|
Armchair TravelDecember 2014
|
"Once a year, go someplace you've never been before." ~ The 14th Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and author
|
|
New and Recently Released!
|
|
| I Stand Corrected: How Teaching Western Manners in China... by Eden CollinsworthDid you know that the Chinese are highly respectful of people's business cards? They are because they consider the cards an extension of the person. Learn further fascinating facts in I Stand Corrected, as world traveler, single mom, and businesswoman Eden Collinsworth details how she came to write a Western etiquette guide that hit the Chinese bestseller lists. As she vividly discusses living in China while writing that book, she shares rules from it and also discusses other parts of her life in this amusing and highly entertaining look at life and manners in modern China. |
|
| Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia by David GreeneDavid Greene, the co-host of NPR's Morning Edition, spent several years based in Russia. In his new book, he describes his eye-opening travels along the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Traveling third class from Moscow to Vladivostok, he meets ordinary but fascinating people -- from singing babushkas to entrepreneurial teens -- and shares food and time with them. Using this trip as a lens, he also discusses the challenges faced by 21st-century Russia. For another entertaining look at this storied place, try Ian Frazier's acclaimed Travels in Siberia. |
|
| Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite by Suki KimReading a bit like a dystopian novel, this gripping book provides a rare look at life in North Korea. Suki Kim, an award-winning author who was born in South Korea but has lived in the United States since she was a teen, took a job teaching English to the sons of North Korea's elite during what turned out to be the last six months of Kim Jong Il's reign. She watched every word she said, kept her notes on a secret flash drive, and tried to connect with her students, young men who believed all the propaganda they'd been served and had little idea of what the rest of the world is like. Fans of Barbara Demick’s excellent Nothing to Envy will appreciate Kim's well-written, thought-provoking examination of this closed-off land. |
|
| An Age of License: A Travelogue by Lucy KnisleyBroken-hearted, young author and illustrator Lucy Knisley took advantage of every chance she could get to travel in 2011, even if it meant doing so alone. In graphic novel format, she wonderfully depicts her life during this confusing time, when she visited France with relatives, Norway while promoting her work, and several other places, including Sweden, where she had a romantic fling. Foodies and cat lovers will especially appreciate this charming morsel since meals and felines are given lots of attention. |
|
| Where the Peacocks Sing: A Palace, a Prince, and the Search for Home by Alison Singh GeeWhat happens when a successful, glamorous American journalist based in Hong Kong falls for an Indian journalist who turns out to be a prince with a ramshackle 100-room palace? Enough things to fill a book! Not even realizing she was looking for a husband, Alison Singh Gee found him, and that changed her life. Describing her unlikely and fairy tale-like love affair, she recounts her cross-cultural journey to the rural Indian countryside, where she abandoned modern comforts and embraced new perspectives on home and family. In a starred review, Library Journal says Where the Peacocks Sing is "like Eat, Pray, Love but with more heart and less sulking." |
|
| The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel MendelsohnIn this moving (and internationally bestselling) memoir, author Daniel Mendelsohn traces the lives of six family members who were killed during the Holocaust. After finding poignant letters written by his Uncle Shmiel (whom he resembled so strongly that older relatives would sometimes cry when they saw him), Mendelsohn decided to find out what exactly happened to Shmiel, his wife, and his four beautiful daughters. To do so, Mendelsohn traveled to multiple countries on four continents talking to people and gathering information about his relatives and the Holocaust. The result is a "finely wrought, many-faceted narrative" (Booklist) that helps shed light on the meaning of suffering. |
|
| Enrique's Journey by Sonia NazarioPulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sonia Nazario has written for decades about issues relating to immigration. In Enrique's Journey, she traces the pathways followed by Central Americans and Mexicans to the U.S., focusing on one teenage boy from Honduras who goes north in search of his mother, who left him when he was only five in order to earn money to send back home. Enrique's personal story allows readers to focus on the hardships and even terrors he faces while also understanding the economic and social reasons for migration, the challenges of the dangerous journey, and the discouragement migrants find at the end of the trail. This illuminating book is based on Nazario's prize-winning Los Angeles Times feature series. |
|
| Searching for Hassan: A Journey to the Heart of Iran by Terence WardIran has had its share of political turmoil over the last 30 years, including the Iranian Revolution in the 1970s and a war with Iraq that lasted most of the 1980s. For American Terence Ward, his parents, and his three brothers, the troubles made them worry and wonder about the fate of Hassan, their friend and "Persian father," whom they'd known when they lived in Iran during the 1960s. In 1997 when (for a time) Iran became more open to visitors, the entire family seized the chance to return; this "astonishing and deeply poignant" work (The Washington Post) describes their intense journey. |
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|
|
|
|