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Armchair TravelDecember 2014
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"Once a year, go someplace you've never been before." ~ The 14th Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and author
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New and Recently Released!
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| 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. |
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In Search of the Perfect Loaf : A Home Baker's Odyssey
by Samuel Fromartz
The creator of the popular Chewswise blog documents his 2009 assignment to work in a French boulangerie and subsequent travels through America and Europe to learn bread history and science while perfecting his award-winning recipes. 25,000 first printing.
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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." |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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Some You May Have Missed!
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Hong Konged : One Modern American Family's (Mis)Adventures In The Gateway to China
by Paul Hanstedt
In this alternately hilarious and heartrending memoir, acclaimed writer and editor Paul Hanstedt recounts the true story of his family's recent sojourn to Hong Kong. Hanstedt and his wife and three children--aged 9, 6, and 3--lived in Hong Kong for a year, a year beset by culture clash, vicious bullies, hospital visits, M&Ms, and the worst traffic jam you've ever seen.
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More Sand In My Bra : Funny Women Write From The Road, Again
by Julia Weiler
Following on the heels of the best-selling Sand in My Bra, this sequel is a collection of hilarious women's travel stories. From Australia to Zambia and everywhere in between, these true stories are full of bust-a-gut laughter. Nothing helps a travel story more than something going wrong. The frustration, embarrassment, and inconvenience provide great material for stories once the anguish has faded. The adventurers here encounter just about every unexpected mishap imaginable.
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A Year in the World : Journeys of a Passionate Traveller
by Frances Mayes
With her beloved Tuscany as a home base, Mayes travels to Spain, Portugal, France, the British Isles, and to the Mediterranean world of Turkey, Greece, the South of Italy, and North Africa. Weaving together personal perceptions and informed commentary on art, architecture, history, landscape, and social and culinary traditions of each area, Mayes brings the immediacy of life in her temporary homes to the reader.
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The Next One To Fall
by Hilary Davidson
A tale set three months after the events of The Damage Done finds travel writer Lily Moore on a visit to Peru with photographer Jesse Robb, where the suspicious falling death of a tourist prompts Lily to question the victim's three traveling companions.
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Travels With My Aunt
by Graham Greene
Described by Graham Greene as "the only book I have written just for the fun of it," Travels with My Aunt is the story of Hanry Pulling, a retired and complacent bank manager who meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time at what he supposes to be his mother's funeral. She soon persuades Henry to abandon his dull suburban existence to travel her way winding through Brighton, Paris, Istanbul, and Paraguay. Through Aunt Augusta, one of Greene's greatest comic creations, Henry joins a shiftless, twilight society; mixes with hippies, war criminals, and CIA men; smokes pot; and breaks all currency regulations.
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The Outcasts
by Kathleen Kent
It's the 19th century on the Gulf Coast, a time of opportunity and lawlessness. After escaping the Texas brothel where she'd been a virtual prisoner, Lucinda Carter heads for Middle Bayou to meet her lover, who has a plan to make them both rich, chasing rumors of a pirate's buried treasure. Meanwhile Nate Cannon, a young Texas policeman with a pure heart and a strong sense of justice, is on the hunt for a ruthless killer named McGill who has claimed the lives of men, women, and even children across the frontier. Who--if anyone--will survive when their paths finally cross? As Lucinda and Nate's stories converge, guns are drawn, debts are paid, and Kathleen Kent delivers an unforgettable portrait of a woman who will stop at nothing to make a new life for herself.
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The Corsican Caper
by Peter Mayle
When a billionaire is violently targeted by an unscrupulous Russian tycoon who would buy his coastal estate, master detective Sam Levitt heads negotiations with an underworld of mercenaries and hitmen as well as the Corsican mafia to prevent the billionaire's demise. 50,000 first printing.
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De Potter's Grand Tour : a novel
by Joanna Scott
Drawing on real letters, legal documents and a trove of diaries, the author delivers a historical novel about a widow in 1905 trying to piece together the secretive life of her husband, a black-market antiques dealer who mysteriously disappeared off the coast of Greece. Includes reading-group guide.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Prince George's County Memorial Library System 6532 Adelphi Rd. Hyattsville, Maryland 20782 301-699-3500http://www.pgcmls.info/ |
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