During the pandemic, I continued to work on the Around the World project, although not always alphabetically. Reading books and watching movies are easier than writing up blog posts, so I seem further behind than I am. Anyway, here’s the entry for Iceland, which is a gorgeous country. It almost looks like a cold version… [Read More]
Blog
Category: Rest of the World
Austria: Chess Story
Chess Story , a 1941 novella by Austrian-Jewish writer Stefan Zweig, is set on board a ship traveling from New York to Buenos Aires during World War II. Several of the passengers are escaping Nazi-occupied territories, as Zweig himself did. One of the travelers is a Czech chess grandmaster. Several others want to see him… [Read More]
Australia: Overlander
I’ve always wanted to go to Australia. Who knows if it is ever going to happen now. But I can tell you this much: I will not see Australia the way that Rupert Guinness did. In 2017, he joined a group of endurance cyclists on a trip across Australia’s southern coast. They started at Freemantle,… [Read More]
Armenia: The Sandcastle Girls
One of my sorority sisters was Armenian, and she talked about being Armenian a lot. She was involved in different Armenian cultural groups off campus, and her formal dates were always fellow members. I was kind of like, whatever, it’s nice that she’s interested in the country of her ancestry, but it’s also kind of… [Read More]
Azerbaijan: The Orientalist
I was searching for books about Azerbaijan and skipped over the country’s most famous novel, Ali and Nino: A Love Story, because I didn’t know it was the country’s most famous novel. I was worried about getting stuck with some dreck. Then I saw that The Orientalist: In Search of a Man Caught Between East… [Read More]
