Have I Packed Enough Books? Or, On Travel and Reading

There are few things I hate in the world as much as packing. Crying babies on long flights and the internet inexplicably going down come about the closest.

I am an avid traveler and a rabid reader, two things that are made obvious by the very existence of this blog. With all my experience jetsetting around the globe, flying back and forth between Philadelphia and Michigan to attend graduate school and then return home to family, and attending dozens of conferences and conventions, you’d think I’d have figured out how to pack by now. In particular, as a graduate student in literature – which means I constantly have to be reading, even as I constantly have to be on the go, attending conferences, conventions, and talks – you’d really think I’d have the whole packing books thing down, or switched to some digital medium.

You’d be wrong.

This is the books I packed for my recent four-week trip to Belarus and Russia:

The books I actually read? The Storytelling Animal and part of The Three Body Problem. That is, not even two of the ten books I packed.

Packing books is a complicated thing for me: I can’t sleep on airplanes, and I’m terrified by the idea of wasting time or getting stuck somewhere with a book to read. In fact, I can’t even leave the house without a book. Naturally, that means I overpack, because there was that one time in Kyrgyzstan I finished all ten books I brought and the nightmares of that time still haunt me. On the other hand, when I’m travelling, I’m usually photographing, writing, soaking in impressions, exploring, catching up with people, using Delta’s excellent new in-flight entertainment system, or – these days – keeping up with correspondence on my phone.

Still, packing more books than I can possibly read has become a kind of security blanket. I know I won’t read them all; I rarely read ten books in a month even when I’m at home, because I’m too busy with writing and research. Rather, the books are a reassurance that if everything goes wrong, my flight gets delayed for five hours, I have to spend a night in an unfamiliar city, and I can’t sleep in an airplane, I’ll have something to read. It’s the same kind of reassurance as a first-aid kit in my suitcase: I certainly hope I won’t crack my head open while hiking, but I feel better knowing it’s there.

The other issue, of course, is the checked luggage weight limit, a number with which I have become intimately familiar. In fact, at this point, I’m pretty sure I can tell if my suitcase is overweight by picking it up the way an experienced baker can eyeball a cup of flour. Bringing ten books is a great security blanket, but there’s the awful choice of which ten books, which I usually have to whittle down from the twenty books I actually want to bring, and – yes, I know, I have a problem.

This is usually made more difficult by the fact that I only read paper books. This isn’t some kind of Luddite stance or “get off my lawn” hatred of technology; rather, it’s a personal preference that be able to turn the pages, to physically feel the book in my hand, to spill exotic food and drink on it, and to be able to read it during take-off and landing (because not all airlines have Delta’s rather forward-looking stance of letting me keep my technology on during take-off). Also, as a graduate student in literature, pleasure reading and non-pleasure reading often intersect, by which I mean the line between the two is eternally blurry. It’s very easy for me to go from pleasure reading to dog-earing pages to taking notes, which is something I can only do with a physical book: something about physically folding that page over or manually underlining that text helps it stick.

Douglas Adams, while an excellent science fiction writer, seems to have miscalculated when it comes to my eccentricities. Image credit: Sageas.

And, often, when I’m traveling to some literary locale, the setting of a favorite novel, I want to bring my own copy, with its cracked spine, yellowed pages, spills and stains, and sand between the pages, as I explore the setting of the book. Sure, I could probably pull up an e-book of anything these days, but if I don’t have my copy, that I read, the literary travel doesn’t feel quite the same.

 

In short, I need to bring physical books, but that security blanket comes with a cost – often, with a hundred dollar for the extra pound overweight suitcase cost. Packing, for me, is always an adventure of what I’m willing to give up for my security blanket of books. Usually, the result is a back-breaking carry-on and only two outfits nice enough for tea with the queen; sometimes, I have literally mailed my own books, that I brought with me, to myself, because I have purchased so many new books on a trip.

I struggled with this form of literary insanity for a long time, somehow convinced that there has to be some perfect algorithm through which I can pack the correct amount of exactly the right books for a particular trip. But, slowly, I’ve come to accept that my book-reading habits defy logic. Perhaps I’m overly stubborn and unwilling to change, but this acceptance has (metaphorically) taken the weight off my shoulders (while piling it into my carry-on).

Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, Chocolate Frogs, and Mars Bars

My last stop on the way home from my recent travels was the airport of Amsterdam, and my two and a half hour layover there meant that I had the opportunity to stock up on everything you can’t buy in America:

In fact, expertly navigating the airport (which has the size and amenities of a small city) to the best shop to purchase each of these items, I ended up spending my entire layover stocking up on various chocolates, and  – for the first time in my life – had to sprint to my closing gate to get over on the plane.

Most of these items have simple, non-geeky explanations: Kinder Eggs are banned in America as a chocking hazard, Neuhaus Belgian chocolate is only available for purchase in about two U.S. cities, and any other form of Kinder Chocolate is pretty much only available at small hole-in-the-wall ethnic food stores with credit card minimums.

The Mars Bars, though, were absolute geekery. For a reason I have yet to discover (they’re certainly not a choking hazard), Mars Bars are unavailable for purchase in the United States. They also happen to be mentioned in the first Harry Potter book, when the food trolley comes around on the Hogwarts Express:

“[Harry] had never had any money for candy with the Dursleys, and now that he had pockets rattling with gold and silver he was ready to buy as many mars Bars as he could carry – but the woman didn’t have Mars Bars. What she did have were Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum, Chocolate Frogs, Pumpkin Pasties, Cauldron Cakes, Licorice Wands, and a number of other strange things Harry had never seen in his life.”

As a member of the generation that grew up with Harry Potter, I naturally wanted to try every single one of these candies, and remember trying to find Mars Bars before learning that they’re not sold in the U.S. I desired them with the same vengeance with which I wanted to try Every Flavor Beans and Chocolate Frogs. Ironically, due to the powers of commercialization, said Chocolate Frogs and Every Flavor Beans are now easily available for purchase; in the heyday of Harry Potter, I remember many of them for sale in bookstores next to the Harry Potter books, and when I was younger I even collected chocolate frog cards:

My chocolate frog cards, many of them for the same famous witches and wizards mentioned in the books, which for a geeky teenager really made the books seem like they were coming alive. 

For Mars Bars, though, I still have to fly to Europe, which in my book kind of makes them as magical as Kinder Eggs, and certainly more so than Jelly Belly Beans with the Harry Potter logo. The magic of aviation is truly great and powerful in fulfilling one’s geeky wishes:

Reading on Location: The Three Body Problem in Kamchatka

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks in Kamchatka, a Russian peninsula that is about as close to the edge of the world as you can get. A closed territory (and military zone) during the Soviet Union, it’s much easier to reach now that it’s part of the Russian Federation instead. Still, it’s a nine hour flight, which is as long as it takes me to cross the Atlantic from Michigan to my native Belarus, and the bizarreness of flying over land for nine hours and still being in the same country is not lost on me.

A view of the edge of the world from the plane. 

When we land, though, it really does feel like the edge of the world. There’s snow-covered mountains in the distance and the air smells of the sea, giving us the impression that if we just walk past that one last horizon, we’ll fall off the edge of the earth.

It’s, interestingly enough, the perfect place to read Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, one of the most significant works of recent Chinese science fiction, for a variety of reasons.

The seclusion of Kamchatka is one of the major reasons. In the novel, the post-revolutionary People’s Republic of China exiles many intellectuals and other “counter revolutionaries” to the Greater Kinghan Mountains in Northeastern China to fell wood, and Ye Wenje, the daughter of an intellectual who is thus considered suspect, gets sent to this secluded place, to the “huge sky and open air” (24) of Inner Mongolia, where she both admires the solitary nature and laments its destruction. Though Russia isn’t China, and despite Kamchatka’s familiar birch trees (so common in Belarus), the forested mountains, the huge sky and open air, the feeling of being on the edge of the world – they give the place a breathtaking, solitary, beautiful air that make it seem not unlike the one Ye Wenje is sent to.

The forested mountains and wide open sky of Kamchatka

At the same time, the feeling of seclusion is yet another similarity. Kamchatka is not only physically far from home; it’s also disconnected. Finding internet in Petropavlovsk, the major city of the province, is like looking for gold at the end of a rainbow. Every time I ask about where I could find it, a kind taxi driver or store owner tells me that it’s either incredibly slow or not there -– they simply haven’t laid down the cables for it yet, so they have to get their internet via satellite dish. And, as I notice driving around town, the city is covered in satellite dishes larger than any I’ve ever seen, one on practically every rooftop. Banks, government buildings, and hotels all have them due to their necessity for a connection to outside networks, but that doesn’t mean just anyone can use them.

 

At the same time, the satellite dishes are fitting in another way. A key aspect of the novel is a secret Chinese government program to send signals out to space and potentially make contact with intelligent life; Ye Wenje ends up at the installation of Radar Peak after the Chinese Cultural Revolution, working on precisely this project. Radar Peak, and Red Coast Base, which contain it, are fictional, and fictionally located in the Greater Khingan Mountains – which are in Northeastern China, which is about as close as you can get to Kamchatka and stay in China.

Thus, though Radar Peak itself is secluded, separated from humanity, it ironically has some of the best communication technology it is possible to possess as it seeks to make contact with intelligent life in the universe. Similarly, on the secluded peninsula of Kamchatka, the only way to communicate with other intelligent life seems to be through these humongous dishes, which are more than atmospheric as I read about radio telescopes and transmission monitoring systems. And yet, ironically, these endless dishes seem to enable me with a better ability to communicate with my friends and family than I have in the U.S.A: I have four bars and 4G almost everywhere in Petropavlovsk while my phone provider, T-Mobile, provides me with free international data. Writing the rest of this post from my home in Michigan, I have a measly two bars in the city of Ann Arbor. It’s a weird sense of seclusion and yet not, of a connection that is directly tangible and yet utterly tenuous, the endless dishes making me aware of the way that human communication seems to span the globe so easily, and yet is such a complex system.

A view of an array of satellite dishes and antennas against a backdrop of Kamchatka’s mountains. 

At the same time, another aspect that connects me to the book is the exploitation of nature. In The Three Body Problem, Ye Wenje belongs to the Inner Mongolia Production and Construction Corps, which cuts down almost all of the trees in the Greater Kinghan Mountains, thus destroying the ecosystem. In fact, a key point in the book is Ye Wenje reading the book Silent Spring, a 1962 novel about the environmental effects of pesticides, and being inspired to write a letter to the Chinese government about the devastation she sees around her:

              And so, under their chain saws, vast seas of forests turned into barren ridges and denuded hills. Under their tractors and combine harvesters, vast tracts of grasslands became grain fields, then deserts.
Ye Wenje could only describe the deforestation that she witnessed as madness. The Tall Dahurian larch, the evergreen Scots pine, the slim and straight white birch, the cloud-piercing Korean aspen, the aromatic Siberian fir, along with black birch, oak, mountain elm, Chosenia arbutifolia – whatever they laid eyes on, they cut down. (24)

This letter is an act that changes the trajectory of her life, and the attention the book draws to the environmental devastation is yet another aspect of the excellent historical research Cixin Liu did in penning this book.

These words capture much of how I feel about Kamchatka, and the exploitation of its natural resources- a fact in some ways tied to the change in political power that occurred in 1991. Kamchatka is gorgeous, but the stories of its pristine wilderness being exploited are endless.

The Kamchatka river, with a gorgeous view of the sky and mountains – but if you look down, you can see the line of the poachers’ net running across the river. 

The rivers are overfished, we’re told by practically everyone, which makes the bears hungry, causing them to come into the cities looking for food. Though the fine for unlicensed fishing is huge, poachers (“bracaniers” in Russian; Kamchatkans have a special word for their poachers) still set up nets to overfish the rivers; a few days into my stay, we went on a boat excursion down the river Kamchatka, where we found a net set up by poachers across a tributary of the river, such that no fish could pass at all. The net was full of fish, many of them dead, and it was clear that this kind of fishing was unsustainable. Later on, we ran into the Sea/Marine Life Conservation Police, and sent them down that same river- but only after we freed some of the fish that were alive.

A view of the edge of the world from the plane.

At the same time, hunting is big business in Kamchatka: a license to kill a bear costs $10,000, and that’s one of the cheaper ones. The hunters we met insist that the bear population needs to be kept down, so the hunting really is sustainable, but I’m not sure if this is true for all the animals for which hunting licenses are sold, including curly-horned goats and moose. A woodworking workshop we visited was full of wood, bone, and teeth, being used by the woodworkers to create souvenirs – and though he insisted that many of the bones and teeth were ones that he or others had simply found, I wondered how much of his work was sustainable.

Handmade souvenirs in the traditional Itelmen design, made with animal fur – one of the many kinds of animal-based souvenirs we encountered. 

Almost every souvenir store we visited had souvenirs made out of wood, fur, and bone, some of which was perhaps acquired sustainably through legal means, but much of which was likely not.America has very strict laws about importing animal products such as fur, skin, and bone, so I wasn’t able to purchase any of the souvenirs, as they would be illegal by American standards. Even if American laws were laxer, though, I would still have to do an enormous amount of work to be a conscientious buyer, inquiring as to whether the fur and bones used on the souvenirs were from animals felled for other purposes, or whether the animals were killed for their fur and bones.  In short, Kamchatka didn’t seem to have the same American sentiment of “take only pictures, leave only footprints,” and the evidence of exploitation – from bottles lying where they should to the souvenir shops – was everywhere. In fact, even though I wrote part of this post on a bus between Milkovo and Petropavlovsk, which takes a road through serene forests and mountain rivers shaded by birch trees, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that this serene, peaceful beauty isn’t quite as pristine as it looks.

The supplies of a souvenir workshop we visited, including fur and trees felled by the woodworker himself

An intricate souvenir carved out of a moose antler.

A mammoth bone ,on display, but likely about to be used to make some kind of souvenir.

The teeth of various animals, used in the making of souvenirs.

 

Kamchatka is beautiful, but it seems to be fighting a losing battle in terms of preserving that beauty, just as in the novel, Ye Wenje’s letter to the Chinese government about the harm to the ecosystem falls on deaf ears. Even as Kamchatka is secluded, almost inaccessible to those who don’t speak Russian (given the lack of anything in comprehensible English) – just like the Khingan Mountains in the book – it is ravaged by humanity. Later in the book, the thoughts of Ye Wenje echoed in particular with me:

Indeed, even on top of Radar Peak, a place the world almost forgot, the madness and irrationality of the human race were constantly on display. Ye saw that the forest below the peak continued to fall to the deranged logging by her former comrades. Patches of bare earth grew daily, as though those parts of the Greater Khingan Mountains had had their skin torn off. When those patches grew into regions and then into a connected whole, the few surviving trees seemed rather abnormal. To complete the slash-and-burn plan, fires were lit on the bare fields, and Radar Peak became the refuge for birds escaping the fiery inferno. (270)

The same could be said of Kamchatka: even here, at the end of the world, the landscape is not pristine. The madness and irrationality of the human race that Ye Wenje could just as well be the deranged exploitation of natural resources I see and hear about everywhere.

(This is the first of two posts I’ll be making about reading The Three Body Problem in Kamchatka; the second will have to do with the state, ideology, and scientific/technological progress).

A Literary Trip to the Chateau d’If

I recently had the honor of having my article about my Count of Monte Cristo-inspired trip to the Chateau d’If published at Travel Thru History. Here’s a sneak peek:

“On the 24th of February, 1815, the lookout of Notre-Dame de la Garde signaled the three-master, the Pharaon, from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples.”

Thus begins Alexandre Dumas’The Count of Monte Cristo, telling of the arrival of the ship Pharaon (bearing the novel’s protagonist, Edmond Dantes) into Marseille. By a strange coincidence, I arrive in Marseille on the 25th of February, almost exactly two centuries later. I had vowed to visit this sacred place ever since I’d read Alexandre Dumas’ novel at an impressionable young age – – and finally, here I am.

Check out the entire article at Travel Thru History.

Reading on Location: The Martian at Haleakala National Park, Hawaii

I breathed deeply as I looked out at the landscape of Mars.

Okay, so there’s clearly something wrong with that sentence. It’s a pretty good bet that I wouldn’t be breathing deeply if I was standing on Mars – conserving your oxygen supply and all that. Rather, I stood near the top of Haleakala, a crater in Haleakala National Park on the island of Maui in Hawaii.

Haleakala is a volcanic mountain, full of craters from ancient eruptions but likely dormant today. Its sweeping slopes are rocky and covered in a rusty red dust that in more than reminiscent of the Red Planet. Plants grow here and there on the craggy hillsides, but if you stand at just the right angle and zoom in just the right amount, you’ll get nothing but the rusty red hills. You’ll feel like you’re on Mars.

Looks pretty Martian to me….

Well, almost. There’s a few things that suggest you’re not actually on another planet. The oxygen and nitrogen in the air are a helpful clue, even though here at ten thousand feet there’s less of both than usual, and warnings about dizziness and headaches are everywhere. If you look into the distance, you can see the blue of the Pacific Ocean, which reflects the equally blue sky, both definitely belying the idea that it’s a Martian landscape (the sky looks blue on Earth because of the way the atmosphere bends light, and Mars, with its thinner atmosphere, composed of different elements, has a “butterscotch-yellow” sky). And, on this particular day, the rich blue sky is full of fluffy white clouds, while the clouds of Mars, though they exist, are not made of water vapor and are only visible at night, when light reflects off them.

And yet, this was the perfect location for reading a book about surviving on another planet – in this particular case, Andy Weir’s The Martian.  This post is my first in a series about “Reading on Location” – that is, reading books in locales that seem perfect for them, or traveling with a book perfectly chosen for the trip. This isn’t the same as literary travel, where you go after you’ve read the book, but rather traveling with a helping of luck and (hopefully) serendipity, where I try to make my books line up with my travels.

And in this particular case, I’ve succeeded: The Martian is the perfect companion for me on the island of Maui.

The Martian, against a backdrop of Haleakala.

In fact, as a Midwesterner, everything about Maui makes me feel a little bit like I’m on a different planet. The palm trees and perpetually sunny days are a change from Michigan, where snow and sleet are out stalwart companions for half the year. When I look up at the stars at night, the constellations have shifted, with the big dipper absolutely in the wrong place (an interesting thought – what do the constellations look like on Mars?) The sun sets early and rises equally at ungodly early hours, and apparently, if you look closely enough at the right moment at the sunset, you’ll see a green flash. And to top it all off, there’s constantly chickens crossing the road, as if this is some kind of crack-fuelled alternate universe where the first lines of jokes literally happen. In the larger scope of things, I may not have travelled that much – I’ve only crossed about half of our little planet – but since we haven’t invented warp drives yet, this is, relatively speaking, the farthest away from all that is familiar that I can actually go. And even having travelled that small distance, there is a disorienting element of foreignness to everything I encounter.

 

It may not be Mars, but being here does make you think about the larger scope of things. Hawaii is a chain of islands formed from volcanic rock eons ago, and there’s the same sense of inscrutable, age-old natural processes behind it as behind the mysteries of a distant red planet. Being on a tiny, unfamiliar island in the middle of an expanse of ocean, with different flora and fauna and different constellations and a different pattern of the rising and setting of the sun – it makes you think about how our planet is part of something bigger, a mystery and an order of things that exists on a more cosmic scale. Which is a sentiment that science fiction, when done right, is supposed to evoke – and which The Martian certainly does.

The dust of “Mars”

I arrive wearily home with sneakers covered in red dust from hiking up and down Haleakala, which I proudly sport for the rest of my trip. Somewhere in The Martian, the protagonist, Mark Watney, mentions that Mars is red because it’s so old that it’s literally rusting. I’m not sure if that’s the case here, too, though these ancient volcanic islands make me hope that it is. At the end of the day, I sit on the beach and read more of The Martian after going for a swim in the Pacific Ocean. There’s no oceans on Mars (anymore), but there’s certainly plenty of sand and rock and sitting on the sandy beach, covered in sand, with my book plastered in sand (there’s a lot of sand), I let it fall through my fingers and thing about a red planet far away, and how this distant clime on these tiny islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean can almost feel like a different planet with the right perspective.

What to Read After Captive Prince? Swordfighting, Intrigue, and Adventure (and Love Stories)

The final installment in C.S. Pacat’s Captive Prince series, Kings Rising, was released a few days ago, and, naturally, devoured pretty quickly by, well, everyone. If you’re wondering what in the world to read now that you’re done with Pacat’s books (besides rereading them. Again.) you’re in luck. Because Pacat, brilliant writer that she is, both did her research and was heavily inspired by a lot of literature, some of which she’s shared on her Twitter. Pacat really likes stories with “high-octane escapism, adventure, swordfights, chases, escapes, true love, intrigue, high stakes,” so here’s a long list of books and series with all of those elements, some direct influences on Pacat, others similar in style.

Queen Margot/ La Dame de Monsoreau/ The Forty Five – Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas is, according to Pacat, one of her favorite authors and one of the major influences on Captive Prince. He’s also the author that pretty much helped to invent the historical novel and the swashbuckler story. He is absolutely a master at intertwining the intrigues, plots, politics of France’s history with adventure, swordfights, chases, escapes, and true love – all of which combine to create a sense of epic and high stakes. The three novels listed above form what is known as Dumas’ “Valois Trilogy,” and they’re set in the sixteenth century, during the French Wars of Religion, a bloody, turbulent, and highly political time. It was a period when France was divided religiously and politically – and what the Valois trilogy chronicles is all the turmoil of this time, and, slowly, the way it brings about the birth of a more united French nation.

The first in the series  is Queen Margot (often titled La Reine Margot even in English versions), and it is, at the same time, hundreds of pages of complex, convoluted political intrigues, adventure, and a love story. If you liked all the tight plotting of the Captive Prince series, enjoyed guessing what Laurent’s machinations were, and in general enjoy books that feel like games of chess, you’ll love Queen Margot. La Dame de Monsoreau is the second, and though this one, too, has a love story at its heart, it also draws on the trope of the “clever fool,” or the court jester who is really the power behind the thrown. Plus, much of the book is set in the Loire Valley, the castles and settings of which are – as I wrote in a previous post on the Locations of Captive Prince – very reminiscent of Vere.

The Castle of Chambord, France – one of the castles of the Loire Valley, where much of the Valois Trilogy is set. Tell me that doesn’t look like Vere, I dare you. 

The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
While we’re on the topic of Dumas, I must of course add The Three Musketeers to the list. It’s the novel that is probably responsible for every swashbuckling movie, book, and play out there, including Zorro, The Princess Bride, Captain Blood, and pretty much every adaptation of the Three Musketeers ever made to the screen. And there’s plenty of swashbuckling, but there’s also the intrigues of the French court (with a properly dastardly Cardinal Richelieu as the powerful villain), secret affairs, spying, poisoning, battles, clandestine meetings, and races to save the reputation of France. Plus, the protagonists are, if you look closely, anti-heroes rather than heroes, which falls in line with Pacat’s interest in deconstructing the hero archetype really well (ironically, this book probably cemented the swashbuckling swordsman as the hero archetype, but oh well).

The Three Musketeers is responsible for pretty much every swashbuckling, swordfighting movie ever – like this charming duel in Pirates of the Caribbean 

The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller 
If any of the Captive Prince books made you cry, then this book will. But in a good way. (That’s an auspicious start to a book recommendation…) There’s significant overlap in the Captive Prince fandom and The Song of Achilles fandom, because there’s significant similarities between the books. The Song of Achilles is about Achilles’ (the Trojan War hero from The Illiad) and his beloved, Patroclus – and it essentially rewrites the (epic) story of the War of Troy from the perspective of Achilles’ and Patroclus’ love, and the way that it transcends, well, everything. Plus, Akielos in Captive Prince is, according to Pacat, heavily based on ancient Greek culture (which is much more homonormative than our culture), and Madeline Miller really brings the world of ancient Greece alive, giving you the sense that you’re reading another love story in Damen and Laurent’s world. Plus, Achilles and Patroclus’ love story was a huge inspiration to Alexander the Great and his beloved, Hephaistion, which is the topic of Mary Stewart’s series of historical novels, starting with Fire from Heaven, that Pacat was also inspired by.

Fire from Heaven – Mary Stewart
This is one of the few books on this list I haven’t read; however, as mentioned above, Stewart was one of the historical novelists that inspired Pacat, and is usually recommended to lovers of The Song of Achilles, so I plan on giving it a chance soon.

Kushiel’s Dart – Jacqueline Carey
This is a book that gets recommended by, well, everyone, though I personally don’t hold it in such high esteem. This may be a matter of preference, though, and I’d be remiss not to include it. It’s set in an alternate version of France (and Europe) called Terre d’Ange, whose inhabitants are descended from angels, and their highest law is “love as thou wilt.” It’s essentially, as far as I can tell, an alternate Europe without heteronormativity or patriarchy, but with similar power structures (aristocracy, monarchy, etc…) Within this world, Phedre is a bisexual courtesan trained to be a spy, who uses both her wits, intelligence (she speaks four languages and is educated in history and politics) and sexual skills to spy, unravel plots against the kingdom, and to generally become a courtesan-spy-hero.

The Mark of Zorro/The Curse of Capistrano – Johnston McCulley 
This is the original Zorro novel, and by “original” I mean the first one, which created the character and came up with the whole archetype, which was then used, adapted, and re-written dozens of times. Originally published serially as The Curse of Capistrano, then re-named The Mark of Zorro when published as a book. Written in 1919, its plot and intrigue nonetheless holds up to today’s standards.

Yes, that Zorro. 

Swordspoint – Ellen Kushner
There’s two major things this novel has in common with Captive Prince : homoeroticism and swordfighting. Referred to as a “melodrama of manners,” it’s a story set in the fictional Riverside, where “a man lives and dies by the sword” and nobles rely on swordsmen for hire to fight their duels (Thanks, back cover). The novel is the story of Richard St. Vier, the best swordsman in Riverside, and his lover, Alec – and the way the two get embroiled in the political and sexual intrigues of the aristocracy. There are two other books set in the same world, one of which (The Fall of Kings) I’ve heard described as what would happen if Aragorn and Gandalf fell in love. With swordfighting.

The Game of Kings – Dororthy Dunnett
According to Pacat, Dunnett is her favorite author. She’s been described as a historical novelist in the style of Dumas. Set in sixteenth century Scotland, it’s the story of Francis Crawford of Lymond, a spy, swordsman, and dastardly, machiavellian plotter, working for the greater good of Scotland, which is threatened at its borders, while himself standing accused of treason. (I admit, I haven’t read this one either, but Pacat says Dunnett is her favorite novelist, so this had to be on the list).

Captain Blood – Rafael Sabatini
I can’t help but suspect that Laurent may very well have been just a little based on Captain Blood: a swordsman and pirate who is also really, really clever. A British doctor, he inadvertently gives medical aid to a traitor to the crown during the English civil war, and promptly gets shipped off to the colonies as a spy. He escapes, and becomes a pirate. While the first book is a simple adventure story, the sequel is a collection of short stories, in which Captain Blood, like Laurent, uses both brains and swords to outwit and defeat his enemies.

The Locations of Captive Prince

C.S. Pacat’s Captive Prince trilogy (which, to make a really tacky cliche statement, has really taken me captive as a reader) is set in a fictional world, so technically, there aren’t any real-world locations I could bring into the location here and talk about and travel to. However, when I tweeted Pacat about the inspiration for the fictional kingdoms of Akielos and Vere in the books (which had struck me as very Greek and French, respectively), she replied with the following:

She’s also talked a lot in interviews about how the locations and cultures of the books were inspired by the Mediterranean Basin and ancient Greece. France and Greece being two places that I have had the good fortune to visit, one could say, I suppose, that I have in some ways visited Vere and Akielos. My approach to this post is a bit backwards, however, in the sense that usually I travel to a place while reading, or having read, a book, and let it imbue the place with meaning. This time, I’m in Philadelphia, reading these books and thinking back on my time in France and Greece. Still, the locations are evocative enough that they make me want to get on a plane and dash off to France’s Loire Valley (which I talked about in my previous post).

I say the Loire Valley in particular, because I can definitely see the influences of a certain French style in the books. In particular, Vere, through Damen’s eyes, is lavish, extravagant, intricate, almost Baroque. It brings to mind the style of the French court in the 17th century:

The Hall of Mirrors in Versaille, built in the 17th century by Louis XIV

The Gardens of Versailles

Above is the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles, as well as its gardens. Both show a distinctly French style: rather than letting the gardens grow wildly, for example, as is the custom in Britain, they are painstakingly manicured and laid out into intricate designs. Its flourishes and curliques are as intricate as the architecture of the palace, which in turn resembles the flourishes and intricacies and delicacies of the customs expected of the courtiers – just like we see customs rigidly adhered to in Vere. Seventeenth century France was a place so heavy on decorum that a play that did not meet those standards of decorum because it mixed genres (among other things) was literally put on trial. You can really see that rigidity in the art, in the architecture, in the gardens – and I think much of that inspired the culture of Vere as well. For example, one of the major differences between Akielos and Vere in the book is that in Akielos, sexual acts are private, in Vere public:

“In Akielos we don’t,’ said Damen, ‘in front of other people.’
‘Not even the King?’
“Especially not the King,’ said Damen.
‘But how does the court know if the royal marriage has been consummated?’
‘The King knows whether or not it has been consummated!’ Horrified.

This immediately made me thing of the practices of the French court, and how ridiculous they seem to us now. For example, in the French court, the levee du roi was customary – that is, when the king rose (lever) in the morning and got dressed, the nobility could attend and watch him get dressed. It was practically a ceremony. Similarly, royal marriages (according to my research) were occasionally consummated in public, or at the very least courtiers would help the couple undress and make all the necessary preparations, then wait outside. Basically, the royal private life was put on display in a very public way, which I think in Captive Prince translates to people literally watching sexual acts as they might gladiator fights.

But I digress. I was talking about castles. (It’s funny how from architecture you get to customs and then move into the royal couple’s bedchamber).

Pacat mentioned that it was more the palaces of the 14th century than the 17th that inspired her. I, however, tend to imagine them as more 16th century constructions – the 16th century was a period in France in which the heavy, medieval fortresses transformed into the chateaux that we know now, mostly thanks to Francis I. This was also the period when the world-famous Louvre went from being a fortress to a chateau. Thus, I tend to think of the various castles of Vere as places like Chambord and the Louvre:

Chambord

Interior at Chambord

The Louvre

However, in deference to what C.S. Pacat mentioned, I will admit that I can certainly see a fourteenth century castle like Pierrefonds (the only one on this list I haven’t been to) as the inspiration for much Veretian architecture and style :

Pierrefonds view

Pierrefonds interior

When it comes to Akielos, my knowledge is less deep; I’ve been to Greece once, but have not lived there or studied its culture the way I have with France. Still, Pacat’s descriptions of Akielos really do evoke the ancient Mediterranean for me:

Ios; the white city, built on high limestone cliffs that crumbled and broke off into the sea.

Those white cliffs have been mentioned so many times. I didn’t actually see any white cliffs in Greece, but the practice of building cities (especially white ones) on hills near the sea is very Greek, and Athens itself really does have some of that feel of Ios to me: an ancient city, perched atop a hill, its crumbling stone and columns a hallmark of its age (even if there’s a sea missing):

Akropolis in Athens

The other thing that really intrigued me, both in terms of plot as well as location, is the numerous mentions of age-old ruins throughout Akielos and Vere, left over from when they had been one kingdom (Empire?) that had fallen apart. From our modern perspective, evokes Rome, I tihnk- which had, at one point, encompassed both parts of France and parts of Greece, but which fell apart for a variety of reasons and left tantalizing ruins for mystery-seekers and archeologists. So, if you go to the above Akropolis in Athens, and stand atop that city perched on a hill, and look down, you’ll see the following:

(the above photos are mine; I apologize for the quality).

I sometimes think that living, as Damen and Laurent did, in Vere must’ve been like living in Rome or France in the Renaissance, with its own beautiful castles and architectural marvels (which I talked at length about above), but also – and this is particularly true in the case of Rome – with historical ruins all over the place, the crumbled, dilapidated shapes of former architectural marvels at your feet. There are still Roman aquaducts and arenas as far north as Paris, after all, and Rome, though I’ve never been there, is likely a melding of classical and Renaissance architecture. So when, in Kings Rising, Laurent and Damen travel through Akielos, walking through fields full of ruins, I couldn’t help thinking of Stonehenge, or any of those marvelous other ruins in the British Isles or Europe, or perhaps even these simple columns at Delphi, in Greece:

The above is a picture of mine from Greece, and I love the signs, the hints, of a former civilization, with an ability to build and to create – dilapidated, worn by the sands of time, against a background of rough, windswept, unforgiving mountains. The remains of a former civilization, not quite gone, in fact, standing proudly – but in such a way that they serve as reminders that time will destroy kingdoms.

And that, I suppose, is a rather sad note to leave Kings Rising on, because the implication at the end of that novel is precisely that there will be one great kingdom rather than two torn asunder. A (non heteronormative) version of Renaissance France and ancient Greece, coming together to become a new kingdom. Perhaps a new Empire. I do wonder what the architecture would look like.

Reading on Location

Almost everyone has heard of literary travel: journeying to where books were written, where they took place, or where an author lived – to imbibe the atmosphere that was complicit in the creation of a great oeuvre, or to get that little bit of context. For many, it’s another way to make a book feel real, or to experience it more deeply – to enter that world that you wish so desperately to live in. That’s why Harry Potter tours to Oxford and Jane Austen tours to bath are so popular- there’s that charm hanging over the locales that makes you feel like you’re part of the story when you go there.

This post is about a slightly different way of experiencing literature through travel – what I call “Reading on Location.” Though sometimes that overlaps with where the book took place, more often what I’ll be writing about is “atmospheric” locales that provide the perfect mood for specific books. For, as any avid reader knows, any book has a particular mood – the exoticism of faraway locales in pirate stories, the romance of California in stories about Zorro, the grace and charm of old castles in French historical fiction, the beauty of the Scottish highlands in Outlander. It’s the kind of mood that leads one, having finished a book, to desire another one like it – with another one “like it” being not a book belonging to a particular genre or author or time period, but a much more vague set of signifiers like “historical adventure romance with swordfighting.” For me, reading the book in the “correct” location – one that correlates to the book’s setting and “feel” – is another way to make reading a book meaningful. It helps me feel what the characters are feeling, to enter into their world, to take that step from merely reading avidly to “experiencing.”

Me, on the roof of Notre Dame de Paris, with the novel Notre Dame de Paris in my hands (more on that in future posts! )

There’s a different kind of charm than that of literary travel in taking a trip, for whatever reason– be it vacation, business, or visiting family – and picking up a book I haven’t read before that I think will suit the locale I’m visiting. This kind of thing is a gamble, obviously, as I can’t know exactly where the story will go (even if I do research the books I read well enough beforehand to have an idea of what I’m picking up), but if I gamble correctly, there’s a wonderful feeling of serendipity. There’s just enough chance involved that it doesn’t feel contrived, and yet enough planning in this game of chance that the odds of that serendipity are slightly higher. Plus, I’m the kind of person who will refuse to leave the house without a book (I’m not kidding; I haven’t left the house without a book in years), so whether I’m traveling, going to work, or waiting for the subway, I have to have a book with me to pass the time. Given this fact, I give a lot of time and thought to which book I’ll read next – on which trip, on which commute, at which convention. The book has to fit the trip and the “mood” of the trip.

In short, it’s not about visiting because of a book. It’s more about lining up your book with your travel so that you get a more perfect travel experience and a more perfect reading experience. If you think of travel as requiring preparation, including getting cash, packing your suitcase, and buying a map, then this is part of that preparation – picking a book that will add flavor to your trip. And vice versa – once you’ve chosen a trip, that trip will add flavor to your book, as the descriptions you read mirror the sights you see when you glance up from the page.

For example, one of my fondest memories is of my first trip to France. I was an impressionable fifteen-year-old at the time, obsessed with the writings of Alexandre Dumas. I’d inhaled the Count of Monte Cristo, devoured the Three Musketeers while lamenting never having seen Paris, and stepped my way through La Reine Margot. The sequel to that novel is La Dame de Monsoreau, which I chose as my companion for that trip to France. I loved Dumas, and I knew that book took place in France – a country I had wanted to visit because it was the birthplace of my beloved author. That was all I knew.

When I arrived in France, it was like Serendipity herself, personified in goddess form, had descended and handed me good luck on a golden platter. Our trip began in Paris, where we drove by the

The Luxembourg, where the Musketeers strolled and adventured.

Luxembourg (that favorite meeting place of the musketeers) and passed by the Louvre – in short, the places where the book’s protagonist, Bussy d’Amboise, spent quite a bit of his time. The next stop on our trip was the city of Chartres, famed for its cathedral, and in a twist of fate that I cannot believe to this day, I flipped to the next chapter of my book and read about a rider arriving in the city’s square, right in front of the cathedral, just as we drove up to the town. I explored the city and mounted its towers with that very book in hand.

Next on our trip were the castles of the Loire Valley – Chambord, Chenonceau, Azay-le-Rideau, and a handful of others, known the world over for their postcard picture quality. These castles lie in the middle

of France, along the Loire River – in a location that, in the 16th century, would have been known as Anjou. It is here that Bussy d’Amboise (who I had fallen utterly in love with) spent much of the novel, duelling, going on romantic trysts with his beloved, and receiving clandestine letters, and engaging in intrigue right in front of his patron, the Duc d’Anjou. Yes, the Duke of that same Anjou was a major antagonist in the novel, and this atmosphere of Renaissance castles, court intrigue, duels, plots, and machinations, seemed to hang over the entire province, imbuing it with magic. We visited Chambord, and I spent my time there exploring every single nook and cranny, looking for the kinds of secret passageways you’d find in a Dumas novel, peeking behind corners, mounting stairs, stepping out onto balconies to take in the view. The chateau itself is like an architectural confection – like one of those intricate, many layered cakes that you’re afraid to touch and yet want to consume. I too wanted to practically consume the atmosphere that clung to every bit of architecture, to breathe in the history and the magic. I wanted to feel the way the characters felt, as they climbed those steps, as they stepped out into the balcony, as the candles glittered around the walls. 

The winding staircase of the chateau of Amboise. Can you imagine courtiers in Renaissance garb climbing these steps? I can.

One of the cities we stopped by was conveniently Amboise, which boasted its own castle overlooking the Loire Valley. (Later research would show me that there were several Amboises in France, and the historical Comte de Bussy belonged to a different Amboise, but at the time, I cared little). I wandered the castle with book in hand, taken in by the aura of the place, thinking that this castle, perched on a hill with a sharp drop into the river, and its quiet elegance, would have suited the character of Bussy.

If I had loved Dumas before I came to France, by the time I left, I was head over heels in love with the author and his creation, Louis de Clermont, Comte de Bussy d’Amboise. I felt like I had walked in his footsteps- and in many ways I had – and visited the heartland of France, which had given life to him. And it all happened by chance because I had picked the right book off the bookshelf before getting on the plane. It all seemed so perfect, and I could just see these characters in these magical places:

 

The French Bussy d’Amboise and Madame de Monsoreau

The Russian Bussy d’Amboise

The above images are from two different adaptations of La Dame de Monsoreau, and yes, that’s Bussy (I prefer the one on the right, from the Russian adaptation). Conveniently, the French adaptation was filmed at precisely some of these Loire Valley castles that we visited (though after my visit), which, thinking back, adds even more magic, because then the characters above literally walked and talked in these places.

I finished La Dame de Monsoreau on the plane in tears, determined to go back. I also knew that I would never have this kind of good luck again, not even if I tried; there was no way I could so perfectly line up a story’s plot with its locations as I had done with this book. But that experience, in addition to giving me a direction in life (I am now a graduate student studying French literature) has given me a new way to travel and a new way to read. It has taught me to seek magic in the places I go in new and different ways, and if I were cynical and pessimistic about our 21st century (I try not to be)I ‘d say that no, Max Weber was wrong, enchantment isn’t gone from the world. You can still find it, if you bring a book with you when you travel.

Hello, World!

Yes, I’m aware that “Hello, World!” used to be the default title for those really old website-building programs and stuff. Call it nostalgia.

Anyway! Welcome to my new (or semi-new) book blog, The Itinerant Bookworm. You may have seen me on Blogsport, but I’ve since moved platforms. Also, much of the content on that blog was reposted from other publications for which I wrote; this blog will be almost completely original.

It also won’t have too many book reviews. I’ll be posting more about other things that relate to reading – ruminations and thoughts and the like. I’ll also be making two different series of posts:

Book Recommendation Lists: These aren’t your usual book recommendation lists. They won’t really be going by a traditional genre like “fantasy” or by “what I’m reading that you should read.” Instead, they’ll be thematic, with themes like swashbuckling adventure, vampires, queer romance, etc….I’ll tag each post with all the books recommended in it, so that if you like one particular book, you can check out my tag and see if it’s in a list or two. If it is, bingo – you have more books that are a lot like what you’ve just read, and maybe you’ll discover a new favorite. I also find that I’m often in the mood for something very specific – i.e. historical fantasy with good romance, or hard science fiction about AI, rather than something more vague like “historical romance” or “sci-fi,” so hopefully these lists will help my readers find new books to read.

Reading on Location: I always bring a book with me when I travel, and I’ve often found that if I’ve managed to match my book up with the location I”m traveling to well, then it adds to the book and the trip. For example, I’ve read many Dumas books in France, and let me tell you, it was quite an experience! So these posts will be about specific books and the best locations to read them, so that if you’re ever on a trip you can pick the right book. I’ll tag these by location as well as book title, and of course provide pictures.