Reading List

I've got a stack of fresh books from the library. I basically went to the travel selection and kept taking things off the shelves until my arms were comfortably full.

I got the Fodor's guide to Germany, so I can read up on what'll be nearby when I'm in Bonn. (especially what I can get to with my transport pass!).

Next, I picked up Rick Steves' Postcards from Europe. The Trip Itinerary is largely composed of places I'm likely to visit while I'm over there - Chapters 1-4 are entitled Amsterdam, To the Rhine, Club Rothenburg, and Munich. I'm sure I'll get some good insight especially from those chapters, but more importantly, Rich Steves is one of the most famous travel journalists of all time, and I'll be able to see something about him and the profession from reading the book - how he operates, what his code of ethics is, etc.

The next book is the most random - it's called My 'Dam Life - Three Years in Holland, by Sean Condon. It's pretty much straight humor, but hey, I'll be a stone's throw from Holland while I'm in Germany, and it's what the library had about it.

The last two books for some reason ended up being about Turkey. A Fez of the Heart, by Jeremy Seal, and Looking for Osman, by Eric Lawlor. I'm 3/4 done with Fez of the Heart, which was the first of the pile that I really started in on. The man is obsessed with hats to the point where sometimes I just need to put the book down and laugh at him, but he's one of those authors that is constructively obsessed - he convincingly paints a picture of the history, culture, and politics of Turkey in terms of the Turban, the Fez, and the 'western hat'. He has a funny habit of literally translating the names of towns as he enters them, and then referring to them by this funny-sounding English name for the rest of the novel. In a lot of languages, it's pretty normal to have towns with common nouns for names. In English, not so much. We've got Bath, for example, but usually we have older forms or words taken from other languages, so when Jeremy hangs out in Pomegranate, Soapmakers, or, best of all, Warrior Pistachio, it's lovely.