Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal’s Journey from Down Under to All Over by Geraldine Brooks
A lovely if at times a bit sad armchair read if you’re looking for a bit of recent history and adventure.
In line with Travel Tuesday (#traveltuesday) on Twitter, I’ll be reviewing a travel book once a month, since I read so many and love them so much. Fortunately, Australians love to travel, so there’s no shortage of books to choose from for Aussie Author Month.
Geraldine Brooks grew up in a sleepy neighbourhood in Sydney without a car, without ever making an international phone call or getting on a plane. To explore the world from her house she made pen pals and wrote to people from New Jersey, France, Israel and even not so far away in the Eastern Suburbs. Later in life, she decided to meet them all.
This story isn’t just about Brooks—who later became a foreign war correspondent—meeting her pen pals and finding out what became of them, but it is also a capsule of history of what Sydney was like in the 60s and 70s when she was growing up.
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Wandergurl’s recommended reads from 2010 and a self-imposed challenge to conquer her TBR pile.
Book picks for 2010
The Forbidden Rose by Joanna Bourne
Effectively the prequel to The Spymaster’s Lady, this equally wonderfully written novel is about ‘Maggie and Doyle’. Marguerite de Fleurignac, a French noblewoman, encounters William Doyle in her burnt out chateau. They both pretend to be people they are not, as she is trying to desperately smuggle out people during the revolution and he is an English spy looking for her father. The romance is lush and lovely, the spy plot moves around nicely, and I was kept captivated. Highly recommended.
Feet of the Chameleon by Ian Hawkey
This is a largely anecdotal history of modern African football and how it has shaped various countries’ political histories. I read this book during the football (soccer) world cup while in Africa so it was especially poignant. It explained a lot of things that were interesting to me, and would be interesting for anyone with an interest in Africa, its people and its history.
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A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire (October Daye #2)
A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire (October Daye, Book 2)
Toby Daye is sent by her liege, the Duke of Shadowed Hills, to the County of Tamed Lightning to check on his niece, the reigning countess. Toby thinks that this will be an easy job, but once she and her assistant Connor arrive, she finds it more complicated than that—people are dying and their souls aren’t being carried away by shades, the traditional soul bearers of the fae.
Toby has grown from the previous book, and it shows—I liked how her character didn’t remain static and bitter. She has become more stable, has found herself on more solid footing. She even has girlfriends and goes on night outs. Her situation (explained in the previous book, Rosemary and Rue) sucks but she’s learnt to deal with it better. She’s still a strong character and you can’t help but barrack for her.
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It’s a mix of genres this month in the Mixed Bag, which includes Deborah Locke’s memoir—a must-read for fans of Underbelly.
Don’t Bargain With The Devil by Sabrina Jeffries (School For Heiresses #5)
Dont Bargain With The Devil by Sabrina Jeffries (School For Heiresses, Book 5)
When Lucy Seton discovers that famous magician Diego Montalvo plans to build a pleasure garden next door to Charlotte Harris’s finishing, she’s determined to thwart his plans. But he’s sneaky and charming and continually makes Lucy forget her vow to be the paragon of propriety. Diego has ulterior motives, however. He intends to return Lucy to her long-lost grandfather even if he has to kidnap her.
Don’t Bargain With The Devil is the kind of book I might have enjoyed when I was just discovering historical romance, with its over-the-top dashing hero and the heroine who tries to be a good girl but can’t help herself in the hero’s presence. But I’ve been reading historical romance for a long time, and this one didn’t stand out above the rest. I skimmed bits of it, and while Jeffries comes up with some good lines here and there, the most interesting bit about the book is the mystery of who the hero in the final book of the series will be.
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Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume edited by Jennifer O'Connell
Are You There God? It’s Me … Wandergurl
Growing up in the 80s and 90s, Judy Blume was a staple read for me. I had all her books (except, strangely, the Fudge series) and would read them over and over again. Just As Long As We’re Together was a particular favourite of mine, and it was next to my bed so that if I had a nightmare I could turn the light on and read it to feel better and get back to bed. While some of the books were a little bit dated even then (for example, sanitary pads no longer had belts…) the essential themes and relationships in the book endured. There were still bullies, fights with your best friend, growing up facing issues around race, body image, boys, parents, school work … these were the things that Judy Blume knew so well.
I grew up in a tiny country in Southeast Asia with a population the size of Australia. Back then we didn’t get a lot of young adult books or children’s books, and Judy Blume was one
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Small Wars Permitting: Dispatches from Foreign Lands by Christina Lamb
Award-winning journalist Christina Lamb’s collection of stories brings to life parts of the world, but also the personal impact of her work.
All right, so I haven’t been reading a lot of romance lately. (That’s why this site says reading “mostly” and not “just” romance down under!) As per usual I found myself wandering through a bookshop, randomly picking up a book and not putting it down. This is the real test for me. If I want to—no, have to—keep going after the first few pages, it needs to be bought. Such was the case with this book.
Small Wars Permitting: Dispatches from Foreign Lands was written by Christina Lamb, who won the British Press Award for Foreign Correspondent of the Year in 2007. She’s written pieces for the Financial Times, Time and the Sunday Telegraph, just to name a few.
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The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński
I am a history and travel buff, as people who read this blog have probably already guessed. This book came up on my list ages ago as a quintessential book on Africa. I never bought it (it was expensive!) until Penguin Australia, bless their hearts, reprinted it as part of the Popular Penguins series and sold it for $10 as part of their anniversary.
Ryszard Kapuściński was a Polish journalist who was sent all over the world to cover events. He spent a lot of time in Africa, from the 50s onwards, and covered everything from their initial independence to civil wars, revolutions and everything in between.
Part travelogue, part behind the scenes look, this book provides a good introduction to Africa, showing its history and many of its problems that still exist today. More than anything, this book is about people. The many vignettes detailing the author’s encounters with different peoples and his descriptions of the tribal nuances and intricacies make for interesting reading.
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Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski
For my birthday, Kat got me this book on Herodotus. Herodotus was the original traveller and historian. Born in Greece in the 5th century BC, he wrote several books but is most famous for The Histories which is frequently quoted in everything from the earliest Greek tomes to mythology, philosophy and even modern history.
Travels with Herodotus was written by another famous traveller, Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish journalist who won numerous awards for his writing. He covered Africa, the Middle East and Asia and is known for his keen observation. Sadly, he died last year and this was the last book he wrote.
Kapuscinski begins his travels as a young journalist for a Polish newspaper. He describes his first trip overseas to India in a time when no information is available to him—Stalin is still alive and many books are still repressed—and he speaks no English. Reading his experiences, you can feel his sense of discovery and awe upon reaching a foreign land very, very different from his. This sense of discovery permeates the book,
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The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by María Rosa Menocal
When I was in my first year of university I had to take a medieval history class with a crusty old Jesuit from the midwest who taught me one of the most important lessons I would ever learn: “It doesn’t matter if you know what you’re doing. What matters is that you sound like you know what you’re doing.” He also took to teaching us about medieval life using an old but probably still accurate book on medieval history that possibly is no longer being published. While he covered all the standards–crusades, western expansion, the dark ages, the evolution from Germanic tribes, the black plague–he also got me started with my love for architecture, flying buttresses, arches and how that all came together in the beautiful city of Cordoba.
Where the hell is Cordoba?
Not a lot of people have heard of Cordoba. Nowadays it’s a pretty but quaint town-like city in southern Spain. Back in the day, it was a thriving centre of learning ruled by the Islamic Umayyad empire, a place where different cultures could mix, where Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together
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