Been There? Read That!
by Ali Matthews
This week, the booksellers tell you about the places, real or imaginary, that they dream of traveling to and the books that take them there.
Destination: Somewhere Peaceful
The Book: Cruising Utopia, Jose Estaban Munoz
The place I want to travel most to is just an idea. This place is a place of peace, care, and love. Munoz presents queerness as an aspiration, a dream of utopia. The place I want to go will never be, but I’ll feel its presence as I aspire and dream of it. That’s the value of dreaming of utopia. The pursuit of it, if done with love and care at its core, is the same as building a kinder world and as we continue towards it we must recognize the value of our failures. The place I want to go is on a never ending path of warm hearted failure and is a place I will never go. I’ll continue to dream of it while reading Cruising Utopia getting closer through failure each day. – Pax
Destination: Italy
The Book: The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante
This reads like a horror novel for those with abandonment issues, but it takes place in Italy!
I’ve never been to Italy, but I imagine it's gorgeous. I loved The Lizzie McGuire movie, I love Italian wine, and I love pasta. So good. Read with a glass of wine in hand. Or maybe a bottle. – Jules
Destination: Cairo, Egypt
The Book: Beer in the Snooker Club, Waguih Ghali,
These two books respectively chronicle the aftermath of Egypt’s two revolutions in the last 100 years. Beer in the Snooker Club (often called Egypt’s The Catcher in the Rye) takes place during Nasser’s presidency in the 1950s, and If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English follows the years after the Arab Spring. Both books are wonderfully imagined and thoughtfully achieved. Egypt is no exotic world of camels and desert, but a real place of revolution, determination, and deep humanity. – Bex
Also: If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English, Noor Naga
Destination: New York City
The Book: In a New York Minute, Kate Spencer
What can I say? I love my city! And I love books that love New York as much as I do. In a New York Minute feels more like the best types of rom-coms that take place in the city (ehem, Nora Ephron’s), which is very comfortable and rich like a Nancy Meyers movie. Wash Day Diaries shows the other side of the coin with an all Black cast that lives in the Bronx, and I loved seeing how they navigated the city and heartbreak and friendship. Both versions of the city are very real, and there’s so much to love about them. – Camryn
Also, Wash Day Diaries, Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith
Destination: Wittenberg, Germany
The Book: Michael Kohlhaas, Heinrich von Kleist
Wittenberg is home to many important sites from the life of Martin Luther. Among others, All Saints’ Church, the fabled site of Luther’s posting of his 95 theses, still stands there. Luther was–to understate things quite severely!–a complicated man: capable at once of the highest piety and the lowest brutality. Kleist’s classic novella, which takes place partly in 16th century Wittenberg, seems to capture something of his spirit: how an all too human certainty of one’s moral rightness too easily morphs into a license for indiscriminate villainy. Kleist uncovers a questionable intimacy between justice and injustice that threatens to unsettle our staid moral formulas. I’d love to wander the Wittenberg Altstadt one day and ponder these riddles further. – David
Destination: Patagonia, Argentina
The Book: Of Love and Shadows, Isabel Allende
I’ve always wanted to go on a long hike there!
– Jacque
Destination: The Appalachian Mountains
The Book: Sugar Run, Mesha Maren
It’s the crisp mountain air for me! This novel follows a woman on an agonizing climb to get her life and her grandparents’ land back following a prison sentence. We cut back in time to the events leading up to her arrest, a fascinating, page-turning mystery unfolding there, and in present day, she’s finding new love and hopefully, new beginnings. The natural world just comes alive here, as the author is from Appalachia herself. - Aatia
Destination: Barcelona
The Book: The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
What’s more transportive than good ol’ historical fiction? For The Shadow of the Wind, the modern classic tale by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, we’re in Barcelona. I want to follow a decades-long mystery down twisted cobblestone streets. Not too keen on Spanish food though. - Aatia
Destination: Scotland
The Book: To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
I love going to Scotland. I always want to branch out a little in my travel destinations, but those rolling green mountains and bagpipes keep pulling me back. There’s nothing better than sitting and reading in the Scottish countryside. – Ali
And The Bookshop on the Corner, Jenny Colgan
The Destination: Portugal
The Book: Journey to Portugal, Jose Saramago
I have yet to travel to Portugal but have always been drawn to it. Cliffs overlooking the ocean, a rich literary history, seafood—what more could you want. Saramago’s Journey to Portugal, an author’s journey through his homeland, paints a beautiful picture that makes me want to pack up everything and open up a small bookshop in a small Portuguese town and leave everything behind. There I can sit and read the poetry of Fernando Pessoa’s heteronym Álvaro de Campos and pass the days away. – Nick
Destination: Skinder’s cabin, deep in the forests of Vermont
The Book: White Cat, Black Dog, Kelly Link
The forests of Vermont are vast, and strange. In the final story of Link’s collection, titled “Skinder’s Veil,” we follow Andy as he takes over his friend’s house-sitting gig in a large cabin owned by a man named Skinder. It should be an easy task, except for one unbreakable rule—if Skinder shows up at the door, do not let him in. This story is weird and magical and ominous, and made me immediately yearn for a weekend trip to the woods to commune with talking bears and stray deers and some funny twin sisters. – Amali
