Books – Flung

Barbarian Days: Travel with Purpose

Sarah Stodola — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 16:54:34 +0000

I picked up William Finnegan’s surfing memoir, Barbarian Days, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2016, not with the intention of reading it front to back, but to consult the passages in which he visits the island of Nias, in Indonesia, a place I’d just come home from 40 years after Finnegan. My own trip to Nias wasn’t easy, given the relatively short distance I was traveling—two flights from Singapore, then a three hour drive to the only […]

Source

10 Essential Works of Literature about Delhi

Elen Turner — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 00:42:43 +0000

India’s capital is a full, fascinating city with a long past that prompts a certain air of nostalgia in many writers. The best are able to capture its complex historical layers while addressing the facts of the modern metropolis, with all of the benefits and drawbacks of such a position. From a book-length poem about the love affair of a Sufi saint to a Booker-winning portrayal of the city’s class struggles, here are 10 great books about Delhi… […]

Source

‘On Trails,’ But Not On All of Them

Sarah Stodola — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 13:32:57 +0000

It didn’t occur to me until I was reading the epilogue of Robert Moor’s well regarded new book, On Trails, that the title has a dual meaning. I’d understood it first as one in a long line of similar titles: On Liberty, On Beauty, On Human Nature, etc. But coming toward the final pages, it suddenly hit me that Moor could have meant something more along the lines of [being] on trails, like On the Road. I wonder if this […]

Source

Kafka’s Vacation Time

Sarah Stodola — Tue, 23 May 2017 13:03:11 +0000

Though he’s one of very few authors in history to have his name turned into an adjective, Franz Kafka was a disaster of a writer, insofar as we would consider a writer who is not a disaster to do things like get a decent night’s sleep on occasion, write every day (or at least every week), and send completed writings out into the world for publication. Kafka did none of these things, and more often than not, actively tried to […]

Source

5 Things You Never Knew about the U.S. Territories

Poornima Apte — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 23:05:28 +0000

From sea to shining sea—that last line of “America the Beautiful” speaks to an integral element of the American narrative, in which we’re romanced by a vast, beautiful, and unified land. Sure, Americans include nods to Hawaii and Alaska when considering their country—those are two states with stars on the flag, after all. But many fail to give the other territories much thought. And it’s our loss, argues Doug Mack in his rollicking new travelogue, The Not-Quite States of America: […]

Source

10 Great Works of Literature About Los Angeles

Sarah Stodola — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 14:52:00 +0000

The city known for churning out fantastical versions of life via film tends toward a darker sensibility in its fiction. Of course, when it’s been in a more sullen mood, the Hollywood machine has adapted a good number of these novels to the silver screen. Here are 10 great novels about Los Angeles… [columns] [column size=”third” last=”no”] [/column] [column size=”third” last=”no”] The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler This atmospheric, high-brow crime novel introduced the world to Philip Marlowe, who conducted […]

Source

Katie Kitamura’s ‘A Separation’: An Impending Divorce Undone

Sarah Stodola — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 01:51:31 +0000

Until it isn’t, Katie Kitamura’s new novel, A Separation, is among the most perfect representations I’ve read in fiction of the ennui that engulfs any thinking person as she sinks, and then sinks further, into a luxury beachfront vacation. The view of the sea from the room’s balcony, the overly affectionate couple at the next table over, the “very nice pool.” None of it giving the observer any indication of which country she happens to be in. The observer in […]

Source

A History of Hennessy, from Ireland To France To America

Sarah Stodola — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 16:57:06 +0000

At the tail end of a vacation in France a few years ago, my boyfriend and I had a couple days in our rental car to get back to Paris from Bordeaux, where we’d been enjoying the countryside and the ocean and the wine and the perfectly ripe avocados. We had no plan, just a general direction we needed to pursue, waiting along the way for something to pique our interest enough to stop. I remember whirring past windmills and […]

Source

Great Works of Literature About West Africa

Sarah Stodola — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 22:48:06 +0000

In the past couple of decades, the amount of literature out of West Africa available to English speakers in the West has increased manifold, and in recent years it’s been expanding beyond the historical subjects of war and slavery to reflect the humanity of everyday life in the region. If you’re heading to West Africa, here are 10 great books that will help you better appreciate the visit… [columns] [column size=”third” last=”no”] [/column] [column size=”third” last=”no”] Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi […]

Source

A Journey Through the Foodiest Country on Earth, Family in Tow

Alice Stephens — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 18:01:00 +0000

There’s a joke told among expats in Japan that newcomers deem themselves experts in the enigmatic country after a week and write a book about it after a month. The library is filled with these books. Dave Barry has one. So does Will Ferguson. Add another title to the list, Michael Booth’s Super Sushi Ramen Express: One Family’s Journey Through the Belly of Japan. The author freely admits that before he embarked on his three-month odyssey, he had “no definable […]

Source