I've taken the opportunity to read a lot of books during my trip so far and will no doubt read many more before I'm through. At the risk of sounding snobby, I think picking books to read during trips is like picking out wine to pair with a good meal. I'm not a wine expert, so this analogy doesn't resonate too much inside of me, but it makes sense from what I've heard about good wine.
I want to make a list of the books I've read so far and quickly note what they're about and what I thought about them before they become indistinguishable from each other. Since leaving the US, I've made a point of finding English language book stores in major cities along the way and have stocked up there. I haven't had to suffer any breaks between books so far and, at the moment, I'm carrying five with me, so I should be alright for a while. I try to always read a book fitting to the area I'm in but, that doesn't always work out perfectly. I've donated all the books as I go, unable, of course, to bring them all back home with me.
Hisotry of Warfare (John Keegan):
I actually started this book before I left Austin, but I felt like it was a good introduction to the world through a realists eyes. I learned about the spread of military technology and how Central Asia is where our modern idea of "invading armies" began. It inspired me to read about Genghis Khan or Tamerlane later on.
History of the Natchez Trace:
Explains how the Natchez Trace formed a land bridge between the lower Mississippi River and the Cumberland River between Natchez, Mississippi and Nashville, Tennessee before the steam boat came along and made even upriver travel cheaper than land. This was highly appropriate for my bike ride along the Natchez Trace, but it was poorly written and often devolved into laundry lists of demographic and economic facts and figures.
The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen):
A great novel about contemporary American life. It's about a family of five from the midwest whose children have moved off to the corrupted east coast. Great novel for "getting a feel" for the US; my first country on the trip.
Absalom, Absalom (William Faulkner):
I found this at a used bookstore in Natchez that was suffering because of Kindle sales (I maybe should have bought one for the trip) for about a buck. Read it in Mississippi in honor of Faulkner and was almost finished with it before losing in New York City. It was a challenging read that kept repeating itself. I felt like the plot progressed two steps forward, one step back the whole way, with plenty of foreshadowing so that you knew the whole way that the outcome would be disastrous. I'd like to give Faulkner another try.
The Long Ships (Frans Bengtsson):
The novelized Saga of Orm, the youngest of a family of Vikings from Scania (modern day southern Sweden) who adventures around Europe looking for wealth and fame. I read this in Iceland in order to get a feel for the Nordic Viking life. I should have read the Icelandic sagas instead, but there were too many "begots" through the whole thing. I still liked The Long Ships though, and inspired me to take a trip from the southern most tip of Scandinavia to Nordkapp - only hitchhiking and camping and thereby barely spending any money at all.
Emma (Jane Austen):
This may seem like a strange novel to bring along with you on a ferry from Iceland to Denmark. Again, one of the viking sagas would have been better - maybe some Faroese literature? This was the first book I purchased abroad and I got it in Akureyri, Iceland. The bookstore there had a very limited English language selection and, foreseeing an uneventful ferry trip, I bought the thickest book I could find there. This happened to be Emma. I like Jane Austen, but after reading "The Corrections" and "The Long Ships", both rooted in the gory and often unsavory realism style, "Emma" seemed too uptight and proper. It only showed life in the parlor and didn't get into the juicy details of everyday 18 Century life. I supposed "uptight" and "proper" was good for me coming into Denmark and Germany, though. And, my ferry ride was the closest I got to England.
Balkan Ghosts (Robert Kaplan):
This book had been recommended to me on numerous occasions by several different people. In a flash of forethought, I ordered the book online and had it sent to Germany so that I wouldn't have to carry it there. No way was I going to find it in English there. It's a travel log of an American journalist going through the Balkans in 1990-1991 - right after the fall of the Soviet Union and just before Yugoslavia's messy break up. It was a good crash course in Balkan history - an area where I was sorely ignorant. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it to a lot of the places he went, but it was good to at least have a frame of reference for the region. Several of my hosts in Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia commented on how it was useless since it was written by an American. They're probably a little right. Nevertheless, it made me want to read Rebecca West's book about her trip through the Balkans in early 20th century, "Black Lamb Grey Falcon".
The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde):
Bridge on the Drina (Ivo Andric):
This was the first, truly "foreign" book I bought and read. Lots of people in Belgrade had recommended it and I found it easily in several Belgrade bookstores. Andric won the Nobel prize for literature and so is nearly a Serbian national hero. The book covers nearly 500 years of the history of Visegrad - a little town in current day eastern Bosnia. I had already passed through this area once I got the book, so I didn't get to visit it, but the book is an amazing portrayal of the history of the Balkans through the eyes of a famous bridge. From Ottoman occupation to Serbian uprisings to Austro-Hungarian occupation and their departure during World War I, it covers it all.
Bridge of San Louis Rey (Thornton Wilder):
Bryn brought this book for me from Australia when we met up in Istanbul. It's about life in 18th century Peru, so completely removed from Istanbul, but still a good, short novel about a group of people who die in a bridge collapse. I liked to continuation of the bridge theme after reading "Bridge on the Drina" but I mostly liked the book for it's sketch of the characters' personalities, motivations and inner struggles. It's framed by a friar's attempt to explain why these specific people died by the bridge collapse. Bryn thought that the futility of this effort was the central theme but I disagreed. The frame was ultimately an excuse to write about fictional, obscure individuals in 18th century Peru.
Portrait of a Turkish Family (Irfan Orga):
This was another local recommendation that I bought in Istanbul for way too much - about $30. But that's just how things are in Istanbul. Way too expensive. The book was a huge success when it came out in 1950, but has since fallen out of print and, according to the bookstore owner, there is only one version out now, which explains the high price. It's good portrayal of Istanbul during the fall of the Ottoman Empire and beginning of the republic; a riches to rags autobiography that kind of reminds me of Dickens, except that the author inserts too much of his own self-pity and conceitedness. At times, it pissed me off. When he whined about how his family had to get rid of one servant and were down to only two during hard times, I lost a lot of respect for the guy. Also, reading the afterword by his son made me respect Orga less. It sounds like he failed to learn from his hardships in WWI Istanbul and kept making lots of financial mistakes throughout his life. Still, you have to respect the insight he provides on Istanbul during an important time during its history.
Snow (Orhan Pamuk):
I was strongly encouraged to read Orhan Pamuk by several Turks. He's a contemporary, Nobel Literature Prize winning author who writes all about the experience of living in Turkey. He was exactly what I was looking for in Turkey. One of my hosts recommended that I read "Snow" as it is about eastern Turkey whereas most of Pamuk's books are about Istanbul. As I had already covered Istanbul in Orga's book (see above), I went for it. Snow is a story about a fictional week in the eastern city of Kars where an actor joins forces with the local military to take over the city. A journalist is caught in the middle of it and is manipulated by all different sides (Islamists, Kurds, Leftists, the military, etc.) to push their own agendas during the crisis. I thought it was a great introduction to all the different forces spinning around in Turkey, but it wasn't a great introduction to Kars, which I visited towards the end of the book. Pamuk's main character (the journalist) is also a bit of a wet-blanket. He reminded me of Goethe's "Junge Werther" who nearly made my head explode with his indecisiveness and hand-wringing and self inflicted pain. Pamuk could have cut about 100 pages from his book if he his lead character only thought things over three times instead of five. I guess that's what gives the book its texture, though.
To Catch of Tartar (Chris Bird):
Bryn brought this book for me from Australia as I'd be heading to the Caucasus after Turkey. To Catch a Tartar is advertised as a travel journal through the Caucasus, but it's actually a British journalist's account of the first Chechen war in the mid 1990s, which was fine by me. But Bird is a terrible writer. At one point, he strung together four totally unrelated metaphors in four consecutive sentences. His style really reminded me of Robert Kaplan but at least Bird didn't over inflate his own importance in the matter and paid more attention to the people around him than how awesome he was for hanging around in Chechnya while the Russians were shelling him. He jumps back and forth between the current and numerous former Russian incursions into Chechnya which, when mixed up with all the various names throughout history, was very confusing. But overall, he gets across the idea that the Russians have been trying to nail down the Caucasus for centuries and have never quite got it down pat. Great on the ground account of all that went down, too.
The Travels of Marco Polo
This is one of the few books that I didn't finish on this trip. It's basically just a collection of his notes that may or may not be fabricated. Marco spent most of his time in the service of Kublai Khan, the grandson (or son?) of Genghis Khan who ended up ruling the Chinese district of the Mongol Empire. There are some interesting stories in there from old, obscure leaders in places that were long ago erased by war, famine or the desert. I feel like you have to be more of a Central Asian history scholar to be able to put any of this stuff into perspective, though.
Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World (Justin Marozzi)
I had a clear objective from the beginning of my trip to read a book about Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan or Tamerlane while spending many, many hours on Kazakh trains. I was able to carry out this objective flawlessly thanks to finding this book in a bookstore in Ankara back in June. Marozzi does a good job of displaying Tamerlane as one of those pragmatic, Machiavellian leaders who would massacre whole cities and pile their skulls into pyramids as a way to achieve empire. It was a reminder that often the most successful war is total war. Tamerlane is probably one of the least politically correct figures of history (probably the absolute least before Hitler came around). But Marozzi also writes about how modern day Uzbekistan (the heart of Tamerlane's 15th century empire) is rehabilitating Tamerlane's image in order to manufacture some kind of national history and pride. While I wasn't able to make it to Uzbekistan, I saw Kazakhstan undertaking very similar efforts with even more obscure historical figures.
The Great Game: The struggle for empire in Central Asia (Peter Hopkirk)
This was a continuation on the Central Asian empire theme, only brought forward about 400 years. This time, the empires are Britain and Russia, competing sometimes passively, sometimes aggressively, over the fractured kingdoms, emirates and principalities of present day Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Western China. It has such resounding relevance to what is happening today and, generally, what is always happening in Central Asia. It also reinforced the theme from Tamerlane that to rule in Central Asia, you have to be a ruthless, cut-throat, sneaky bastard. It also reinforced my desire to go to Uzbekistan. Hopkirk has three other books on the subject that I hope to read once I get back home.
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack And The Japanese Psyche (Haruki Murakami)
Ok, so I didn't go to Japan and I never really planned to go to Japan on this trip. I actually read this book while traveling through Korea. I found this book in Almaty, Kazakhstan, which was a really weird place to find it, but couldn't resist. I've known about the 1995 sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway, but never really studied it in much detail. This book, on the surface, will tell you everything you'd like to know about how the attack was carried out and what witnesses experienced, but it's also a great novel. The format is a little strange: the author has basically woven together testimonies from over a dozen people who were directly affected by the attacks to give the event the most personal texture possible. Then, at the end, he interviews another 6 or so members of the cult (Aum Shinrikyo) who carried it out. It's the kind of excruciatingly in-depth, detailed exploration of the attack that I'd love to be able to read about every major attack ever carried out.
No plans for the next book yet. I'm off to India and should have no problem finding a good Indian novel in English though. As always, suggestions are welcome.
I want to make a list of the books I've read so far and quickly note what they're about and what I thought about them before they become indistinguishable from each other. Since leaving the US, I've made a point of finding English language book stores in major cities along the way and have stocked up there. I haven't had to suffer any breaks between books so far and, at the moment, I'm carrying five with me, so I should be alright for a while. I try to always read a book fitting to the area I'm in but, that doesn't always work out perfectly. I've donated all the books as I go, unable, of course, to bring them all back home with me.
Hisotry of Warfare (John Keegan):
I actually started this book before I left Austin, but I felt like it was a good introduction to the world through a realists eyes. I learned about the spread of military technology and how Central Asia is where our modern idea of "invading armies" began. It inspired me to read about Genghis Khan or Tamerlane later on.
History of the Natchez Trace:
Explains how the Natchez Trace formed a land bridge between the lower Mississippi River and the Cumberland River between Natchez, Mississippi and Nashville, Tennessee before the steam boat came along and made even upriver travel cheaper than land. This was highly appropriate for my bike ride along the Natchez Trace, but it was poorly written and often devolved into laundry lists of demographic and economic facts and figures.
The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen):
A great novel about contemporary American life. It's about a family of five from the midwest whose children have moved off to the corrupted east coast. Great novel for "getting a feel" for the US; my first country on the trip.
Absalom, Absalom (William Faulkner):
I found this at a used bookstore in Natchez that was suffering because of Kindle sales (I maybe should have bought one for the trip) for about a buck. Read it in Mississippi in honor of Faulkner and was almost finished with it before losing in New York City. It was a challenging read that kept repeating itself. I felt like the plot progressed two steps forward, one step back the whole way, with plenty of foreshadowing so that you knew the whole way that the outcome would be disastrous. I'd like to give Faulkner another try.
The Long Ships (Frans Bengtsson):
The novelized Saga of Orm, the youngest of a family of Vikings from Scania (modern day southern Sweden) who adventures around Europe looking for wealth and fame. I read this in Iceland in order to get a feel for the Nordic Viking life. I should have read the Icelandic sagas instead, but there were too many "begots" through the whole thing. I still liked The Long Ships though, and inspired me to take a trip from the southern most tip of Scandinavia to Nordkapp - only hitchhiking and camping and thereby barely spending any money at all.
Emma (Jane Austen):
This may seem like a strange novel to bring along with you on a ferry from Iceland to Denmark. Again, one of the viking sagas would have been better - maybe some Faroese literature? This was the first book I purchased abroad and I got it in Akureyri, Iceland. The bookstore there had a very limited English language selection and, foreseeing an uneventful ferry trip, I bought the thickest book I could find there. This happened to be Emma. I like Jane Austen, but after reading "The Corrections" and "The Long Ships", both rooted in the gory and often unsavory realism style, "Emma" seemed too uptight and proper. It only showed life in the parlor and didn't get into the juicy details of everyday 18 Century life. I supposed "uptight" and "proper" was good for me coming into Denmark and Germany, though. And, my ferry ride was the closest I got to England.
Balkan Ghosts (Robert Kaplan):
This book had been recommended to me on numerous occasions by several different people. In a flash of forethought, I ordered the book online and had it sent to Germany so that I wouldn't have to carry it there. No way was I going to find it in English there. It's a travel log of an American journalist going through the Balkans in 1990-1991 - right after the fall of the Soviet Union and just before Yugoslavia's messy break up. It was a good crash course in Balkan history - an area where I was sorely ignorant. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it to a lot of the places he went, but it was good to at least have a frame of reference for the region. Several of my hosts in Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia commented on how it was useless since it was written by an American. They're probably a little right. Nevertheless, it made me want to read Rebecca West's book about her trip through the Balkans in early 20th century, "Black Lamb Grey Falcon".
The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde):
Bridge on the Drina (Ivo Andric):
This was the first, truly "foreign" book I bought and read. Lots of people in Belgrade had recommended it and I found it easily in several Belgrade bookstores. Andric won the Nobel prize for literature and so is nearly a Serbian national hero. The book covers nearly 500 years of the history of Visegrad - a little town in current day eastern Bosnia. I had already passed through this area once I got the book, so I didn't get to visit it, but the book is an amazing portrayal of the history of the Balkans through the eyes of a famous bridge. From Ottoman occupation to Serbian uprisings to Austro-Hungarian occupation and their departure during World War I, it covers it all.
Bridge of San Louis Rey (Thornton Wilder):
Bryn brought this book for me from Australia when we met up in Istanbul. It's about life in 18th century Peru, so completely removed from Istanbul, but still a good, short novel about a group of people who die in a bridge collapse. I liked to continuation of the bridge theme after reading "Bridge on the Drina" but I mostly liked the book for it's sketch of the characters' personalities, motivations and inner struggles. It's framed by a friar's attempt to explain why these specific people died by the bridge collapse. Bryn thought that the futility of this effort was the central theme but I disagreed. The frame was ultimately an excuse to write about fictional, obscure individuals in 18th century Peru.
Portrait of a Turkish Family (Irfan Orga):
This was another local recommendation that I bought in Istanbul for way too much - about $30. But that's just how things are in Istanbul. Way too expensive. The book was a huge success when it came out in 1950, but has since fallen out of print and, according to the bookstore owner, there is only one version out now, which explains the high price. It's good portrayal of Istanbul during the fall of the Ottoman Empire and beginning of the republic; a riches to rags autobiography that kind of reminds me of Dickens, except that the author inserts too much of his own self-pity and conceitedness. At times, it pissed me off. When he whined about how his family had to get rid of one servant and were down to only two during hard times, I lost a lot of respect for the guy. Also, reading the afterword by his son made me respect Orga less. It sounds like he failed to learn from his hardships in WWI Istanbul and kept making lots of financial mistakes throughout his life. Still, you have to respect the insight he provides on Istanbul during an important time during its history.
Snow (Orhan Pamuk):
I was strongly encouraged to read Orhan Pamuk by several Turks. He's a contemporary, Nobel Literature Prize winning author who writes all about the experience of living in Turkey. He was exactly what I was looking for in Turkey. One of my hosts recommended that I read "Snow" as it is about eastern Turkey whereas most of Pamuk's books are about Istanbul. As I had already covered Istanbul in Orga's book (see above), I went for it. Snow is a story about a fictional week in the eastern city of Kars where an actor joins forces with the local military to take over the city. A journalist is caught in the middle of it and is manipulated by all different sides (Islamists, Kurds, Leftists, the military, etc.) to push their own agendas during the crisis. I thought it was a great introduction to all the different forces spinning around in Turkey, but it wasn't a great introduction to Kars, which I visited towards the end of the book. Pamuk's main character (the journalist) is also a bit of a wet-blanket. He reminded me of Goethe's "Junge Werther" who nearly made my head explode with his indecisiveness and hand-wringing and self inflicted pain. Pamuk could have cut about 100 pages from his book if he his lead character only thought things over three times instead of five. I guess that's what gives the book its texture, though.
To Catch of Tartar (Chris Bird):
Bryn brought this book for me from Australia as I'd be heading to the Caucasus after Turkey. To Catch a Tartar is advertised as a travel journal through the Caucasus, but it's actually a British journalist's account of the first Chechen war in the mid 1990s, which was fine by me. But Bird is a terrible writer. At one point, he strung together four totally unrelated metaphors in four consecutive sentences. His style really reminded me of Robert Kaplan but at least Bird didn't over inflate his own importance in the matter and paid more attention to the people around him than how awesome he was for hanging around in Chechnya while the Russians were shelling him. He jumps back and forth between the current and numerous former Russian incursions into Chechnya which, when mixed up with all the various names throughout history, was very confusing. But overall, he gets across the idea that the Russians have been trying to nail down the Caucasus for centuries and have never quite got it down pat. Great on the ground account of all that went down, too.
The Travels of Marco Polo
This is one of the few books that I didn't finish on this trip. It's basically just a collection of his notes that may or may not be fabricated. Marco spent most of his time in the service of Kublai Khan, the grandson (or son?) of Genghis Khan who ended up ruling the Chinese district of the Mongol Empire. There are some interesting stories in there from old, obscure leaders in places that were long ago erased by war, famine or the desert. I feel like you have to be more of a Central Asian history scholar to be able to put any of this stuff into perspective, though.
Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World (Justin Marozzi)
I had a clear objective from the beginning of my trip to read a book about Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan or Tamerlane while spending many, many hours on Kazakh trains. I was able to carry out this objective flawlessly thanks to finding this book in a bookstore in Ankara back in June. Marozzi does a good job of displaying Tamerlane as one of those pragmatic, Machiavellian leaders who would massacre whole cities and pile their skulls into pyramids as a way to achieve empire. It was a reminder that often the most successful war is total war. Tamerlane is probably one of the least politically correct figures of history (probably the absolute least before Hitler came around). But Marozzi also writes about how modern day Uzbekistan (the heart of Tamerlane's 15th century empire) is rehabilitating Tamerlane's image in order to manufacture some kind of national history and pride. While I wasn't able to make it to Uzbekistan, I saw Kazakhstan undertaking very similar efforts with even more obscure historical figures.
The Great Game: The struggle for empire in Central Asia (Peter Hopkirk)
This was a continuation on the Central Asian empire theme, only brought forward about 400 years. This time, the empires are Britain and Russia, competing sometimes passively, sometimes aggressively, over the fractured kingdoms, emirates and principalities of present day Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Western China. It has such resounding relevance to what is happening today and, generally, what is always happening in Central Asia. It also reinforced the theme from Tamerlane that to rule in Central Asia, you have to be a ruthless, cut-throat, sneaky bastard. It also reinforced my desire to go to Uzbekistan. Hopkirk has three other books on the subject that I hope to read once I get back home.
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack And The Japanese Psyche (Haruki Murakami)
Ok, so I didn't go to Japan and I never really planned to go to Japan on this trip. I actually read this book while traveling through Korea. I found this book in Almaty, Kazakhstan, which was a really weird place to find it, but couldn't resist. I've known about the 1995 sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway, but never really studied it in much detail. This book, on the surface, will tell you everything you'd like to know about how the attack was carried out and what witnesses experienced, but it's also a great novel. The format is a little strange: the author has basically woven together testimonies from over a dozen people who were directly affected by the attacks to give the event the most personal texture possible. Then, at the end, he interviews another 6 or so members of the cult (Aum Shinrikyo) who carried it out. It's the kind of excruciatingly in-depth, detailed exploration of the attack that I'd love to be able to read about every major attack ever carried out.
No plans for the next book yet. I'm off to India and should have no problem finding a good Indian novel in English though. As always, suggestions are welcome.
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