Given the amount of SF I’ve been consuming lately (“not that there’s anything wrong with that”), I’ve decided to embark on one of the many “reading challenges” that circulate in the blogosphere.
Largely because I first learned of it about the time of my post on foreign literature, I’m going to pursue The Armchair Traveler Reading Challenge that began July 1. Theoretically, I’m supposed to list the six books I intend to read between now and year end. At this point, though, I plan on simply listing “candidates” for the challenge since the rules allow participants to switch out books throughout the challenge. I will simply update the list here as books are completed (two as of this initial post) or added to the list of selections.
Completed:
- Elizabeth Hand’s Generation Loss (the descriptions of northern coastal Maine make it one of the story’s characters)
- Words Without Borders: The World through the Eyes of Writers (an anthology with 28 writers from nearly 20 countries).
- Finding George Orwell in Burma, Emma Larkin
- The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years, Chingiz Aitmatov (Kazakhstan)
- Buddha or Bust: In Search of Truth, Meaning, Happiness and the Man Who Found Them All, Perry Garfinkel (world trek)
- Virgins of Venice: Broken Vows and Cloistered Lives in the Renaissance Convent, Mary Laven
Future Candidates:
- An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan, Jason Elliot
- Blue Latitudes, Tony Horwitz (retracing Captain Cook’s explorations of the South Pacific)
- In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs, Christopher de Bellaigue (Iran)
- Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus, Robert D. Kaplan
CHALLENGE COMPLETED: October 7, 2007
Paths that lead to the most profound destinations, to moments of illumination or change, have nothing to do with actual travel, but rather negotiate a mental geography.
Lucius Shepard, Life During Wartime
