Compulsively Aimless

  Sharing three vintage travel guides from This Beautiful World Series, a series of compact books with over 100 high quality color pictures published in the 1960s and 70s. The series started with titles focused on Asia and expanded to cover a wide range of surprising locations from Katmandu to St. Louis.  Their logo is a stylized representation of a Chinese character for beauty.  I have three of their books and added another book on Rajasthan that is not part of the series but seemed to fit in to the group to give the picture symmetry.  Most of the guides were sold in country. All purchased second hand at the AFSA book store on one of the many lunch hour visits I made to the store. Kashmir, Shinay Fuiwara (1978). The Himalayas: A Journey to Nepal, Takehide Kazami (1968). Once owned by "ME Lee".  With a blue circular ink stamp "Colorama - 21 "[~K?] Price"  Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ages, Masatoshi Konishi (1969). Blue rectangle stamp inside, London Book...

VINTAGE TRAVEL: Part II - Iron Curtain Edition  I have only a smattering of miscellaneous guides from before the fall of the Soviet Union. The guides are in English and in were published by published by state owned presses or ministries of tourism. I try to imagine their owners. What motivated them to travel to the restricted areas of former Yugoslavia, Romania, and the U.S.S.R. An English speaking traveler would have been under scrutiny of both sides for making a visit to these destinations behind the iron curtain during the cold war. One of the most daring was Fitzroy Maclean (described in an earlier blog: Diplomat, Adventurer, Soldier, Author) , a British diplomat who, while in Russia in the 1930s during the height of Stalin's show trials,  continually exhausted his minders by traveling into the forbidden areas of Soviet Central Asia. Maclean had been described as the original British Action Hero and had enough adventures for ten lifetimes.   These guide books are...

 VINTAGE TRAVEL   Perhaps it’s the COVID virus which has made me go deep into my library to find vicarious travel experiences. Lately, I've been looking at a series of vintage travel guides. Years ago, I unconsciously started buying them second hand from the American Foreign Service Association located in the basement of the State Department. And by vintage, I've arbitrarily picked 1980 and earlier. Each of them came from a series of books by a publisher similar to those existing series today like Lonely Planet, Rick Steves, and Frommers. And guidebooks are different from their more literary cousins, travel narratives. Guidebooks are meant to be compact and functional making the traveler self-sufficient or at least reassure the owner they can be confident in their new adventure.    More than other books, travel guides tell two stories: the first is a snapshot of how the world was perceived at a point in time and second, the story of the book's life, who owned i...

A quiet, peaceful, and even sweet book from Alice Herdan-Zuckermeyer. Alice and her husband, "Zuck" were intellectuals of in Weimar-era Berlin, he also being a playwright. The couple escaped Nazi Germany at the start of WWII and found their way to a small Vermont farm where they adapted to the small town ways of farm life in New England raising goats, chickens, and pigs, and struggled to survive the harsh New England Winters. Alice was able to keep her sanity by regular trips to the Dartmouth College library and writes a captivating chapter on her love of the Dartmouth library. She has also written a bit of a love story for her newfound country calling herself an American even after returning to Europe following the end of the war. As might be expected with New England farm life, it can be somewhat slow in sections. Overall, a satisfying read providing an outsider's perspective on America during WWII and a great addition to the New York Review of Books seri...

Good Reads Review of Zone One   Zone One, Colson Whitehead I admit I discovered this book because of the current pandemic situation we’re living in and while there are some eerie parallels in Colson whitehead’s zone one to COVID-19, this book is much bigger than that. Whitehead uses this dystopian environment to refocus on how we view everyday activities when it’s taken away from us. There are periods of dark humor but also great moments for reflection. One of the biggest enjoyment in reading this book for me was Whitehead's poetic use of language. He is a true master of vocabulary and poetic images. A fascinating and enjoyable read that is hard to put down.

Today's list is a short, obscure but mildly amusing group: reference books.   The Flag Book by Preben Kannik (M. Borrow s & Co. 1959) .   Beautifully laid out color flags of the countries of the world as it existed in 1959.  Includes country heraldic flags, military flags, and ceremonial flags.  Purchased from the Berlin Heights, Ohio Library book sale. American Place-Names, George R. Stewart (Oxford University Press, 1970).  You will learn from this concise and selective dictionary for the continental U.S. that Apponagansett Bay, Apponaug, RI and Appoquinimink, DE and PA are Alqonquian meaning "uncertain." Or that Zoar, Ohio was named by a German religious sect, which considered it a name for a city of refuge since Lot fled for refuge from Sodom to Zoar.   There are 550 pages of amusements here. Bought at the State Department used book store.  It contains a brief inscription, "Thought you'd like this...Eberhard."...

Henry Allen has deftly told you his family story and perhaps your family story as well. Where We Live is a concise string of pictures painted about childhood homes, the home of his grandparents, his father's Navy Ship from WWII, his college dorm, and summer homes. His descriptions of time and memories put into words the thoughts and feelings you may have had about had associated with family and places lived. I had to pause after reading his essay on summer homes. It truly caused me to put the book down and pause and think about these summer places where all of our good memories reside but seem so fleeting. A book that will enhance your own view of where you've lived.