A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore...

Pages: 302 Original date of publication: 1932 My edition: 2000 (NYRB Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Joseph Fox Books, Philadelphia, January 2012 Hindoo Holiday is an account of the time that the author, JR Ackerley, spent in india working as a secretary to the Maharajah of Chhatapur (jokingly changed to Chhokrapur, apparently meaning “City of the Boys,” for this book). The Maharajah is an eccentric old man who enjoys riddling conversations and the company of boy actors. The setting is the British Raj, when Indian rulers had a fair amount of autonomy—but in the wake of peace, there was very little that the Maharajahs could actually do. So, in possession of vast amounts of wealth, according to the introduction to this book, these rulers spent their money on untold luxury. It was amidst this environment that this book is set, and the Maharajah Sahib of Chhokrapur is one of these. The diary covers roughly six months in 1923 and 1924; appa...

Pages: 137 Original date of publication: 1973 My edition: 1976 Why I decided to read: it seemed like the perfect thing to bring on the plane when I went on vacation to England How I acquired my copy: Amazon UK, January 2010 You decide to stop using the word “anachronism” when a seventeenth-century carriage drives through the gates of Buckingham Palace carrying twentieth-century Russian or African diplomats to be welcomed by a queen. “Anachronism” implies something long dead, and nothing is dead here. History, as they say, is alive and well and living in London (p. 82) In 84, Charing Cross Road , Helene Hanff collected the letters she and Frank Doel, a bookseller in London’s famous Charing Cross Road, exchanged for twenty years, from just after WWII up until his death. Helene Hanff had always wanted to travel to England, but until the summer of June 1971, after 84 Charing Cross Road had been published and she went on tour to publicize the book, she had never had the opportunity to do s...

Pages: 438 Original date of publication: 1993 My edition: 1999 (Virago) Why I decided to read: heard about it through LibraryThing How I acquired my copy: Awesomebooks, February 2011 The Virago Book of Women Travellers is a collection of excerpts of writing from women traveler, from the seventeenth century through the twentieth. Many, many authors are represented here, from Flora Tristan (who I learned was the grandmother of Paul Gaugin) to Isabella Bird to Beryl Markham, and includes a number of authors who I knew through their fiction but wrote about their travels as well: Vita Sackville-West or Edith Wharton, for example, or Kate O’Brien, who had a lifelong love for Spain that you see in her novels, but experience her love for the country firsthand through her travel writing. These women represent a number of nationalities, traveled pretty much everywhere, and experienced pretty much everything. Especially prior to the twentieth century, women (particularly single women) used trave...

Pages: 410 Original date of publication: 1860 My edition: 1997 (Virago) Why I decided to read: LibraryThing recommendation How I acquired my copy: Amazon UK, March 2011 Emily Eden’s name has been floating around in my literary consciousness for a while—many years ago I read a novel called One Last Look , which apparently is based on Emily Eden’s travels in India; and then a couple of years ago I read Women of the Raj , a historical overview of British women in India in the 18 th , 19 th , and early 20 th centuries. So when I found out that her letters home to her sister were available, this became a must-read for me. The book is a collection of letters that Emily wrote between 1837 and 1841, when Emily’s brother George, who was Governor-General, set out to tour the Upper Provinces of India; Emily and her other sister, Fanny, came with him. Historically, Emily’s travels were important because she was able to witness the beginnings of the First Afghan War, although s...

Pages: 333 Original date of publication: 1880 My edition: 1984 (Virago) Why I decided to read: recommended to me through LibraryThing How I acquired my copy: Amazon UK seller, January 2011 Unbeaten Tracks in Japan is composed of a series of letters that Isabella Bird wrote home to her sister and friends during the summer of 1878. She set out from Tokyo, eager to explore the “unbeaten tracks” of the northern part of Honshu (the largest island of Japan) and Hokkaido. The letters are a combination of travelogue, anthropological study, and cultural study. I was especially eager to grab this book off my TBR shelf after what’s recently happened in Japan, and I enjoyed reading about Isabella Bird’s adventures there 130 years ago—a very different experience from when my family lived in Tokyo in the 1980s and ‘90s! Isabella Bird inserts very little of her own thoughts and feelings into the narrative of her letters, but at times her very subtle sense of humor comes through, ...