On Books and Reading

I think it's Spring Break (one week of no classes) back home in Georgia now. So perhaps a lot of people there are relaxing and reading. Or maybe traveling and not relaxing. I feel like I'm on a kind of break as well, since I don't have very taxing teaching duties right now. But it's still very cold, so enjoying the beach, wandering leisurely through town, or taking trips to nearby interesting spots are not appealing. Mostly I just hang out in my apartment and take at least one walk into town each day (to go to the office, shop, and just get out). But it's always a windy, cold walk. So what I am doing a fair amount of (as I also usually do during Spring Breaks) is reading, huddling under a blanket and sitting just below the heating unit. I brought some books with me, but I've also been looking for new ones.

There are several bookstores in town, and all of them sell at least a few books in English. The best of these that I've found is on the Korzo and has a pretty big section of books in English. I bought a couple of books last week by Isabel Allende. They're from a juvenile fiction series, fantasy I guess, that I didn't even know she had written. I've been so busy for so long that I haven't even had time to browse at bookstores or check bestseller lists for many of the writers I like (or new writers). So far I have read the second in Allende's new trilogy -- Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (set in a fictional kingdom in the Himalayas). It was fun, though light and well, fantastical. I also got the third in the trilogy (set in Africa), but they did not have the first one (set in the Amazon). They take place in these far away, "hidden" places in our world and involve magical beasts (like real Yetis), talking stones, and so on. A couple of adolescents (boy and girl) accompany their grandmother on her treks as a travel magazine writer and solve mysteries or crimes as they discover these magically interesting people, animals, and places.

I'm also reading my friend Kellie Wells' new novel, Skin, which I highly recommend. She's a gifted writer with a luminous style, complex characterizations, and powerful stories. Check it out (available at Amazon.com or University of Nebraska Press).

Speaking of Amazon, I assume it would be kind of risky (mail wise) and expensive to order things from there to get here. But there is a new bestseller out that I'd really like to get and read, Labyrinth, by Kate Mosse. I know it's probably a DaVinci Code wannabe, and maybe kind of cheesy. But I wish I could find it and read it. The kicker is that I had an English language version of it in my hands at a bookstore at the airport in Amsterdam. But I thought it seemed kind of overpriced (about 14 euros). Plus I was just too tired to think coherently there and deal with carrying yet one more thing. Now I wish I had bought it and would pay that much if I found it here. I've checked all the bookstores here in town, and asked my favorite one to order it for me. But so far, it sounds like they may not be able to. At least they're looking into it. If I can't order it here, maybe I'll find it in Zagreb, which I think I'll visit in about a month. Or maybe I can find it in Italy if I go there (which I hope to as soon as it is even a little warmer).

You may get that I tend to feel the cold pretty intensely. People who know me marvel that I made it through two years of fieldwork in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, especially since it was during some of their worst ever winters. But partly it's that I was prepared mentally for long, cold winters up there (though I still suffered from the cold). Here I expected a Mediterranean Spring. Surely it will come, hopefully soon.