Book Stop #2

Book Stop is an occasional meme that allows me to travel and indulge in a good bookshop browse, during these strange, strange times when we cannot travel outside our home state, let alone the country. I plan to combine my bookish instincts with my itchy feet and explore the world via bookshops.

I have a number of bookstores on my to-visit wish list, if I am ever in that country, state or neighbourhood. This is the perfect time to share some of them and my reasons for wanting to visit (beside the obvious reason, of course!)

This edition of Book Stop will also be combined with Paris In July as we head off to Shakespeare & Company, 37 rue de la Bûcherie, 75005 Paris.

In July 1991 I spent three days in Paris. Nowhere near long enough, I'm sure you will all agree. 

We arrived late afternoon and went straight to one of the camping grounds that ring outer Paris. The plan was to set up camp and drive into Paris at sunset so that our first view of Paris proper would be at night, all lit up with the lights that make it so magical. We boarded a Seine River cruise and ooh-ed and ahh-ed at the lights as we glided past all those famous sites I'd only ever read about until that time.

The rest of the evening was spent wandering around the Left Bank, trying to work out how to order and pay for pastries.

Paris was my very first experience in a foreign speaking country. I was 23 and travelling alone within a group. I was rather overwhelmed by the whole thing. So much of my time in Paris is a blur. My photos and a few brief notes in my journal are the only record I have. 

I know I climbed all the stairs up the Eiffel Tower. The lines for the lift were long, even first thing in the morning, and I was young and fit. So climb I did!

1991 was the middle of the Gulf War and we were told that the city wasn't as full as usual with tourists as the war was keeping the American tourists at home. (I had already enjoyed the benefits of this in London during the past 5 months. I was nannying and tripping around the country on the weekends. The weekends I stayed in London, I was able to access last minute tickets for all the West End shows by lining up half an hour before the start. Every show had oodles of returned tickets thanks to the no-show of American tourists. I saw some amazing productions at a great price. No-one likes to perform to a half empty room!)

I still experienced Paris as being busy with bustling, hustling crowds, but apparently, most years it was worse!

The other problem with 1991 travelling, was the smoke haze from the fires in the Gulf. At the top of the Eiffel Tower our view was greatly impaired by the haze. The haze followed us all around Europe that summer.

I also remember climbing all the steps up the belfry of Notre Dame Cathedral in the stifling heat. I tasted escargot for the first (and last) time. I loved buying little cheese snacks at the corner convenience stores. I went through the Musée d-Orsay, walked up the Champs-Élysées and did a dash around the Louvre. But generally, I wandered the streets in a bit of giddy daze. I promised myself that one day I would return, and take my time. I would stay in one of the nicer apartments (not a tent), I would have more money and be a more confident traveller.

When I returned home to Australia four months later, I started a travel wishlist. Whenever I watched a tv program, or read an article, or a book, I would note down places of interest that I wanted to see for myself.

One such note was for the Shakespeare and Company bookstore.

Describe by many as controlled chaos, a place for dreamers and poets, the Shakespeare and Company has a well-known history and an enviable list of famous patrons.

Jeanette Winterson writes in the LitHub,

There’s Hemingway, flexing his fists from the boxing ring, stopping by to pick up a book. James Joyce never arrives before noon and usually needs to borrow money. The big woman with the white poodle is Gertrude Stein. By the stove, beautiful and tired, Djuna Barnes is talking about her novel Nightwood to T. S. Eliot.

Scott Fitzgerald likes to sit and read on the stoop in the sun, and Sylvia Beach has made up her mind to publish Ulysses, because no one else will.

Started by Sylvia Beach in 1919 and now run by George Whitman and his daughter, Sylvia, Shakespeare and Company has changed owners, address and been forced to close due to war and more recently Covid-19. It is now part of Parisian folklore and a must-see for many book-loving travellers.

I, for one, (if international travel ever resumes, and we can return to Europe without quarantining for two weeks), will make Shakespeare and Company my first port of call.

In the meantime, I will endeavour to read one of the many books written about this iconic bookshop.

• Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop | Krista Halverson
• Shakespeare and Company | Sylvia Beach
• Sylvia Beach & The Lost Generation – The History Of Lit Paris In The 20′s & 30′s | Noel Riley Fitch
• Time Was Soft There | Jeremy Mercer
• Sylvia's Bookshop: The Story of Paris's Beloved Bookstore and Its Founder (As Told by the Bookstore Itself!) | Robert Burleigh & illustrated by Katy Wu 
• Down and Out in Paris | The Guardian | 7th March 2009 | Jeanette Winterson

Book Stop #1

Book Stop

Photo by Paolo Chiabrando on Unsplash

Given that we cannot travel outside our home state, let alone the country, at the moment, I thought I might indulge my bookish instincts with my itchy feet and explore the world via bookshops.

I have a number of bookshops on my to-visit wish list, if I am ever in that country, state or neighbourhood. I thought this might be the perfect time to share some of them and why I want to visit (beside the obvious reason, of course!)

Book Stop will be an occasional meme that lets me travel and indulge in a good bookshop browse at the same time. A library or two may also make it onto the list.

My first Book Stop is in Bath - glorious, historic, literary Bath!

The city of Bath is one of the few places in the UK that I've managed to visit both times I have been. A big part of that is thanks to Jane Austen. The second part is well, the baths. I'm a history buff as well as a book nerd, and the thought of treading ground (or is that water?) where the Romans have once been, was something I couldn't resist, twice.

When I first visited in 1991, I stayed in the local YMCA with a friend. We trekked up to Alexandra Park to admire the view back into Bath. We strolled around the Abbey, the Pump Room and the Roman Baths, marvelling at how green the water was and how old it all was.We also walked around the Royal Crescent and the Gravel Walk and tried to imagine what it was like in Jane Austen's time. We ended up climbing trees in Royal Victoria Park!

My second visit to Bath in 2007, was a day trip. I re-walked the Royal Crescent and spent the morning in the Jane Austen Centre. Mr Books and I then had a wonderful afternoon relaxing and reviving in the the new Thermae Bath Spa. If you ever find yourself in beautiful Bath, do yourself a favour and book a session at the Spa. It's worth it.

Little did I know at the time, that a new bookshop had recently sprung up in Bath, in the little street just behind the Jane Austen Centre. 

John St, Bath, has been home to Mr B's Emporium since 2006. It's online presence has all the quirky, creative and passionate reasons why I love independent bookshops. The story of it's genesis is inspiring and quite romantic. The staff are obviously committed and engaged bibliophiles and the space has evolved and grown over time to include a number of bespoke, inviting rooms. I can't wait to explore it in real life.

The intimate reading nooks, the fabulous reading suggestions from their staff and the amazing author events & live music combo's (that I would love to see for myself one day), make this an Indie bookshop after my own heart. I can almost smell the books and spa minerals from here!

Have you ever been to Mr B's Emporium, where books reign supreme?

Are there any other book shops in Somerset I should explore next time I venture to the UK?

Tokyo Style Guide by Jane Lawson

Thankfully Jane Lawson's book, Tokyo Style Guide is more of a walking tour of Tokyo than a pure style guide, as my interest in shopping is minimal. Unfortunately, it's also a hardback book, so it didn't get to come on holidays with me. I browsed it a little before leaving, but have thoroughly enjoyed going through it properly now that we're back - it has helped to make sense of some of what we saw and experienced as well as providing fodder for next time! 

This is not a comprehensive travel guide for all the things to see and do in Tokyo.
It's best used in conjunction with other guides (unless you're a complete shopping junkie, then Jane is your guru!)

Most of Lawson's walks feature specific shops and areas of Tokyo renown for their stylish wares or style icons, but there's also a lot of important, practical stuff, like where to get a good coffee, yakitori and tasty dumplings. Lawson also includes temples, parks, markets and other interesting sites that the first-time, overwhelmed visitor to Tokyo might miss. We skipped most of the shopping experiences in this book but I still found lots to inspire me in planning where to go and what to expect.

Lawson stresses the 'magic' of finding your own way, 'getting lost in Tokyo is to be expected, so take a deep breath and make it part of the fun.' I was very grateful to have read this particular section BEFORE going to Tokyo. We only got a little bit lost once, although one or other of us got bamboozled by directions numerous times, just luckily not both of us together! (Which probably what makes us such a good travelling combo). It's not always easy to go with the flow when you're tired and stressed in a strange country, but Japan was certainly one of the easier countries in which to do so.

What I really loved about Tokyo Style Guide though were the pages and pages of fabulous, colourful street photography. They prompted me with good ideas before heading off as well as giving us lots of good memories when we got back home.

Lawson's other helpful tips included wearing slip on shoes and checking your socks for holes.

She went through some useful phrases which included the Japanese characters so that you could feel confident about walking into the right toilet block or out of the correct doorway.

Some of the train travel info was out of date as the big wide world of phone apps has made this much easier in just two years.

Tokyo Style Guide was a December 2016 publication - a lot can happen in Tokyo in 18 months!

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

I like to think that I have taken my 'what to read whilst travelling' choices to an inspired level of brilliance, but I really outdid myself with our recent trip to Japan. Reading Murakami in Japan now feels like the ONLY place to read Murakami!

Not only does the usual Murakami weirdness make sense when you're actually in Japan, but you also realise just how important the environment is to Murakami and his characters. His descriptions of the trees, forests, waterways and urban spaces are everywhere as you move around the country. As are the crows.

In this case, the boy named crow is a mentor to our young protagonist, Kafka Tamura, perhaps an alter ego, a Japanese Jiminy Cricket. Whatever crow is or isn't, right from word one, Murakami is flagging that symbolism, mythology and psychology will be our prime concerns in Kafka on the Shore.

In Japanese mythology, crows are seen as a sign of 'divine intervention in human affairs' (wikipedia). Western mythology tends to associate the crow with bad news or as a harbinger of death. They're selfish, spread gossip and neglect their young. And they're everywhere in Japan. They sit on telegraph wires, fence posts and roof tops. You often wake up to their cawing, even in the city.

Cats are the other creatures that dominant not only Murakami stories, but many Japanese stories, yet curiously I didn't see one single cat in three weeks, let alone a talking cat! The opposite of the crow, cats are creatures of good luck, although still often associated with death and hauntings.

Silence, I discover is something you can actually hear.

There is no denying that Murakami is on very intimate terms with kooky.

If the talking cats weren't enough, a cameo appearance by Johnny Walker and Colonel Sanders of KFC fame might tip you over the edge. A reference to the (fictional) Picnic at Hanging Rock as an example of another group loss of consciousness event caught my eye. Did Murakami know that it was an urban myth? Is that what he was implying about his own story? The sense of mystery and other-worldliness was certainly a shared atmosphere between the two stories.

I was also amazed by truck drivers who suddenly became classic music afficiandos, quiet librarians who turned out to be sex fiends and sex workers who quoted philosophers. What's not to love? The kookiness gets under my skin and into my head. Just like what happened to me with his previous books.

1Q84 is still roaming around in my head, Colourless Tsukuru less so, but it's still a memorable book experience.

Things outside you are projections of what's inside you, and what's inside you is a projection of what's outside you. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time your stepping into the labyrinth inside. 

One of the really enjoyable aspects to reading Murakami in Japan is the place names. Suddenly they really mean something. Most of the action in Kafka takes place in Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku. 

We didn't get to Shikiko with this visit, but we did see one of the huge bridges, from a distance, that joins Shikoko to Honshu and we spent some time at the station that is the interchange for the JR line that goes to Takamatsu. Seeing the name of the city featured in my book up in lights suddenly grounded this surreal story into reality.

This is only my fourth Murakami (see my Author Challenge tab for details) so I'm not sure I can safely name all his common themes and ideas, but there are a few that I've clocked. Going into the woods/fear of getting lost, weird sex, talking creatures, dreams, random jazz references, loneliness and silence. And for me, the reader, there is an over-riding sense of bewilderment (WTF was that about?) as well as an overwhelming sense of wanting more (whatever it was a think I like it!) 

I'm caught between one void and another. I have no idea what's right, what's wrong. I don't even know what I want anymore. I'm standing alone in the middle of a horrific sandstorm. I can't move, and can't even see my fingertips.

Murakami doesn't wrap his stories up with a neat, tidy bow or resolve many of the story lines. This should be totally frustrating...and it is, but somehow you love being kept in the dark and confused at the same time. Perhaps it's the likeable characters? Or perhaps it's the not so subtle way he plays with your head? Or perhaps it is the hope that the next book he writes will bring you one step closer to understanding this maddening man and his ability to suck you into his world. 

Every one of us is losing something precious to us....Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's how I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories.

Image source

Murakami likes to do the whole books in books thing. Kafka's backlist was an obvious start -The Castle, The Trial, Metamorphosis and In the Penal Colony in this case. But he also referenced The Arabian Nights, the complete works of Natsume Soseki, a book about the trial of Adolf Eichmann (I can only assume it was Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem), Electra by Sophocles, The Tale of the Genji and 'The Chrysanthemum Pledge' in Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Ueda Akinari.

So many tangents, so many connections, which one should I tackle next?

Travel Guides - Japan

My recent trip to Japan was a long time in the making.

I've been wanting to go ever since I studied Japanese at school.

I'm not sure why I didn't prioritise it earlier in my travelling career, except for the vague notion that I've had that I should do the bigger long-haul trips to Europe and the America's in my younger years and save the shorter, closer-to-home trips for later.

Certainly there was no jetlag before, during or after our time in Japan (not like our trip to Cuba and Mexico 18mnths ago where I was shattered for the entire first day in Cuba and for several days again when we finally got home).

We started planning Japan about a year ago.

We knew we wanted to catch some blossom time, but it also had to fit around our work schedules, B17's HSC exam timetable and Mr Books club football commitments.

I patiently waited until August 2017, though, for the latest Lonely Planet Japan to be published before really getting into the nitty gritty of the planning.

At work we're regularly asked which is the best travel guide.

Every trip I take, I decide to do a thorough comparison, to help me answer this question, but every trip leaves me with even more indecision than before I started. There are simply too many variants involved - the type of holiday you want, the author of the particular guide, your mood, the country you're visiting etc.

After Vietnam, I felt that the LP was good for the day-to-day on the ground stuff, like where to get tickets, how much they cost, how to get to and find the various places and what plugs, visas and shots you might need. I found the Eyewitness books good for the history of the country (great to read on the plane) as well as highlighting favourite venues to visit with maps and great colour pics. The Wallpaper city guides had great walks, a focus on the architecture (& shopping, although I've always ignored that section) and good suggestions for drinks and meals. The Trip Advisor app was our main go-to for restaurants and experiences at this time. Their rating system helped to narrow down the often overwhelming choices available.

In Cuba the LP helped us to work out where we actually wanted to go. It was such an unknown adventure, we didn't even know where to start. Yet it was the Eyewitness guide that filled in the gaps for some of the smaller towns that we stayed in. In the bigger towns and cities, the LP walks were a fabulous way to orient ourselves and to see a great cross-section of the area. In Havana, I grew frustrated with the LP because of how they divide the city up into the various suburbs for what to see and do, but then put all the sleeping, eating and drinking sections together at the end. When I'm staying in Centro Habana, I want ALL the stuff associated with Centro Habana to be together. I don't want to have to flick around trying to find a good place to grab a rooftop cocktail! Which is where the Wallpaper Guide came in handy again. Cuba is also where we embraced AirBnB for the first time. All but one of our stays was found on the app.

In Mexico, the Eyewitness guide had fabulous maps and walks around most of the ancient sites. As did the Moon Guide, but everything in the Moon guide was catered for American tourists only, from giving all the prices in US dollars (as opposed to the Mexican peso!) to where to find American food and other places that American likes to hang out together. Useful only for helping us to cross off certain places to not go to for dinner or to hang out! It also had some odd comments that we found skated very close to offensive.

With all this under my belt, I thought that for Japan we would use the LP to plan some of the bigger stuff as well as do their walks, use the Eyewitness Travel Japan for the history and iconic sites, AirBnB for accommodation and Trip Advisor for food.

For the record we have never knowingly stayed in a LP recommendation for accommodation. I have looked at their options over the years, but they're either too expensive or not actually anywhere near where we want to be. Back in my pre-internet, pre-app, backpacking days, the LP did help me track down YMCA's and Youth Hostels. But now I prefer a quieter, cleaner, cosier form of accommodation, embedded in the local community, which is why AirBnB has been perfect for us. 

We take the time to read all the reviews and comments. We look for English speaking hosts, and factor in things like distances public transport, restaurants and other things to see and do. We adjust our expectations for every country we travel to. We take the time to find places that sound like they will suit us and meet our needs and we leave honest reviews that take into account all these factors. Cuba and Japan are two very different countries which demanded two very different styles of travel, yet AirBnB worked beautifully for us in both. 

Trip Advisor used to be great, but the current filters are not very useful and keep going back to the default ones they want you to use. It is still handy to check out nearby restaurants and experiences when you first arrive in a new city, but it's getting harder to sort out the ads from the genuine reviews. I still write honest reviews, but I've become warier. Most of our Japan eating experiences came from friends, our AirBnB hosts or the good old-fashioned serendipitous walk by.

The LP helped me to narrow down my choices about where to actually visit. When I first sat down to fill in the blanks for our 3 week trip, I was overwhelmed - the new edition was so thick with options. So I started with the lovely colour top 25 photographs and a piece of paper. I wrote down which of the iconic sites and places I really wanted to see. Then I read through the 'First time in Japan' and the "If You Like' sections. Each chapter then had a small box of highlights for that region/city.

Sadly, I barely used the Eyewitness guide at all. I found the history section very dry and uninspiring and it didn't cover all the places we were planning on going to (whereas the LP did), so I didn't pick it up again. I also picked up a LP Best of Japan not long before we left, but ran out of time to read it & decided not to pack it to save on weight and space. The road map of Japan came along for the ride, but we used the MapsMe app the whole time instead. The map was handy, though, in the early stages of planning to see where all the places where in relation to each other. The final two books on my pile were a LP Pocket Kyoto & Osaka and a LP Tokyo.

The LP Tokyo was an old edition. I tore out the map and marked out the walks as suggested by LP for Shinjuku and Shibuya (the 2 areas where we were staying). I also tore out the two chapters for these suburbs and just took them along instead of the whole book. The Kyoto & Osaka book was brand new so I didn't want to tear it up (yet!) The Pocket guides really are handy for tucking into your pocket or handbag, although nothing any of the books said prepared us for 4 days in Kyoto during Golden Week!

Golden Week crowds at Fushima Inari-Taisha, Kyoto

I felt very prepared for this trip and had a number of things I REALLY wanted to do. I got to tick most of them off. The rest can wait for the return trip! Mr Books fell in love with the JapanTravel app which he used to plan all our train travel. We like to be organised at the beginning, then as we became more confident in using the trains and buses and negotiating the crowds, we're happy to make stuff up as we go along.

In the end, it was the Lonely Planet books, MapsMe, AirBnB and JapanTravel apps that got us around Japan with the best results.

I will happily conduct more intensive research and guide comparison for future trips!

My blossom photos.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

During the planning stages of my trip to Japan I asked around and checked on Goodreads for the best books set in Japan. At the top of nearly every list I came across was Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.

When it was first published in 1997, and later when the movie was released in 2005, I avoided it at all costs. My impression was that it would be some kind of tacky white American male wish fulfilment fantasy story. Not at all my cup of tea, green or otherwise!

However I succumbed to popular opinion and packed it in my travel bag with many reservations. At best, I thought it would be a good book for the plane when I needed something light and easy to consume.

As it turned out serendipity was on my side.

I also took Murakami's Kafka on the Shore to Japan. In fact, I had started reading it a few days before departure. My review for it will turn up here soon. I finished it, about halfway through our time in Japan, as luck would have it, on our first night in Kyoto.

Starting Memoirs of a Geisha in Kyoto was an inspired thing to do. We stayed in the Higashiyama area, just a handful a streets away from Gion, the main geisha area in Kyoto and where the book was set.

I knew about the controversy surrounding the author and whether or not he had permission to name the geisha who provided him with a lot of the information for the book. From this I had assumed that the book was based on her life story. It wasn't until I finished the book and read Golden's acknowledgements page that I realised this assumption was not entirely correct.

Although the character of Sayuri and her story are completely invented, the historical facts of a geisha's day-to-day life in the 1930's and 1940's are not....Mineko Iwasaki, one of Gion's top geisha in the 1960's and 1970's, opened her Kyoto home to me during May 1992, and corrected my every misconception about the life of a geisha.

 A quick check on the internet, showed that Golden had been sued for breach of contract and defamation of character by Iwasaki who claimed that Golden had agreed to protect her anonymity. Golden claimed otherwise, saying he had tapes and notes to the contrary. They eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum of money. Iwasaki then went on to write (with Rande Gail Brown) an autobiography titled Geisha of Gion (2002) which claimed to tell the real story.

Both books were best sellers and both books have been loved and hated in equal measure on Goodreads. Golden for paternalistic inaccuracies and Iwasaki for grandiose, emotionless boasting.

From what I have been able to ascertain (and please correct me if I'm wrong) there were various levels or ranks of being a geisha. The highest ranking geisha were from the Gion, Pontocho and Kamishichiken districts. A lower rank of geisha were the so-called onsen geisha, or hot spring geisha, who worked in towns famous for their hot spring baths. Lower still were the ones who worked in a jorou-ya (brothel). A maiko was a junior or apprentice geisha.

Geiko Tomeko 1930's

Another controversy surrounded the mizuage ceremony as described by Golden in his book. This is the process by which a maiko became a fully fledged geisha (or geiko as geisha were called in Kyoto). Golden describes his character's virginity being sold off to the highest bidder. It was a pretty ghastly moment in the story and I wondered at the time just how true it was.

Initially I was relieved when a google search indicated that Iwasaki strongly refuted that this ever happened to her and that no such custom ever existed. However further reading seems to indicate that it was in fact a common practice, even for the higher ranking geiko (Sayo Masuda and Liza Dalby). 1959 is the key date here though, as this is when mizuage was made illegal along with other acts of prostitution.

Mizuage still exists as a form of initiation from maiko to senior maiko, but without the sex. The ceremony now focuses on the change of hairstyle and 'turning of the collar' on the kimono. According to her autobiography, Iwasaki became a maiko at age 15, in 1964, five years after the change in law.

So after all that, did I actually enjoy the book?

Yes, I did.

I read it as historical fiction, not as a memoir, and thoroughly enjoyed the glimpse into another world in another time. It was a quick, easy read. The romantic element felt unbelievable, rather Cinderellish really. For me it let down the historical aspects that I enjoyed learning about. It also happily mentioned the names of streets, buildings and streams that I was able to walk down, through and around, imagining what it must have looked like 70 years ago.

I could do nothing but step into my shoes and follow her up the alleyway to a street running beside the narrow Shirakawa Stream (that's a tautology by the by - kawa and gawa means river or stream). 

FYI: Hitler adopted the swastika from an ancient Hindu, Buddhist symbol denoting a temple.
It is still used in Japan (& other Asian countries) to indicate the site of a Buddhist temple.
Confronting to the Western eye, but true.

Back in those days, the streets and alleys in Gion were still paved beautifully with stone. We walked along in the moonlight for a block or so, beside the weeping cherry trees that drooped down over the black water, and finally across a wooden bridge arching over into a section of Gion I'd never seen before. The embankment of the stream was stone, most of it covered with patches of moss. Along its top, the backs of the teahouses and okiya connected to form a wall. Reed screens over the windows sliced the yellow light into tiny strips.

Poolside Reading

With a major holiday on the horizon, it has got me thinking about holiday reading. Kate recently mentioned two books that she read whilst lying poolside in her latest #6degrees meme; one was a good choice, one not so much.

We've all done it.
In the excitement of planning a holiday; we forget one of the most important elements. What will we read on the plane? at the end of each day? on a rainy day? or by the pool?

As an avid reader, I have rarely been caught without a book and I usually go home with more books than I originally packed! My ability to pick the right book for each holiday has almost become an art form in and of itself. But I have got it wrong occasionally.

Reading Stephen King's Pet Semetary in a quiet, dark caravan park on the north coast of NSW surrounded by rustling trees was one of those not so inspired choices. Attempting a reread of The Odyssey as I was travelling around Europe in 1991 seemed like a good idea at the time, but Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs was the more practical (& social) thing to do. After reading it, I simply passed it on the next person on the bus - it gave us all something to talk about and scare each other with for the rest of the trip. With The Odyssey I was on my own!

My holiday reading depends on the reason for the travel in the first place and the choice of destination. If I'm heading off to a beachside resort or bungalow with a pool for a relaxing break, then my book selection is very different than if I'm planning a major overseas jaunt to somewhere new and exciting. Poolside reads often have nothing to do with my location, but major overseas holidays are definite candidates for book matching.

My first trip skiing saw me travel with Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow by Peter Hoeg - perfect!

My first trip to England saw me read so many books (I was in London for 6 months) it's hard to recall all of them, but the highlights were Forever Amber by Kathleen Windsor, discovering Monica Dickens and binge watching Police Rescue when I felt homesick!

On my second trip to the UK, I read On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, on Chesil Beach.

We also visited Lyme Regis in honour of Persuasion and The French Lieutenant's Woman and we watched a performance of The Merchant of Venice in The Globe Theatre. And thanks to a little library in a B&B near Hadrian's Wall, I discovered Daphne du Maurier's Mary Anne. Curiously I had taken my much loved copy of Brideshead Revisited on the holiday with me, but couldn't read it at all. The tone and atmosphere was all wrong. It was too hard to be ironic and satirical whilst in happy holiday mode.

In Adelaide I read Kerry Goldsworthy's Adelaide and on a soccer trip to Canberra I read The Misogyny Factor by Anne Summers. In New Zealand, many years ago, I made myself read Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff.

My first time in WA was with Salmon Rushdie oddly enough. Midnight's Children had nothing to do what I was seeing and experiencing, yet the book was so powerful that it will now forever be linked with WA and WA with Midnight's Children. My second time in WA seemed the perfect opportunity to reread Cloudstreet by Tim Winton. It was. My third time in WA revisited some of the same ground that I had explored in the first. It was really weird having memories of India pop into my head in certain places! The book I actually took on this trip, though, was a disaster. It was my CCspin book The Brother's Karamazov - most definitely NOT a holiday read.

My first time in Bali saw me pack Inspector Singh Investigates: A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul which was a great choice. But even better was the book I found in a local Seminyak bookshop, Love and Death in Bali by Vicki Baum.

Our trip to Vietnam was busy and tiring and I didn't have much time for reading, so a book of short stories was the right choice in the end. The Frangipani Hotel by Violet Kupersmith was beautifully written and slightly creepy at the same time. The stories were set in the USA and Vietnam and they were full of fascinating characters both real and spectral.

In Cuba I read Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana - the descriptions of Havana and Santiago de Cuba were so spot on thanks to the time-stood-still feel in much of this country.

Our honeymoon in Hawaii was a Kiana Davenport-fest. Song of Exile was a vivid, memorable story whilst House of Many Gods didn't leave as big an impression. Whilst in Honolulu, at the end of our trip, I picked up a copy of Moloka'i and Honolulu by Alan Brennert. Not the cheeriest of topics, but if you're ever going to read a book about leprosy (then Korean brides), then Hawaii is the place to do it.

In Hong Kong I found a copy of Amy Tan's The Hundred Secret Senses to see me home from my adventures in China.

My fast approaching trip to Japan has been filled with oodles of travel guides and preparatory reading but going with me on the trip is Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (light and easy for the plane and when I'm tired & weary), The Narrow Road to the Interior by Basho for the train trip to our overnight stop in Yamadera and Kafka on the Shore by Murakami for a more modern version of Japan. All three are relative slim, B-format books - another factor to consider when packing holiday reading - when you refuse to embrace e-readers!

What have been your best (& worst) holiday reads?

Once Upon A Small Rhinoceros by Meg McKinlay

Once Upon A Rhinoceros is my kind of picture book.

As a child I dreamed of setting off into the big, wide world to explore. I've always wanted to see what there was to be seen. I couldn't wait to be grown up so that I could finally just go.

Small rhinoceros has the very same dream; she wants to see the world. She patiently waits until the time is right, and as you can see by the glorious cover designed by Leila Rudge, she succeeds.

She sailed on...through the woolly wild of winter and the smooth sweep of summer...to faraway lands and beyond.

On her return home, her family and friends are happy to see her, but unimpressed by her tales...all except for one quiet voice who asks,

'Did you get lost?'

'Many times.'

'And was it...wonderful?' 

'Oh yes!'  

Oh yes indeed!

With themes of independence and freedom, pushing the boundaries of what is considered 'normal' and daring to be different to fulfil your heart's desire, Once Upon A Small Rhinoceros will charm you and inspire you in equal measure.

Meg McKinlay has written some of my favourite books for teens and children, including the CBCA award winning A Single Stone, No Bears and Ten Tiny Things. She has a wonderful blog post describing her creative journey with this particular story here.

Leila Rudge adds collage elements to her pencil, paint and paper 'hand snipped' illustrations. She has written and illustrated the wonderful CBCA Notable book Ted, the very popular CBCA shortlisted book, Gary as well as No Bears with McKinlay.

#AusReadingMonth
#AustralianWomenWriters Challenge

Neon Pilgrim by Lisa Dempster

Neon Pilgrim: A Memoir of Walking Japan's Henro Michi seemed to be designed to appeal just to me right now, being in the middle of holiday preparations for Japan, as I am. Not that I'm planning to walk around any of the 88 Temples in Shikoku or run away for two months to find myself, as tempting as both options might sound at times!

Neon Pilgrim is a travelogue and a memoir in one. Wikipedia defines a memoir as:

"a story from a life", such as touchstone events and turning points from the author's life.

This is what Dempster has presented us with - a moment from her life that proved to be a major turning point for her. It also happens to be a very engaging, easy to read account of her time walking the 88 Temple pilgrimage in Shikoku, Japan.

We don't learn a lot about Dempster's back story. We know she is twenty-something with some issues - depression, no job, over weight and living back at home. Back in her school days, she completed a year long exchange program with a school in Shikoku. She became aware of the 88 Temple pilgrimage at this time. In her time of need a decade later, it came back to her as a way of solving all her present day problems.

We don't really understand how Dempster got to this point in her life. But I guess we don't really need to know. The point for us, as well as Dempster, is the walk, the pilgrimage, the experience.

Temple 44 - Source: Simon le nippon

It was obviously a hard slog for Dempster - a real physical and mental challenge. Walking in the middle of the Japanese summer may not have been the wisest decision she ever made, but sometimes when you need to make a major change, you just need to get started, obstacles be damned!

Part of the tradition of the henro michi is gift-giving - offerings or settai. By giving drinks, food, shelter, lifts or clothes to the pilgrims, settai offerers are honouring the monk Kobo Daishi as well as those who walk in his footsteps. It can be seen as their way of participating in the pilgrimage themselves and acknowledging the importance of the pilgrimage in general.

For Dempster, the settai giving, and on her behalf, the accepting, played a significant role in her experience. The help was often timely and much needed. It took her quite a while to accept the generosity generously, but as with most things associated with the pilgrimage, there was a ritual to smooth the way.

It's possible to be a part of the 88 Temple pilgrimage in various ways. You can be a henro, pilgrim who walks the entire route with your backpack and sleeping gear on your back, sleeping wild or in the various small shelters along the way. Some people cycle the route, or drive themselves around or join in a bus group. Some henro's walk the distance but stay in B7B's or hotels. Some people do the walk in stages throughout a lifetime, while some have walked it hundreds of times already. A few do it in reverse.

Dempster went the whole hog, sleeping out or in tsuyado, the free shelters scattered along the route. It was considered unusual for a foreigner to do so, which made her an object of much fascination and discussion along the way. Obviously this was not the easy choice either. Wild animals, no toilets or showers and creepy crawlies in the middle of the night where just some of the hazards. Dempster was constantly facing her fears and challenging her self-doubts.

Photo by Wayne Emde.

Her pilgrimage was also a time of great beauty, kindness and exhilaration. She had some glorious days and profound moments. She met some inspiring fellow walkers and found joy in things large and small. She also had some really shitty days where everything seemed to work against her - the weather, her body, her mind. Dangerous urban sprawl sections of the walk, over exuberant temple tourists, curt temple workers and unknown noises in the night were all part of the bad days.

I would have loved seeing some photos of the various temples, but I guess carrying a camera is not part of the pilgrimage experience.

The cover doesn't really do justice to this story and I never found out why she was a 'neon' pilgrim. Perhaps I missed that bit? But I found the story inspiring and fascinating. If I ever get to one of those desperate crossroads in my life or find myself stuck in a huge rut that can only be got out of by doing something drastic, then this will be the pilgrimage for me. Although I will walk and sleep comfortable in a cosy, warm B&B every night thank you!

Neon Pilgrim was originally published in 2009. This updated edition includes an Afterword by Dempster where she briefly detailed how much her life changed after completing her pilgrimage. She still had some dark times, but

the henro michi is a gift I can return to anytime, something to remind me that within myself I have the spirit and strength to get through anything.

In anticipation of #AusReadingMonth #NonFicNov

Wrong About Japan by Peter Carey

Wrong About Japan was a lovely surprise. My relationship with Peter Carey is a bit hit or miss, but this slim memoir/travel journal with his teenage son hit the mark.

I recently caught up with a well-travelled friend who has been to Japan several times to mine her for information about where to go and what to see. At the end of the chat she loaned me her copy of Wrong About Japan saying it was a book that she and her family all read and enjoyed together.

It turned out to be a fascinating snapshot of manga and anime obsession as well as a great introduction to the Asakusa area of Tokyo and some of the cultural differences that Westerners often feel when the visit Japan trying to find the 'Real Japan'. I hadn't given much thought to manga or anime, well, ever, but reading about Carey and his son's passion for the art form and it's stories, piqued my interest...a little.

Father's of teenage sons have to find all sorts of ways to stay bonded during this weird and often trying phase. I'm not sure how many dads would spot a trip to Japan to assist in that process, but all power to Carey for doing everything within his means. Having watched Mr Books go through this painful time with both his boys, I found many of the brief comments and asides made by Carey to be very affecting and authentic.

The book was first published in 2004. I would love to know what 26 year old Charley now thinks about this trip with his dad and whether he is still enthralled by manga and if he ever returned to Tokyo. I wonder how they both would describe the 'Real Japan' now?

I'm often dissatisfied with outsiders writing about the Australian way of life. On the one hand's it's seductive to see our way of life reflected through an outsider's eyes, but on the other, it's extremely provoking to see how many errors and misconceptions exist. I therefore wonder how a Japanese reader would view Carey's thoughts on his time in Japan.

In this curious little book, I learnt a bit of history about samurai's and sword making, I got a sense of the trains and just how big and complicated the stations can be as well as the hotel rooms and just how small and compact they can be.

I also picked up two more Japan reads to add to my wishlist - Rick Kennedy's Little Adventures in Tokyo and Alex Kerr's Lost Japan.

Part of the pleasure of a holiday really is the anticipation and the preparation.

#6degrees September

#6degrees is a monthly meme hosted by Kate @Books Are My Favourite and Best.

Oftentimes I haven't read the starting book for this meme, but I can assure you that I only play the next 6 books with ones I have actually read. 

If I've read the book during this blogging life, then I include my review, otherwise, you just have to take my word for it!

This month the starting book is Wild Swans by Jung Chang.

Are you game?

Old image alert - Kate @Books Are My Favourite & Best now hosts #6Degrees but this is a good refresh of the rules.

In 1996 I travelled to China for three weeks. It was a country I had wanted to visit ever since I was a teenager gazing in awe at the Terracotta Warriors exhibition on a school excursion to Canberra in 1983. As a result of this interest I have read quite a bit of Chinese literature and books based in China since then.

Jung Chang's Wild Swans was one of those books.

But it was not my favourite book set in China.

The one I hold most dear, is the one I purchased in Hongkong on my way home from China, The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan. Part of it's appeal was it's setting - in Guilin - which was one of the areas I had just explored.

The English language section in the Hongkong bookshop was light on in choice, but this was exactly the book I was looking for. It was Tan's latest book, newly released & despite the ghastly cover, paper and font, I snapped it up.
Thanks to this perfect timing, the images, smells and sounds of China within the book felt more real to me than any other book on China I've ever read.
It is now firmly a part of my China experience.

I had a similar bookish experience in Bali.
In Periplus Books in Seminyak I found an English translation of the book I had been searching for before leaving home to read in Bali.

Vicki Baum's Love and Death in Bali turned out to be the perfect thing to read whilst actually in the country and I'm thrilled that I found it in time.

It filled in so much of the history of the island and helped me to fall in love with Bali.

Another island that I fell in love with whilst holidaying nearby was Moloka'i by Alan Brennert.

We spent a couple of weeks exploring the beautiful islands of Hawai'i, Maui and O'ahu in 2010.
Thanks to this book, next time (fingers crossed), I plan to visit Moloka'i too.
I knew very little about the nature of leprosy or how the leprosy colony on Moloka'i worked before reading this book. Its scientific basis and historical record were fascinating and enlightening.

I could make this entire post about books I read about a country whilst holidaying there, but that might be showing off!

So instead, I will follow the thread of illness, science and pathology to Anne Manne's The Life of I: The New Culture of Narcissism.

In her book, Manne explored the idea that narcissism actually sits on a spectrum - with high functioning at one end and extreme pathological narcissism at the other.
Her example for this end was the Norwegian serial killer Anders Behring Breivik.

The only other book that I can think of that I have read with a Norwegian protagonist is Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder.

Fortunately Sophie is much nicer and her story far more philosophical than Breivik's.
Until we realise (*****SPOILER ALERT*****) that she is in a story within a story.
Meta-fiction has sucked us again!

Meta-fiction is my next (and last) rather easy link in this month's #6degrees, because it allows me to jump straight into one of those unforgettable books that totally weirded me out when I first read it - Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy.

There you have it! I've been to New York, Norway, Hawai'i, Bali and China via books this month.
As you read this post, I will actually be relaxing, cocktail in one hand, book in the other, in one of these amazing destinations.

Can you guess which one?
(although if you follow me on Insta, you will already know the answer to that question.)

#6degrees

Out of Africa by Karen Blixen

Out of Africa by Karen Blixen has been my nemesis for quite a long time now. I've tried to read it several times after seeing and enjoying the movie back in 1985, but it baulked me at every attempt. I found the language stilted and dry and too descriptive.

Thirty years later it finally proved different. I wasn't put off by the old-fashioned language or writing style.

Occasionally the language still jarred my modern ears and eyes, but Blixen was obviously in sympathy with and empathetic towards the local people of Kenya.

The discovery of the dark races was to me a magnificent enlargement of all my world.

We ourselves, in boots, and in our constant great hurry, often jar with the landscape. The Natives are in accordance with it.

Certain stories and sections were beautifully wrought with Blixen bringing the reader right into her world. The first three sections were full of interesting and unique stories. Lulu the gazelle, local customs, tribal justice and tales about many of her servants provided the reader with an insider's view of a world that most of us will never be able to experience. Not only because that time in history has now passed but simply because most of us live out our lives not far from the place or culture of our birth.

An African forest is a mysterious region. You ride into the depths of an old tapestry, in places faded and in others darkened with age, but marvellously rich in green shades. You cannot see the sky at all in there, but the sunlight plays in many strange ways, falling through the foliage. The grey fungus, like long drooping beards, on the trees, and the creepers hanging down everywhere, give a secretive, recondite air to the native forest. I used to ride here with Farah on Sundays, when there was nothing to do on the farm.

The sense of adventure, curiosity and drive that makes someone leave their home, to explore another country completely different to their own and to embrace what they find there is not something that many people do voluntarily. Blixen was obviously an unconventional woman. Her independence and pioneering spirit would have been unusual in her time. She must have faced censure and disapproval at every step.

In Donald Hannah's biography, The Mask and the Reality (1971), she is quoted as saying,

Here at long last one was in a position not to give a damn for all conventions, here was a new kind of freedom which until then one had only found in dreams!

Yet none of this is evident in her book.

All the emotion is sucked right out of it.
We don't get to know Blixen - what makes her tick, why she embarked on this adventure in the first place, what obstacles she faced, how she felt about anything. We also don't get to know Denys at all. He is just this guy who flies in and out at times. When he dies, you feel nothing. You have no sense of who he was or why he was important to Blixen.

Thanks to wikipedia I found out that she wrote a letter to her brother Thomas in 1924, where she said,

I believe that for all time and eternity I am bound to Denys, to love the ground he walks upon, to be happy beyond words when he is here, and to suffer worse than death many times when he leaves...

None of that feeling is portrayed in the book.

Perhaps my problem with Out of Africa was expectation.

I was expecting a cohesive story about her life and times in Kenya, instead it was simply a collection of anecdotes, observations and character sketches, strung together by Blixen at a later date. One whole section, called From an Immigrant's Notebook, was purely snippets of information loosely collected from a journal or letters - all the bits she didn't have the time or inclination to flesh out into longer stories perhaps.

Thanks to the 1985 movie, I was also expecting to get a sense of Karen and Denys' turbulent relationship. Obviously the movie combined various sources of information to round out the anecdotes from Out of Africa, as none of this was revealed in the book.

The insights into Kenyan life and culture were fascinating but Out of Africa is not a memoir or an autobiography. For me, this was disappointing and ultimately unsatisfying.

There is now a museum in Blixen's old home in Kenya.

Out of Africa fulfils several bookish challenges. It is

• my latest #CCspin book for the Classics Club.
• another book from my Women's Classic literature challenge.
• part of my World from My Armchair challenge.

Travelers' Tales Mexico by James O'Reilly & Larry Habegger

I do like to hunt down books that are set in the country or region that I'm visiting.

Our recent trip to Tulum on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico though proved to be a bit of a challenge. I couldn't find any fiction (in print) for this area, although I did find a Moon travel guide dedicated to Tulum.

I eventually unearthed Travelers' Tales Mexico edited by James O'Reilly and Larry Habegger and bought it hoping that some of the tales would be about the Yucatan.

Only one of the tales had an obvious reference to the Yucatan Peninsula, The Underground World of the Yucatan (1994) by Richard Bloom.  ♠♠7♠♠

He gave us a brief history about the formation of cenotes - 'sinkholes with trapped water' and their importance to the original inhabitants of the region - before introducing us to Leonardo Pacheco Cohuich, a guide at Las Grutus de Loltun, Dzitnup & Las Grutus de Balankanche. We learnt a little Mayan and Toltec history as well as touching on the meaning of some of the local cave paintings.

Sadly, we did not have time to visit this particular site ourselves, and the essay was too short to do more than tease and tantalise this particular reader! However, we did pop in for a refreshing swim at Gran Cenote near Tulum after a hot morning walking around Coba Archaeological ruins.

Crossing the Linguistic Frontera (1994) by Joel Simon promised a little more Yucatan flavour with it's subtitle, A Yucatan bus trip becomes a window into Mexican life. Simon and his wife, learnt a lot about patience, the meaning of the word 'full' and the Mexican approach to time and schedules.

Lessons we also learnt during our travels around Cuba, more so than during our brief time in Tulum. ♠♠8♠♠

One of the lengthier tales was Welcoming the Spirits on Janitzio Island  (1994) by Jeff Greenwald which described the Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, ritual as celebrated in one particular community.

It was a poignant and informative piece that also highlighted some of the problems with over the top tourism. ♠♠9♠♠

Finding Frida Kahlo (1990) by Alice Adams has convinced me that I would love to return to Mexico to learn more about Kahlo and see more of her art in situ. ♠♠10♠♠

While the last two pieces that I read - The Evolution of La Frontera (1992) by Richard Rodriguez ♠♠J♠♠ & The Border (1994) by William Langewiesche ♠♠Q♠♠ were selected to help me understand the complicated relationship between Mexico and its northern neighbour. Given that we were in Mexico during Trump's inauguration, the relationship between these two countries was much in the news and on our minds.

During our travels, we also realised that despite being critical and thoughtful users of news and media services throughout most of our lives, we had still absorbed, quite unconsciously, a very North American view of Mexico. It only took a few short days, and a couple of fortuitous conversations with Mexicans to see that our preconceived ideas were based on misinformation and prejudice.

Mexico is a much bigger, more complex and nuanced country than we had been led to believe. We experienced no danger, no drugs and only one trickster. We ate delicious, fresh, locally sourced food, saw some amazing sites and learnt so much about Mayan history, that my head is still spinning!

Chichen Itza - one of the Mayan Archaeological Zones that we explored.

Travelers' Tales Mexico was a great way to get a little insight into the Mexican way of life.
The only beef I had with the layout of the book were the text boxes on the side. Although they were usually linked to the main idea of the essay, they distracted from the reading of said essay. Should one read them on the page as they appeared, or remember to come back at the end of the essay? Neither approach was very satisfactory. The first broke the rhythm of the essay, while the second was often hard to remember to do!

I didn't read all the essays this time around, but I did read all the text boxes - they covered everything from stuff to do, history, food, places, language, stories and useful tips.

Hopefully we will return to Mexico one day, to give me an excuse to read more of these essays in depth, but for now, the six tales above form the first part of my #DealMeIn short story challenge (full details here).

I'm playing with an Australian euchre pack - 32 cards - & I had a lot of fun searching out different designs on google!