Salacious Snacks

Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer
Chuck Thompson

An inelegant glimpse inside of the travel writing industry, Thompson steamrolled my delightful little notions about glossy travel writing.  Having written for travel industry for years, the author tells his readers what really goes down at all-expenses-paid resort visits for travel writers, and the dumbing down that occurs at the editing table of the magazine giants.  Since I'm a devoted reader of several high-circulation magazines, I was dismayed to find out that most travel writers have sponsors' silver spoons up their behinds, and write only blindingly positive reviews, which mask the true flavor of the destination.  Also, Thompson points out that nearly all articles detail the uplifting, wonderful elements of place, rather than letting the more melancholic aspects into print; aspects that are a necessary counterpart to any "real" travel experience.  Thompson's prose is at times overwrought, but forgivable given frequent episodes of self-deprecating inanity.  With chapters entitled "Canned Hams, Kendo Beatdowns and the Penis Olympics: The Education of an Accidental Ambassador in Japan," this book should appeal to those with an affinity for travel and a sense of humor.


To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies, and the Art of Extreme Tourism
Chuck Thompson

Chuck Thompson, take two.  The author confronts the places that have repulsed him during his many years of travel writing, including the Congo, Mexico City, India, and Disney World.  Thompson's writing retains vestiges of his frat-boy past, but with an intelligent twist, making this book an equally entertaining read as the former, with some delightfully more mature realizations about our globalized orb.  His expose on the brainwashing of Disney World employees is licentious, and his gastronomical misfortunes in India are explicit.  The author's experiences in the Congo with Mobutu's former body guard are startling and left me feeling the desolation with which he paints this modern day hellhole.

Two fast, entertaining poolside reads, pick them up cheap online or borrow them from me.

An Unlikely Trio

I first became a Rory MacLean reader two years ago, when I got lost in his most recent book 'The Magic Bus.'  I have since sought out MacLean's other works, including 'Under the Dragon: A Journey Through Burma' and 'Stalin's Nose,' which I just finished.  These books detail divergent places, but the author brings alive the beautiful humanity he finds in each.



As an introduction to 'Stalin's Nose', I will quote the writer's autobiographical quip from the cover: "Rory MacLean trained as a screenwriter.  But, during the premiere of his first feature film, his mother fell asleep and his girlfriend ran off with the financier.  Not surprisingly, he took a holiday."

Despite his modest inclinations, MacLean is a stellar writer.  Stalin's Nose details the author's journey across Eastern Europe in the 1980s with his zany aunt Zita, an elderly aristocrat (with uniformly surprising political pronouncements) looking to revisit places of her glorious past.  Also along for the journey is Winston The Pig, a very accomplished pig, although I will not spoil his tale for you.  MacLean writes with lyric prose; with words that conjure diaphanous meadows and quiet churchyards.  With agile contrast, his portrayal of the Fuhrer's horrors and the concrete solemnity of communism are written with clarity and determination, leaving the reader trapped in the same collision of beauty and misery that Eastern Europe is finally shaking off. Don't worry, Stalin's nose does indeed make a dashing guest appearance in the book.


The Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India by Rory MacLean*

This text practically jumped off the bookshelf and into my basket, sensing my restless wandering feet during an unending, rainy Seattle winter.  I expected a lighthearted travel tale full of modern hippies trying to recreate their fore-bearers' overland quest from the edge of Europe to the Himalaya.  Instead, I found prose so liquid I got lost in its mercurial glimmer and fell into a book trance that was sadly broken when the last page fell away.  MacLean puts a subtle magic into his words which transports the reader to the heat-scathed Turkish shores that tumble into blue oceans, and to opalescent Himalayan peaks where monks' chants fall down around your ears before descending into bottomless valleys.  He hauntingly portrays multiple characters along the way; I can still see the green eyes of Penny, one of the original Magic Bus travelers in the 70s, two years after reading this book.  Maybe the words of this text are written in LSD-imbued ink for the dazzling visions MacLean gives to his readers.

 *This is my favorite Rory Maclean book



Under the Dragon: A Journey through Burma

Maclean, shaken by a brief visit to Burma long ago, returns to the country to travel by rail and collect stories of "ordinary" Burmese. The vignettes portray a government censor for the regime, a humble basket weaver, a woman in the tangles of a complex love affair, a freedom fighter, and others.  I have been yearning to see Burma for years, but it has always been just out of reach, always in the throes of another bloody repressive episode when I've tried to visit from neighboring Thailand.  The country is an enigma of violent government opression in a land of Buddhist monks, who physically radiate the lighthearted holiness of their faith.  Naturally, I fell for this glowing collection of Burmese portraits. 

Guest Blog- 'China Road'

This review is provided by my illustrious, acclaimed physicist cousin Zac, whose hobbies include writing neoclassical rock operas and contemplating the velocity-dependent curve of the impact intergalactic orbits on transcendentalism.  Without further ado, his review of 'China Road':

Rob Gifford, a British-born NPR correspondent working in Beijing, is headed back to England after six years on the job. As a final goodbye to China, Gifford sets off on a two month adventure across China's Route 312; nearly 3,000 miles of asphalt connecting an ever vexing web of people, places, problems and policy. Gifford tempers his Western bias with an overarching sympathy for many of the Chinese citizens he meets on the road. His ability to speak Mandarin allows for sharp insights into some of the sensitive issues of Chinese politics including the One Child Policy, Tibet, the Uyghurs, and attitude towards activist groups like Falun Gong. Gifford also makes sure to include enough historical background to allow the reader to understand China's complex evolution and how its history (and subsequent alteration thereof) shapes the country's future. Giffords' most compelling analysis comes from his conversations with Chinese youth. The increasingly "lost" group of teen and college-age kids are sucked into a confusing capitalist economy with strong Party control, and as a result are lacking connection to Chinese culture, history, and moral groundings. Despite this diverse material, Gifford manages to create an easy and enjoyable read, sprinkled with delightful stories and good humor.

The Lotus Eaters

Most people that have ever met me know that I love Southeast Asia.  It should be no epiphany to anyone that I loved The Lotus Eaters, set in Vietnam.  I first went to Hanoi with a head full of war history and "Fortunate Son" reverberating through my internal monologue, but I walked away from Vietnam shaken by the violent beauty of the landscape.  I will try to tone down my effusiveness about Vietnam and this novel so that you don't think I'm overreacting about what a treasure this book is.

Set during the Vietnam war, this is a tale about a young woman photographer, Helen, who drops out of college to chase the war.  On arrival in Saigon, she realizes that she's wildly out of her league in the old boy's club of wizened war photographers and journalists.  Intending to make a splash on her first night with the war correspondents by wearing a silk dress that gets ruined in the rain, she looks a fool, but she boldly makes friends with the arrogant, acclaimed photographer Darrow. Soon, she, Darrow, and Linh- Darrow's invaluable "assistant"- are an inseparable trio, intoxicated by the drama of war and the irony of it taking place in the verdant landscape.  Amidst glimmering rice paddies and the shell-cratered countryside, Soli creates a beautiful story of love, identity, life and loss.  I was initially engrossed with Helen's character; the fierceness with which she clamors after life, her feeling of instability during calm, and her relentless urge to pursue beguiling Vietnam.

As the story unfolded, Linh's character added a thoughtful richness to the narrative.  A countryside poet prior to the war, he was first a soldier for the Northern Vietnamese Army, and then defected to the the Southern Vietnamese Army and finally, disenchanted with the whole thing, went on something of a sanctioned AWOL to be a photographer with the Americans.  Linh's only true loyalties, like many Vietnamese of the time, were to his country as a whole, his community, and to his unlikely friends.

Ms. Soli has a delicate, elegant writing style with a razor edge that captures the intricacies of post-colonial, war-addled Vietnam and the incredible people who inhabit it.  Beautiful, complex, and a portrait of a country that I love, I can't recommend it enough.

Further Recommended Reading About Vietnam:
The Quiet American, by Graham Greene

Spies, journalism, brothels, intrigue and ill-fated love color this seminal novel written by Graham Greene in 1955.  Although Soli takes an oblique jab at this book in her novel (Helen makes fun of herself for being a Quiet-American-toting idealist), this is probably required reading for voyagers to Vietnam to help understand the role of the French and other colonialists in the region.  If you want to avoid scorn by Lonely-Planet-packing, dreadlock-bedecked backpackers in Vietnam, read it on the long plane ride over.  It's short.

The Lover, by Marguerite Duras

Like a boat trip down the Mekong- languidly enchanting and providing a feeling of space/time disconnect- 'The Lover' is a dreamy vignette of love in French Indochina.  An unlikely union blossoms between a young French schoolgirl and a handsome Chinese millionaire; racial drama follows.  Set in the eroding French Saigon 30 years before Helen's austere roamings through Vietnam, this sliver of a book is a gem.

Halong Bay, Northern Vietnam, 2007

Hue, Vietnam, 2007

Peruvian Pastiche

I spent the last two weeks in Peru, doing delightfully little other than exploring ancient cultures, eating ceviche, becoming one with the sand, and reading.  Sadly, the pride of the Peruvian alcoholic ouvre, Pisco, was not something I could fully appreciate.  Nor was the cuy (grilled guinea pig- and I was too much of a wimp to get beyond the concept and try it).  The seafood on the other hand, was most excellent.  Simple, delicious ceviche.  There were pirate proportions of rum around and Argentinian Malbec to savor, so my culinary/literary twin lusts were satisfied.

My reading list for the trip was not well thought out or organized.  I don't think 'Lonely Planet Peru' counts as a real book, but their sections on Pre-Columbian history were well written and helpful for the places we visited.  I generally try to bring books relevant to the places I'm going, but the literary stars of South America, Pablo Neruda and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, are not Peruvian and are wildly over-read on the backpacker circuit, so I pretended to eschew both in a highbrow maneuver and wound up with a short-sighted and not-so-relevant reading list.  I brought 'Atonement' by Ian McEwan, in an attempt to read something weighty and literary.  My other reading selections were filched from various hostels.


Atonement by Ian McEwan

I was late to the punch on this one, published in 2003 and conveyed into film in 2007.  When traveling, I like to bring a book that I think will advance my literary prowess (instead of escaping into guilty pleasures and beach reads like I usually do at home).  This book was more accessible than I anticipated.  It begins in Pre-WWII England and details a 13-year-old wealthy British girl's brilliant fantasy mind gone catastrophically astray, forever shattering the threads of her tenuous family.  I was taken with McEwan's facility in imaging the hummingbird flutterings of a young girl's creative mind.  Short, elegant, and definitely readable.


La Doctura by Linnea Smith

I picked this up in a lodge on the way to Machu Picchu, as it stared down at me from a bookshelf while I was waiting out a nosebleed.  Smith tells the story of how she left her successful internal medicine practice in Wisconsin to live in the very remote Amazon basin of Peru, tending to the medical needs of a community without any prior access to medical care. Obviously, it caught my interest given my current traveling circumstances and impending career direction, and it held my attention enough to forgive her not-particularly-great writing style and occasionally self-aggrandizing anecdotes.  I would probably be aggrandizing too had I been saving locals from leprosy, leishmaniasis and Dengue fever with expired antibiotics and intra-auricular jungle prayers.  My medical friends will particularly enjoy this internal medicine doctor's foibles with obstetrics- including a wildly lucky (and grossly unsterile) first-time C-section.  Borrow it from me if you want to read it.


The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin is one of those travel writing greats, pioneering the genre and remaining unchallenged by the deluge of travel writers in his wake.  He wrote 'The Songlines' about Aboriginal Australia.  He delves into the unique way of understanding the earth, the universe and our place in it that the Aboriginal people have. This web of understanding is charted by Songlines, which are physical, psychological, musical and universal navigational tools.  A Songline denotes a physical route across the land, and a person is connected to his or her other 'dreaming' relatives along this Songline by a melody signified by their shared 'dreaming' animal.  'Dreaming' animals are assigned after birth, depending on the place of birth and significant geologic features in that area.  The Songlines not only represent a physical map connecting members of certain 'dreaming' group, but delineate their place on the earth and their connection to all other creatures. Anecdotes abound throughout this book, some delightful, some horrifying, all a glance into the miraculous world of the Australian Aborigines that outsiders continually fail to understand, and sadly often denigrate. The middle of the book contains a transcendental collection of thoughts and quotes related to nomadic life throughout the ages- enthralling to any reader with wandering feet.  Reading Chatwin's careful, sparse prose, I had a brilliant glimpse into how the Aborigines likely have the most advanced philosophy or religion of any culture.


People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Mrs. Brooks designs a wonderful story about the Sarajevo Haggadah.  This is a real book which is famed for its color illustrations that were rendered at a time when uncommon in Jewish texts, and it is a book admired for it's survival throughout multiple centuries of political strife, often protected by Muslims and Christians.  Brooks writes a fictional account of the possible life of the Sarajevo Haggadah.  She begins with a young, socially aloof book restorer in modern day Australia, who is sent by the UN to restore the Haggadah, which was long thought burned in the Bosnian war, but turned up in a forgotten library corner.  As the restorer works through the pages, she picks up clues- a partial butterfly wing, a wine stain, a cat hair, a salt water stain, and with each discovery the author transports us back in time to the people wielding the instruments to create the book or providing the necessary tools to hide the book from the Spanish Inquisition, Nazi Germany, and the Bosnian war.  I enjoyed the mystery of the book, as well as the segues back in time.  There was an astute political plot twist near the end that polished the book off well.

A Leaden Spring

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai


Somehow I neglected this sharp, adept novel, winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2006.  Good thing it caught my eye at Powell's (bastion of all things literary) this winter.  I started this book on a snowy night in Boston, but it has taken me this long to finish it due to various book ADD mishaps.

In the tradition of many flourishy but sociologically ruthless writers before her (ahem, Arundhati Roy), Desai creates a book full of downtrodden but ultimately hopeful characters, who live, love and die in politically unstable India. Centered in Darjeeling, Northeast India, in the 1980s, which is the stage of the Gorka National Liberation Front.  The GNLF led insurgencies to reclaim lands that retreating British generals partitioned with little care for consequence.  Mostly though, the story is about Sai, a young woman whose parents have been killed in a car accident, and Sai then returns to her estranged grandfather's house to live under the shadow of the Himalaya.  She falls in love with her math tutor, Gyan, who leaves Sai to fight for the GNLF, and morals become muddled when Gyan betrays Sai's fragile family.  Also intertwined are sharp historical bits about Sai's grandfather, an Oxford educated judge, as well as the narrative of the hapless cook, who sends his son to America to become successful although the son soon finds out Indians in America have a difficult time ascending to the golden top of the American Dream.  Desai writes with a lyric juxtaposition of the beautiful and the profane.  Fantastic author.  Joyful book.

An American Bite

Freedom: A Novel.  By Jonathan Franzen.
Another bestseller I've been avoiding, largely because of the vague description on the book cover and acerbic cover itself (I do judge books by their covers).   In truth, this book is hard to describe, but revolves around a family and their branching, beautifully odd relationships.  Normally, the theme of suburban discontent makes me want to yawn and NOT contemplate the lame tragedy of SUV driving, resource abusing white people, but Franzen's crispy fresh writing style managed to suck me in.  He has an inventive way with words and uncannily captures the roving, self-deprecating female stream of consciousness.  I wondered if 'Jonathan' was a nom de plume disguising a woman, but the picture on the book jacket is convincingly male.  Undercurrents of this book explore ecological conservation, rockstarism, politically incorrect political activism, alcoholism, and exploitative relationships.  Caution: this is a thick book, and the middle third felt like a marathon, mostly because I was under the gun to get it back to the library, and the book remained engaging throughout.  Bottom Line:  Read it if you have some extra time.

Spring Snacks

Kitchen Confidential and Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

I've been watching Anthony Bourdain's TV show "No Reservations" on the Travel Channel for a long time and have been amused that a once-semi-famous, previously heroin abusing, now-washed-up chef created a show that intertwines travel, local food and some pretty crafty cultural observations.  His literary snippets throughout the show hinted to me that he might be a good writer.  When "Medium Raw" was published this winter, I went for it.  It is definitely entertaining, with quite a few shock value stories, but it lacks a central thread.  Besides food.  It meanders from anecdote to anecdote, though his sarcasm and hilariously self-aggrandizing sentences will keep you turning the pages.  When I finished it, I was sufficiently impressed to get his first book, "Kitchen Confidential" from the library.  It came out 10 years ago and was a sensation at the time.  I thought Bourdain has a more authentic voice in "Kitchen Confidential" and liked it better. (My fiance prefers "Medium Raw").  They're not for the faint of heart; both have gritty and profane prose and some gruesome details of life in the innards of famous NYC kitchens.  Both are enjoyable, but read them in order and not backwards like I did.


The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

This thick and ambitiously titled Biography of Cancer was more readable than I anticipated.  Mukherjee's brilliance is in his layering of interesting historical tidbits, patient stories, and observations on how cancer has shaped culture.  Otherwise, this massive topic, with it's biochemical intricacies would be overwhelming and boring.  As someone who suffered through medical school biochemistry with zero idea why we were learning tedious genetic mutations like bcr/abl and the drug subsequently invented to fix the cancer it creates, this book gave me some lightbulb moments.  All of those befuddling DNA/RNA/protein product pathways we had to learn were very recently discovered and have advanced medicine light years since then.  I would recommend this book to people who have an interest in cancer's insidious ways, or medical people who hated biochemistry as much as I did.


Late for Tea at the Deer Palace by Tamara Chalabi

This is the story of a prominent Iraqi family, beginning in the late 1800's and continuing to current day Iraq.  The family was an influential Shi'a (the religious minority in Iraq) family that weathered the fall of the Ottoman Empire, British occupation post WWI, and the unstable governments following.  The family was forced into exile in London and Lebanon in the 1970's, and the author was born in Beirut.  Her family's longing for their home country informed the author's cultural identity, and just before the Americans took over Baghdad, she went 'home' to the country she never knew.  An interesting look at the beautiful history of a dynamic population; the kind of peoples' history that textbooks tend to forget in favor of white-washed atrocities and American heroism.


The Spice Necklace: My Adventures in Caribbean Cooking, Eating and Island Life by Ann Vanderhoof

These are the kind of books I gravitate towards- well written mind vacations that take me away from the persistent rain of Seattle.  In her first book, "An Embarrassment of Mangoes," Vanderhoof tells the story of how she and her husband become disillusioned with their publishing jobs in cold Toronto (am I torturing myself with these stories?), and sell everything, buy a sailboat, and sail down the intercoastal waterway to the Caribbean, where they voyage in a mostly-happily-ever-after manner.  In this follow-up, the couple, after a second Canadian epiphany, return to the Caribbean and delight in island life once more.  I appreciate her descriptions of the differences between the islands and the lingering flavors of French, Spanish and Portuguese spices on their sandy shores.  I also appreciate that their boat is named Receta (recipe), and their dinghy is called Snack.  Throughout the book are many recipes, quite a few of which feature rum and/or coconut.  Cue trip to the refrigerator.

Winter 2011 Good Feasting

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

A beautiful, sweeping novel beginning in India and voyaging by sea to Africa to the "Missing" (a mispronunciation of "Mission" by the locals, an apt eponym) hospital.  It is the story of twin boys born to an Indian nun and a British surgeon.  The twins grow and learn in the protected enclave of the mission hospital, until one twin's transgression destroys the boys' bond forever.  Thrust into war torn Africa, the 'good' twin follows his father's ghost and becomes a surgeon, completing residency in the Bronx.  I hesitate to tell you that the incandescent prose was penned by an MD who is currently the program director of the internal medicine residency program at Stanford, in fear that his writing will be discounted. By my well traveled classmates' accounts, Verghese is a nice guy.  By my account, he is an incredible author. 


Stones Into Schools by Greg Mortenson

This is the follow up story to 'Three Cups of Tea,' Mortenson's best-seller about his establishment of the Central Asia Institute which builds schools for girls in rural Pakistan.  In 'Stones Into Schools,' Mortenson chronicles the incredible success of his institute's expanding efforts into war-torn Afghanistan.  His pervasive understanding of the complex cultural, religious, and tribal intricacies governing the Himalayan countries has earned him consulting positions to the US military.  One thing that I loved about this book is that Mortenson's agenda of promoting education for girls is enthusiastically championed by the very rural communities that most Americans view as hotbeds of Islamic radicalism.  The communities, with conservative elders, find creative ways to get the schools built and pin their hopes for a more stable future on their little emissaries of learning.  I found this second book to be more engaging than the first, partly because of the stories of the charismatic fixers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and partly because of the rocketing success that the Institute has had in building schools in geographically and politically challenging places.


The Wave by Susan Casey

I was delighted to receive this book as a gift from a residency program director while I was on the interview trail.  This director had been involved with the New York literary scene prior to becoming an MD, and I enjoyed talking with someone in the usually stale and relentlessly statistics-based academic world who likes reading as much as I do.  I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but this book is a great blend of history, oceanic mysticism, big-wave surfing, and science.  The premise is that rogue waves are increasing around the globe and are regularly snatching large freighters and drowning all cargo and crew without generating media attention.  Much of the book focuses on the escapades of big-wave surfers who seek out these rogue waves with the help of advanced weather technology, high tech boards, and the convenient lack of their frontal lobes.  Anyone with nautical inclinations or a surfing background will love this book.


The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Jennifer Steil

A glamorous New Yorker in publishing, Jennifer decides to don an abaya over her formerly Gucci clad body and move to Yemen to teach a journalism class to the staff at the Yemen Observer.  Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East and has been host to a number of Al Qaeda training sites.  The Observer is ostensibly an independent publication, although Jennifer quickly realizes the pervasiveness of the government's influence into all aspects of Yemeni life, including appropriate article topics for the newspaper.  Even so, Jennifer falls in love with the history, culture and architecture of her adopted new home.  She finds herself viewed as a novel third sex, a Western white woman who is able to sit in with audiences of males, chew Qat (a mildly narcotic plant that Yemeni men spend much of their work day enjoying), and teach journalism to her co-ed staff.  This is a particularly relevant story now, with the winds of change buffeting the Middle East, including Yemen.


 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

I avoided reading this book for a long time because I hated the title and it's best-seller status.  Thankfully, my younger sister rescued me from my cloud of ignorance and made me read it.  It's fantastic.  Set during WWII in the rural Guernsey islands off the Southern Coast of England, it is a story told in letters between the progressive and charismatic Juliet and her new found friends on the quaint island who don't manage to escape the tentacles of German occupation.  I have not encountered a story told in correspondence form before, but it is done adeptly and movingly.