First, an addendum to Egypt: My favorite book I’ve read in a while was the surprisingly laugh-out-loud yet sweet Less by Andrew Sean Greer - the 2018 Pulitzer Prize winner. I don’t normally like light reads (and neither does the Pulitzer committee), but 🤷🏻♀️.
Now onto the travel reads! So Werner and I have decided to try to read books written by authors from our travel countries (anywhere we stay at least a week in). So all posts from here on will probably include some of that. Note that the local read is the ONLY thing that might not be a “true” recommendation. Everything else is stuff I’ve really loved.
1. LOCAL STORIES:
So far we’ve visited: Italy, Spain, Malta, Slovenia - and just arrived in Croatia today!
- Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (Italy) - I’ve always intended to read Eco, but sort of in the same way I intent to watch art cinema and instead watch the latest superhero movie. Sooo, despite the book’s plot summary (or its Hollywood movie version) - it is NOT a riveting murder mystery. That said, I learned a LOT about medieval times, Catholic politics, and theology (what makes a Franciscan, Dominican, and Benedictine monk different from each other? Now I too know this arcane fact). It did in fact make me think about cathedrals differently as we walked through them. But I’m also glad I’m done with it now :)
- Daphne and the Two Maltas - BBC Assignment podcast (Malta) - Interesting piece to ponder as I walked around one of the prettiest cities I’ve ever been to. (Truly, get yourself to Valleta ASAP.)
- Belated Egypt one: Cairo, A Type of Love Story (h/t Urmila) - Hilarious take by an expat American journalist in Egypt (though, full disclosure, Werner has read this guy’s books on living in China and finds him to be an “asshole” and “condescending”).
2. HOME STORIES
(...because wherever we go, we probably still gravitate towards American / South African stories.)
- James Fallows on the Reinvention of America: I know some friends who love Fallows, and every once in a while, I read something by him that makes me understand why. This is smart and hopeful (didn’t you think that was an oxymoron?) and full of wonky love for change at the local government/politics level.
- The Promise of Vaping and the Rise of Juul - Reading this made me feel really, really old and out of it. I did not know Juul was a verb. I did not know about any of these Instagram memes. I did not know about it’s popularity nor cache among youth (a term which no longer describes my age bracket). And I did not know there was mounting scientific evidence about the negative health effects of vaping. Def read if you are as ignorant as I was.
3. UNRELATED RECS
- The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse Racing Code - I loved this for its perfect nerdiness (getting your data model perfect, solving a puzzle), and Werner loved it for the brilliant arbitrage.
Next up: Ireland, Thailand. Hit me up if you’ve got local reading/listening recommendations!