Al-Shaykh also wrote The Locust and the Bird: My Mother"s Story as a way of coming to understand just what it took for her mother to divorce her father in a society where women were expected to accept what fate dealt them and any deviation from that behavior was severely punished.
Other nonfiction not to miss includes Joel Chasnoff"s The 188th Crybaby Brigade: A Skinny Jewish Kid from Chicago Fights Hezbollah:A Memoir, in which an Ivy League-educated comedian whose career is going nowhere decides to change directions, joins the Israeli Defense Forces, and is sent to Lebanon (hard to believe this could be funny, but it is); Origins: A Memoir by Amin Maalouf includes not only his family"s history, but also the amazing story of his grandfather"s trip to Havana to bring his younger brother home; and Venus Khoury-Ghata"s A House at the Edge of Tears.
There"s a full chapter about the refugee camps in Lebanon in Caroline Moorehead"s devastating Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees, and one of the most thought-provoking books I"ve read in years is Fouad Ajami"s cultural history of the Middle East in The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation"s Odyssey.
LIBERIA.
The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper, who formerly worked for the Wall Street Journal and is now diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times, describes her idyllic childhood and the horrors following the descent of Liberia into civil war.
The Darling by Russell Banks is the story of Hannah Musgrave, American born and bred, a child of hopeful dreams and political protest, who flees the FBI"s clutches and moves to Liberia in 1976, where she marries one of the rising stars of the growing revolutionary movement there. Now living in relative seclusion on a farm in upstate New York, she travels back to that war-torn country to find her three sons. Banks"s novel features a heroine whom you can"t entirely embrace in friendship and good will, but whose idealism and good faith you can"t deny.
Political junkies won"t want to miss Ellen Johnson Sirleaf"s memoir This Child Will Be Great. It"s the remarkable story of a little girl growing up in the 1930s and "40s in a dilapidated area of Monrovia, the country"s capital, and ending up in 2006 with her election as Liberia"s (and Africa"s) first woman president.
LOS ANGELES: CITY OF ANGELS.
Genre readers are really in luck when it comes to L.A.-some of the best-known writers of the past and present set their books there.
From the past, there"s James Cain (Mildred Pierce is the one to pick up first) and Joseph Wambaugh (especially The Choirboys; the t.i.tle is totally ironic, but you have to read the book to find out why). Wambaugh"s nonfiction work, The Onion Field, is one of the few true crime books that I"ve really enjoyed. It takes place in L.A. in 1963, recounting the events that occur after two policemen pull over a car for a routine traffic stop.
From the present there"s Walter Moseley, whose Easy Rawlins novels, read in order, present a history of the city"s racial politics. Begin with Devil in a Blue Dress, which introduces all the major themes that Mosley explores throughout the series.
Other favorites of mine include Michael Connelly (especially his very early novels, including The Black Echo,The Black Ice, and The Concrete Blond) and Robert Crais (especially The Watchman , featuring Joe Pike).
For a look at cool L.A., try the lighthearted mysteries by Harley Jane Kozak and Susan Kandel. Kozak"s main character is Wollie (short for Wollstonecraft) Sh.e.l.ley, a greeting-card designer whose antics will delight you. Some of my favorite parts of Dating Dead Men and her other novels are the zany characters who populate Wollie"s life. Kandel"s character, Cece Caruso, writes biographies about famous mystery writers (and thus always stumbles across a body or two in her researches). Although it"s not necessary to read them in order, the first one is I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason; my favorite happens to be Christietown:A Novel About Vintage Clothing, Romance, Mystery, and Agatha Christie. Fans of Janet Evanovich"s New Jersey romps will enjoy these West Coast read-alikes.
But there are lots of terrific non-genre novels (old and new) about the City of Angels, including The Tortilla Curtain by T. C. Boyle; Bebe Moore Campbell"s Brothers and Sisters; Marisa Silver"s Babe in Paradise; Michael Tolkin"s The Player;The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West; Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber; and Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion.
And nonfiction as well: Sandra Tsing Loh"s Depth Takes a Holiday: Essays from Lesser Los Angeles, and Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner (which broadens the geographical narrowness of this section considerably), for two.
If you"re looking for topnotch nonfiction writing about the state (not just L.A. or San Francisco), take a look at John McPhee"s a.s.sembling California, the last book in his Annals of the Former World series. If anyone can make geology both essential reading and understandable by the interested layperson, it"s McPhee. A friend once mentioned to me that even though he"s read McPhee"s essays in The New Yorker, he"s always drawn to reread them in book form because McPhee"s style is so captivating.
LYME REGIS.
If you"re going to Lyme Regis, a wonderfully broody and very atmospheric city in England that seems to be on the verge of falling into the ocean, the book to turn to first is The French Lieutenant"s Woman by John Fowles. Read it for how Fowles fills the story with Lyme (and, if the book is new to you, for the wonderful way he plays with the idea of story itself). If you do travel to this city, you can find The Cobb and the rock formation known as Granny"s Teeth that Fowles refers to in his novel.
Another novel to pick up is Jane Austen"s Persuasion. Here Anne and others stroll the windy streets of Lyme and silly Louisa Musgrove jumps from The Cobb as she flirts with Captain Wentworth.
Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier is a Victorian-era novel focusing on real women-Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot-who were speculating about evolution and the nature of the world before Darwin; together they changed history (though they got little credit for it).
Note for mystery fans:There"s even a terrific Colin Dexter mystery called The Way Through the Woods, in which Inspector Morse, whom we usually find operating out of Oxford, travels to Lyme Regis on vacation and stumbles on a crime involving a missing Swedish woman who disappeared while on holiday there.
THE MAINE CHANCE.
People go to Maine for the beauty of its coastline, the romance of its forests, the fun of clamming, and the coziness of its small towns. There are many great reads set in the Pine Tree State. Here are my favorites.
One of the cla.s.sics that has kept its charm is Sarah Orne Jewett"s The Country of the Pointed Firs, originally published in 1896. It"s set in a coastal village and is marked by the acuity of its observations, its appreciation for nature, and its gentle insights into the lives of women. (In a strange way, it reminded me of Elizabeth Gaskell"s Cranford, although the two books have really nothing in common except that they"re word pictures of a particular time and place.) All three of Elizabeth Strout"s novels are set in Maine.There"s Amy and Isabelle (one of the male characters is a contender for the most loathsome man in fiction, second only to Humbert Humbert, in my opinion); Abide with Me, which takes place in 1959 (fans of Marilynne Robinson"s Gilead and Home will probably enjoy it very much); and Olive Kitteridge, a collection of linked short stories that won the Pulitzer Prize. Book groups take note: all of these would make an excellent choice for discussion.
Before she became famous for Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote a terrific novel called Stern Men, which is set on an island twenty miles north of the coast of Maine. Fort Niles is separated from another island only by a small channel, but each island"s inhabitants, mostly lobstermen and their families, loathe anyone from the other island. After attending boarding school out of state, Ruth returns to Fort Niles determined to end the internecine warring-partly by falling in love with the "wrong" young man.
When you finish the Gilbert novel, take a look at these two reader-friendly micro-histories of the lobster industry: The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier by Colin Woodard and The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean by Trevor Corson. Corson is a marine biologist and a third-generation lobsterman-here he describes what"s known, and not, about the lobster, and intersperses that with stories of his family"s life on Little Cranberry Island, Maine.
I frequently suggest Stephen King"s Lisey"s Story to readers who believe books in the horror genre are too, well, horrible for them. It takes place primarily in a non-supernatural Maine and is quite a good choice for book groups, as well.
Some Maine-based cla.s.sics include Louise d.i.c.kinson Rich"s We Took to the Woods; Henry David Th.o.r.eau"s The Maine Woods; and Arundel by Kenneth Roberts, which recounts Benedict Arnold"s march to Quebec as told by Steven Nason, a (fictional) young man from Arundel, Maine. (Nearly every high school student in the state has read this book.) One book that should become a cla.s.sic is Bernd Heinrich"s A Year in the Maine Woods, in which he describes the time he spent in a small cabin deep in the trees pretty much alone except for his pet raven, Jack. When I finished this, I wanted to spend a year in the Maine woods, too, seeing, hearing, experiencing, and knowing all that Heinrich did. And, of course, to get a raven of my own named Jack.
Contemporary Maine novels include the Tinker Cove mysteries of Leslie Meier (there are lots of them, so if you enjoy them you"re in real luck; there"s no need to start with the first one); the bed-and-breakfast-themed mysteries of Karen MacInerney, especially Murder Most Maine; and Paul Doiron"s first-but I hope not last-mystery, The Poacher"s Son. Doiron is editor-in-chief of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, and he knows the state well.
And please don"t forget Cathie Pelletier"s funny and poignant novels; their characters still shine in my memory. The Bubble Reputation and The Funeral Makers (among others) will definitely give you a feeling for the quirky charms of the state.
MAKING TRACKS BY TRAIN.
I seem to be quoting Edna St. Vincent Millay often these days; there"s a poem of hers called "Travel" that I memorized years ago because it has always described how I wish I felt-especially the last verse, which ends: "Yet there isn"t a train I wouldn"t take, / No matter where it"s going."
I"ve always wanted to be the kind of person whose adventurous nature would lead me to emulate the poem"s speaker and just take a train ride for the joy of it. My longtime dream-sadly unlikely to be realized at this point in my life-is to travel from Sydney, Australia, across the enormous country to Perth by train. I constantly console myself by seeking out and compulsively reading the accounts of other, more adventuresome travelers. It"s a shame that there aren"t more contemporary writings about train rides available to the armchair traveler, but we"re so lucky to have the ones we do.
In The Big Red Train Ride, uber-traveler Eric Newby, along with his long-suffering and mostly very patient wife, Wanda, traveled from Moscow on a three-thousand-mile journey to the Soviet Far East and the Sea of j.a.pan in 1977. The description of their trip-written in Newby"s always understated humor-is a delight, although you might be grateful (as I was) to be reading it in a warm house, wearing flannel pajamas, and having cups and cups of hot tea readily to hand.
Paul Theroux is a connoisseur of long train rides as well. Many of his books are about train travel-the various trains he"s taken, the people he"s met along the way, and the experiences that ensued. My favorite is The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia, but others include The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas; Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China; and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of The Great Railway Bazaar, which retraces his 1975 journey.
Andrew Eames"s The 8:55 to Baghdad not only describes his 2002 train journey from London to Iraq, but also offers a look back at the life of mystery writer Agatha Christie, who took the Orient Express on the same three-thousand-mile journey in 1928. (Fans of Christie"s book Murder on the Orient Express will find much to explain its genesis here.) Eames is a delightful travel companion-well read, personable, able to remain calm in the face of calamity, and willing to overlook rude behavior and bad food. He revels, as all real travelers seem to, in good company and interesting scenery.
The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet by Reif La.r.s.en is a winsome novel about a young boy traveling from Wyoming to Washington, D.C., by himself, by train. (There"s a bit more about the book in the section "WY Ever Not?") Other books that will make you seek out any long-distance train journey still available include these:Jenny Diski"s Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking Around America with Interruptions Henry Kisor"s Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America Terry Pindell"s Yesterday"s Train: A Rail Odyssey Through Mexican History; Making Tracks: An American Rail Odyssey; and Last Train to Toronto: A Canadian Rail Odyssey William T.Vollmann"s Riding Toward Everywhere And, of course, the following cla.s.sic crime novels:Agatha Christie"s Murder on the Orient Express and The Mystery of the Blue Train, and Graham Greene"s Orient Express MALAYSIA.
Just to offer a little background: Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Thailand is to its north, the South China Sea is to its east, and the Strait of Malacca is to its west, with the separate country of Singapore at Malaysia"s very southern tip. It"s composed of thirteen states: Joh.o.r.e, Kedah, Kelantan, Melaka (formerly Malacca), Negeri Sembilan, Pahang, Penang, Perak, Perlis, Sabah, Sarawak, Selangor, and Terengganu. Its capital city, Kuala Lumpur, and the island of Labuan are separate federal territories. Malaysia was established in September 1963.Whew.
It"s always good to get in at the beginning of the series, especially if it"s as promising as Shamini Flint"s Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder.Traveling from his home in Singapore to KL (as Kuala Lumpur is called by those in the know) Singh must try to extricate a former model from death row for the murder of her ex-husband-a crime he"s sure she didn"t commit, although all the signs point to her guilt and the Malaysian police aren"t budging in their belief that their case against her is airtight.
The cartoonist (or graphic novelist) Lat is beloved in his native Malaysia. Some of his books are finally becoming available here. I read the first one, Kampung Boy, which is the story of his early years, and-surprisingly-I think I learned more about the country and its people from this graphic memoir than from almost anything else that I"ve read about the country.
Other books with a Malaysian setting include Shirley Geok-lin Lim"s Joss and Gold and Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands; as well as The Consul"s File by Paul Theroux, a series of connected short stories that take place in the 1970s.
MARTHA"S VINEYARD Martha"s Vineyard is an island in Ma.s.sachusetts off of Cape Cod. It"s studded by the summer homes of many famous people, including the Kennedys. I"ve never been but am quite open to invitations to visit!
David Kinney"s lively The Big One: An Island, an Obsession, and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish is an in-depth account of the annual thirty-five-day Striped Ba.s.s and Bluefish Derby, a contest that takes place after the summer tourists have gone home; it pits teenagers against recovering alcoholics against hedge fund managers and charter boat captains out for a (long) busman"s holiday.
Jill Nelson"s Finding Martha"s Vineyard: African Americans at Home on an Island explores one of the most interesting aspects of that bucolic place: for centuries African Americans have lived there, in their own enclaves, either for a summer getaway or year round. In addition to her own memories of the importance of Oak Bluffs in her life, Nelson includes reminiscences from author and law professor Stephen Carter, film director Spike Lee, novelist Bebe Moore Campbell, and others.
In On the Vineyard: A Year in the Life of an Island, Jane Carpineto describes the varied people and places she encounters during her sojourn there.
Birders will both adore and mourn over the changes that have occurred since E. Vernon Laux wrote Bird News: Vagrants and Visitors on a Peculiar Island a relatively short eleven years ago, in 1999. It"s enough to make you want to travel back in time . . .
Philip R. Craig wrote nineteen mysteries set on Martha"s Vineyard, beginning with 1991"s A Beautiful Place to Die. His detective is Vietnam veteran, former cop, chef, and fisherman Jeff Jackson.
Other novels set on Martha"s Vineyard include Anne Rivers Siddons"s Up Island; Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman; and Dorothy West"s The Wedding, which is set among an African American community much like the one Jill Nelson describes. (Indeed, West is one of the writers who contributed to Nelson"s book.) A MENTION OF THE MIDDLE EAST.
As we all know from our newspaper reading, tensions in the Middle East seem never-ending. The history of the region is complex, emotions run high, and even choosing particular words when writing about the area is fraught with ambiguities.There are a great many t.i.tles to choose from, so without regard to fear or favor, I offer a list of books that are all certain to broaden your knowledge, increase your understanding of this part of the world, and be enjoyable (if sometimes uncomfortable) reads.
Susan Abulhawa"s Mornings in Jenin: A Novel Rich Cohen"s illuminating and provocative Israel Is Real gave me much to think about.
Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre"s O Jerusalem!: Day by Day and Minute by Minute: The Historic Struggle for Jerusalem and the Birth of Israel Alexandra Hobbet"s Small Kingdoms gives us a detailed and intimate word picture of the life of a Kuwaiti family in the period between the two Gulf Wars.
David Ignatius"s Agents of Innocence (spy novel aficionados should definitely seek it out) Jim Krane"s City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism Maliha Masood"s Zaatar Days, Henna Nights: Adventures, Dreams, and Destinations Across the Middle East Amos Oz"s A Tale of Love and Darkness gives a gorgeous account of his life and that of his parents, who came to Palestine from Lithuania in the 1930s.
Hugh Pope"s Dining with Al-Qaeda is a culmination of all that he"s learned and experienced during thirty years of travel throughout the Middle East, beginning in 1980 when he went there to set up a news bureau for Reuters.
Matt Rees"s mysteries featuring Bethlehem detective Omar Yussef include The Bethlehem Murders, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, The Fourth a.s.sa.s.sin, and The Samaritan"s Secret.
Joe Sacco"s Footnotes in Gaza and Palestine are graphic accounts of two controversial incidents.
Jennifer Steil"s The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: An American Journalist in Yemen MESSING AROUND ON MALTA.
This ancient archipelago located in the Mediterranean is one of Europe"s smallest and most densely populated countries. Here are some perfect novels to read before you visit the gorgeous, mythical islands:Caroline Harvey"s The Bra.s.s Dolphin (Harvey is the pseudonym of novelist Joanna Trollope) Mark Mills"s The Information Officer Nicholas Rinaldi"s The Jukebox Queen of Malta Tim Willocks"s The Religion MIAMI AND ENVIRONS.
Gerald Posner"s Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth, and Power-A Dispatch from the Beach describes the city that Posner calls "the last frontier, both utopia and dystopia."
Mystery aficionados will appreciate these: Award-winning journalist Edna Buchanan made a foray into crime fiction with her series starring Britt Montero, the Cuban American journalist who was introduced in Contents Under Pressure (if you enjoy that, there are many more available); Charles Willeford created an unlikely hero in Hoke Moseley, a Miami cop who first appeared in Miami Blues (he followed that up with other cases; another good one is The Way We Die Now); the Lupe Solano mysteries by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, about a Cuban American detective who"s dealing with mayhem and murder in the heart of the city; and James Grippando"s Jack Swyteck thrillers, which are excellent choices for those who want adrenaline-fueled page-turners. Start with any of them, but I especially liked When Darkness Falls.
And check out these other works of fiction: Never Through Miami by Roberto Quesada (detailing the immigrant experience); on a much more humorous note, Robert Kimmel Smith"s Sadie Shapiro in Miami (it follows Sadie Shapiro"s Knitting Book but takes the septuagenarian and her husband to the sunny south); Stanley Elkin"s literary novel Mrs. Ted Bliss (in which I ran across the wonderful phrase "schmutz-dread"- Mrs. Bliss dislikes schmutz intensely); Helen Yglesias"s The Girls; and Ana Veciana-Suarez"s The Chin Kiss King.
Nonfiction about the area abounds as well: Journalist Ann Louise Bardach"s Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana (detailing the complicated relationship between the two cities); Joan Didion"s Miami (it has the same gorgeous writing as all her other books); Edna Buchanan"s The Corpse Had a Familiar Face; Joann Biondi"s Miami Beach Memories: A Nostalgic Chronicle of Days Gone By; We Own This Game: A Season in the Adult World of Youth Football by Robert Andrew Powell (ever wonder why the Florida college teams are so consistently ranked at the top of the charts? This book helps answer why that"s so.); Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad That Crossed an Ocean by Florida native Les Standiford, who also wrote a bunch of suspense novels about Miami contractor John Deal; and Ann Armbruster"s The Life and Times of Miami Beach.
NAPLES.
As a child, one of the most traumatic events of my reading life was discovering a book in the library about the death of a boy and his dog as a result of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 B.C.E. It may have been based on Louis Untermeyer"s short story "The Dog of Pompeii," but since I was too traumatized to have ever gone back to look for or at it, I can"t be sure. In any case, the idea of nature going ballistic (to mix a metaphor) and burying two towns beneath tons of ash has remained in a not-so-little corner of my mind. Not to mention all the other bits of information regarding the event that have seeped into my consciousness since-one being that Pliny the Elder refused to leave the area, as he was determined to garner every bit of scientific information that he could from the impending disaster. He died there. Which is all to explain why I-deliberately or unconsciously-have simply avoided reading books set in that part of Italy.
Avoided, that is, until I discovered prize-winning Australian novelist Shirley Hazzard (don"t miss her novels The Transit of Venus and The Great Fire). She fell in love with Naples, Italy, when she first arrived there in 1956 to work for the United Nations, at a time when the city was still marked by the bombings it took during World War II. Despite the time Hazzard spent in cities great and small around the world, Naples retained its central place in her heart. She wrote about it often; these brief essays are collected in a lovely little book, The Ancient Sh.o.r.e. The book also includes a long essay written for The New Yorker by her husband, scholar and writer Francis Steegmuller, about a traumatic occurrence in Naples that well describes both the best and worst of this chaotic and beautiful city situated in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.
In Robert Harris"s Pompeii, set in the days leading up to the volcano"s great eruption, the author mixes heart-stopping suspense with fascinating tidbits of information about first-century life in the Roman Empire, with the result that this novel should please those looking for a cla.s.sic thriller as well as fans of historical fiction.
Other grand novels set in Naples include these: Shirley Hazzard"s early and most likely autobiographical novel The Bay of Noon is about a young woman coming to Naples to start a new life but finding it difficult to rid herself of the old one. It was originally published in 1970 but reissued in 2003.
Not only is Sir William Hamilton, the British amba.s.sador to the Kingdom of Two Sicilies (of which Naples was once a part), in love with volcanoes, he also falls rather desperately in love with, and marries, the beautiful Emma Lyon, his nephew"s mistress, who in turn falls in love (desperately) with Lord Horatio Nelson, Britain"s greatest naval hero. I"m exhausted just describing the plot. The Volcano Lover is historical romance for intellectuals, as you would no doubt expect from its author, iconic intellectual Susan Sontag.
NEBRASKA: THE BIG EMPTY.
Except for the Cornhuskers football team, whom I loyally despised all the time I lived in Oklahoma, and Willa Cather"s My antonia, I never thought much about the state until I started reading some really wonderful books-both fiction and nonfiction-about it. And here they are.
Pamela Carter Joern"s writes exquisite works of fiction, including The Plain Sense of Things and The Floor of the Sky.
Ron Hansen"s Nebraska: Stories are terrific examples of a writer who can"t seem to write a bad sentence-not that I"d ever want him to, of course. The subjects here range from the past to the present, and each is worth a slow, intent reading.
Tom McNeal"s first novel, Goodnight, Nebraska, tells the story of a young man trying to find himself in a world that"s not often forgiving.
Ladette Randolph and Nina Shevchuk-Murray edited The Big Empty: Contemporary Nebraska Nonfiction Writers, a collection of essays (and some excerpts) that offers a diverse look at people"s lives in the state at various times and under various conditions. Writers include both the well known (Ted Kooser and Ron Hansen) and those unfamiliar to most readers (Michael Anania, Delphine Red Shirt, and William Kloefkorn).
Polly Spence"s Moving Out: A Nebraska Woman"s Life is an amazingly unsentimental memoir of growing up in a small Nebraska town.
Roger Welsch"s My Nebraska: The Good, the Bad, and the Husker is a humorous love letter to his home state.
Other books set in Nebraska, or by Nebraska authors, include Stephanie Kallos"s lovely Sing Them Home, which takes place in a small Welsh community there; Ann Patchett"s The Magician"s a.s.sistant; Jim Harrison"s Dalva and The Road Home, which continues the tale (once you meet Dalva, it"s nearly impossible to forget her-she"s that fully formed as a character. I still think these are Harrison"s best books.); George Shaffner"s In the Land of Second Chances (and all his other novels set in Ebb, Nebraska); The Echo Maker by Richard Powers (one of the author"s most brilliant and thought-provoking novels); and Timothy Schaffert"s Devils in the Sugar Shop (funny, raunchy, set in Omaha, and peopled by the partic.i.p.ants in an erotic writing workshop).
NEW GUINEA.
According to Wikipedia, New Guinea is the second-largest island in the world; it"s separated from Australia by the Torres Strait.Approximately half the island is the independent country of Papua New Guinea, while the other half is part of Indonesia. From my reading I can tell that it"s a place of great beauty (if you like jungles) and danger. For a goodly dash of both, take a look at these books.
James Campbell"s The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea-The Forgotten War of the South Pacific is a terrific account of a battle in World War II that is pretty much unremembered.
Tim Flannery"s Throwim Way Leg: Tree-Kangaroos, Possums, and p.e.n.i.s Gourds-On the Track of Unknown Mammals in Wildest New Guinea makes for wonderful reading and totally lives up to the charm of the t.i.tle.
Samantha Gillison"s first two novels, The Undiscovered Country and The King of America Peter Matthiessen"s Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in Stone Age New Guinea Kira Salak"s Four Corners: A Journey into the Heart of Papua New Guinea and her novel The White Mary Tobias Schneebaum"s Where the Spirits Dwell: An Odyssey in the Jungle of New Guinea David Yeadon"s Lost Worlds: Exploring the Earth"s Remote Places has a fascinating chapter on the island.
NEW YORK CITY: A TASTE OF THE BIG APPLE.
There are, of course, a ton and more books about Manhattan and the other four boroughs. Here are a few that I"ve really enjoyed.
Joseph Berger"s The World in a City: Traveling the Globe Through the Neighborhoods of the New New York Well-known mystery novelist and short story writer Lawrence Block edited Manhattan Noir and Manhattan Noir 2: The Cla.s.sics. He"s faultless in his selections.
Mary Cantwell"s must-read memoir Manhattan, When I Was Young Stephen Carter"s Palace Council offers readers a view of Harlem that we seldom encounter in the pages of a novel. (You can watch my interview with Carter at www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=3030901.) Will Eisner"s New York: Life in the Big City includes four of the cartoonist"s graphic books: New York, The Building, City People Notebook, and Invisible People Pete Hamill"s Downtown: My Manhattan Mark Helprin"s great novel, Winter"s Tale Adam Langer"s tale of Manhattan real estate, Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A-Flat Phillip Lopate"s Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan and (as editor) Writing New York: A Literary Anthology, which includes both poetry and prose (fiction and nonfiction) about the city, written by a deliriously diverse mix of writers, including Sara Teasdale, Edgar Allan Poe, Langston Hughes, Jane Jacobs, William Burroughs, Dawn Powell, Lincoln Steffens, and Oscar Hijuelos. It"s much too bulky a tome to carry around with you, but perfect for getting into the spirit of Manhattan before you go.
Cheryl Mendelson"s Morningside Heights and sequels Jan Morris"s Manhattan "45 New York Stories: Landmark Writing from Four Decades of New York Magazine The New York Times Book of New York: 549 Stories of the People, the Events, and the Life of the City-Past and Present Eric Sanderson"s Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, with a fabulous a.s.sortment of ill.u.s.trations by Markley Boyer, is too big to carry around, sadly, but is so interesting to browse through at home.
Russell Shorto"s detailed The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America NEWFOUNDLAND.
I can"t imagine taking a trip to Newfoundland without reading Annie Proulx"s The Shipping News and Howard Norman"s The Bird Artist; both grace my own bookshelves. Try the books that follow as well.
Lisa Moore"s February is a fabulous novel that tells-in bewitchingly beautiful prose-the story of a woman left widowed by the historically violent storm on February 14, 1982, that killed all eighty-four crew members of the oil rig Ocean Ranger. Another of her novels set in Newfoundland is Alligator.
And these works of nonfiction: All the time I was reading Robert Finch"s The Iambics of Newfoundland: Notes from an Unknown Sh.o.r.e I kept wishing I could have followed in Finch"s footsteps as he made his way-over a number of years-across the landscape of one of Canada"s most unusual provinces.What a lovely tribute to the flora and fauna (two-and four-legged), history, and culture of Newfoundland.
Farley Mowat is one of Canada"s best-known writers and conservationists. His books range from humorous (The Dog Who Wouldn"t Be, which is set on the prairies of Saskatchewan) to more serious t.i.tles like his memoir Bay of Spirits, which not only describes how he met his wife, Claire, while traveling on a tramp steamer around the coast of Newfoundland, but also provides a picture of the people who live and work in the (much depleted) fishing industry. A good companion read for this book is Mark Kurlansky"s Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World.
NEWS FROM N"ORLEANS Many, but not all, of the newer books on the city have to do with Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Here are my favorites.
Tim Gautreaux takes us back to New Orleans in the years following World War I in The Missing, a novel I discovered at a time when I was despairing about ever finding anything good to read again. I find it odd but accurate to describe Gautreaux"s writing style as both spare and lyrical. But it is. When three-year-old Lily is kidnapped in the New Orleans department store where Sam Simoneaux works as an in-house detective, he makes it his mission to locate her. Much of the novel takes place on a riverboat-a four-deck, 300-foot stern-wheeler where Lily"s parents work as musicians. The novel moves as you might imagine the Mississippi itself does, slow, stately, and steady.You may have to consciously slow down to read it (I did)-much as you do with a nineteenth-century novel.All of our senses-smell, taste, sight, and sound-are engaged as we as we slowly turn the pages.
Dave Eggers"s Zeitoun is a biography-as-novel of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a New Orleans contractor born in Syria, who decides to send his wife and children out of the city as Hurricane Katrina approaches, but chooses to stay behind himself and ride out the storm. As a result of that decision, he"s caught up in a bureaucratic nightmare growing out of the flaws in crisis management and the domestic war on terror.
Other excellent choices include these: Amanda Boyden"s Babylon Rolling, featuring a large cast of exquisitely drawn characters who face up to the imminent threat of Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
In Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans Dan Baum, a writer for The New Yorker, brackets his story of the city and its residents by two cla.s.sic storms: Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and Katrina in 2005. Through Baum"s descriptions, the people he profiles and their lives become intensely important to us.
An excellently readable nonfiction account of Katrina-putting it into historical context-is Douglas Brinkley"s The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
NIAGARA FALLS.
Even though it"s been done nearly to death, tourist-wise, Niagara Falls is still pretty spectacular, especially if you can approach it from the Canadian side. To get a taste for the place, try these books.
Nonfiction Pierre Berton"s Niagara: A History of the Falls Catherine Gildiner"s Too Close to the Falls: A Memoir Ginger Strand"s Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power, and Lies Fiction Lauren Belfer"s City of Light Cathy Marie Buchanan"s The Day the Falls Stood Still Barbara Gowdy"s Falling Angels Joyce Carol Oates"s The Falls Jane Urquhart"s The Whirlpool NIGERIA.