Reading Across the World

This post is a part of a collaboration with Blog with Friends.  Each month we choose a theme and everyone gives it their own special twist.  This month's theme is "Read Across America" so stay reading until the end and you will find links for all kinds of lovely posts!

I have not always loved reading.  When I was little, I used to see letters backwards and flipped all around. Sounding out words was torture; I wouldn’t have minded though if my classmates hadn’t seemed to grasp it so easily.  They were off and reading in no time while I knew that I couldn’t read. I was successful at hiding it for a while though as I was good at memorizing so I would ask someone to read a book to me and then I would pretend to read it when someone asked me to do so.  They caught on though because sometimes I would “read” words that were on the following page before I got there.  

My mother and father read for several hours every single day, that is what they do for entertainment.  Aside from that, I grew up on a farm in a remote part of California in the 70s so there was no TV, no radio, no nothing except a bookmobile that used to drive all the way up our dirt road once a month.  Reading was what we did for fun so I muscled my way through the torture of sounding words out untill every single word was a sight word and I could read without struggling. Then I could enter all of those worlds that were so different than the desert that surrounded me.  I most vividly remember going to Narnia via war-torn England.  

Since then, I have traveled to many parts of the world physically, always with a book in hand. Join me as I take you on a literary journey across the globe.

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Colombia - El Ruido de las Cosas al Caer (The Sound of Things Falling)
​By Juan Gabriel Vasquez

The day I arrived in Colombia was the day Pablo Escobar escaped from prison.  He was on the run from house to house the entire year I was there. It was a violent time for this beautiful, diverse country but for me it was a year of discovery and learning.  As my Spanish became more fluent, my feet became more graceful on the dance floor. I met a presidential candidate and a hit man, I bathed in rivers and listened to a pilot from Texas try to land a plane in the dead of night in a remote area from the little radio near my bed.  I became confident in my ability to survive and travel and began to believe in my own sensuality. Living in Colombia was thrilling.

The Sound of Things Falling is a book that takes place in Colombia after I left, after Escobar had been shot down off a roof in Medellin, but I felt so many connections with the story.  The protagonist is a young American woman volunteering in Colombia just as I was, she too had a host family and fell in love. The difference was, she got married and stayed there while I left.  I learned so much about the Colombia that is growing out of all of those years of violence.

New Orleans - Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

I read Interview with a Vampire long before I actually visited New Orleans and it planted an image of exotic opulence surrounded by magic that both attracted and scared me.  Is there anything more exciting that fear mixed with desire? Of course I had to go. My opportunity came when, in my mid-twenties and at loose ends, I was offered a job on the Mississippi Queen Steamboat. New Orleans did not disappoint.  I could buy a Hurricane at 10 in the morning and stroll through the streets sipping it. Strip clubs were everywhere and moss dripped from ornate railings. Beignets and po’boys were standard fair.  

New Orleans is not only vampires and booze however, it is also a vibrant, fascinating culture filled with a great diversity of people.  A Confederacy of Dunces has all kinds of characters that made me laugh out loud and was written in such a way you hear the unique way people speak in that city in your head because the words are spelled phonetically.  I didn’t even notice this until I recommended it to my husband whose first language is not English, he immediately pointed out the “misspellings”.

Japan - Go by Kasuki Kaneshiro

Something about Japan just keeps pulling me back, then it pushes me away again so I leave and then I miss it.  Japan is perfectly imperfect. After I left a couple of years ago, it was world reading day and Amazon was giving away ebooks from different countries.  Of course I got them all. Go was one of them and I was super excited when it took place not just in Tokyo, but in the neighborhoods all around where I had just spent the last 4 years living.  It was action packed and definitely written from a masculine point of view. It highlighted some of the things that drive me crazy about Japan while at the same time making me nostalgic. 

Turkey - Birds Without Wings by Louis De Bernieres and Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk

When I went to Turkey for the first time in 1999, I had never read a book about it or one that was set there.  I could hardly locate Turkey on a map at that time and that is one of the reasons I chose to go and live there.  I have found that a total lack of expectations, or better yet, negative expectations, makes my experiences better. If I don’t know anything, or I think everything is going to be bad, everything that doesn’t suck, is great!  It certainly worked as I ended up married to a Turk and going back often even after we moved away. Birds Without Wings is historical fiction and it helped me to understand so many things about Turkey. For example, it answered the questions, why are there so many street animals here? And why is this beautiful little village on the Mediterranean coast abandoned?  What happened to the Greeks and Armenians? And why aren’t we allowed to talk about it? It is a beautifully written book although the author is English, not Turkish.  

Although my husband is from Istanbul, until recently, I hadn’t spent much time there.  Istanbul is a labyrinth of small hilly streets and distinct neighborhoods. The older buildings are often crumbling and are sometimes torched to make way for parkings lots and such, arson being one of the ways around laws prohibiting the destruction of Turkey’s cultural heritage.  The book Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk is a memoir of the author’s life in that city and it brings those old buildings to life. 

Russia- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Leaving Japan for Istanbul a few years ago, I had planned on taking an airplane but because I broke my leg, I was unable to fly so off to Russia I went.  Starting my train voyage across that vast country in Vladivostok, I ended up in Moscow. I had no idea what to expect as I hadn’t had time to research anything at all between healing, getting the visa and packing up all of my worldly belongings.  I only got to spend a few days there as I navigated my way through the city arranging my next leg of the trip through Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria, but I was completely impressed by the subway stations, Red Square and how interestingly not tourist friendly everything was.  Russia doesn’t put on a social smile for anyone, it is what it is, beautiful, stern and going about its business. I made it to Istanbul and the next Christmas my mother gave me a copy of A Gentleman in Moscow. It is a novel that reads like a memoir about a man who is not allowed to leave the hotel in which he lives because of political upheaval.  I began to fall in love with the character little by little as I read about his relationships with the people he came in contact with, his humanity and his sense of humor in his insane situation.

Spain - The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Louis Zafon

Four years ago I visited Spain with my then 9 year old daughter.  We landed in Barcelona and I forced her to get up before sunrise the next morning to visit Parque Guell before the crowds. 
We made our way all the way up a mountain to Tibadabo, an amusement park in which every ride feels as if it is flinging you into a void because it is on such an incline.  We wandered the artificial beach and the Gothic Quarter and I reveled at finally being in a country where I understood the language (most of it at least). Now we live in Spain, not Barcelona but Granada and I continue to be enchanted by the old winding streets and dusty old antique shops.  

The Shadow of the Wind is a mystery set in Barcelona that focuses on both books and the feeling of being in that city.  It is a beautifully written mystery centering around a mysterious book. A young boy decides to seek out the author of a book he was charged to protect but he soon discovered that someone is destroying all the copies of the book.

For more posts about reading across America, visit these posts!

Tamara of Part-time working Hockey Mom

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Karen of Baking In A Tornado

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Lydia at Cluttered Genius

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P.J. at A ‘lil HooHaa

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Melissa at My Heartfelt Sentiments

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