The Thin Red Line

Back in 2002,  while traveling to New Orleans for my father’s funeral,  I first read The Practical Nomad by Edward Hasbrouck.   Subtitled "how to travel around the world",  this is The definitive guide to long term international travel.  Hasbrouck,  a San Francisco travel agent and highly experienced world traveler covers absolutely everything you need to know to travel around the world for six months to a year or more.   One of Hasbrouck’s major themes is the educational benefit of international travel,  and while the book is plump full of specific advice for all matter of travel details,  it also talks a great deal about the First, Second, Third and Fourth "Worlds" and about the global North and South.   Anyone not already well familiar with these concepts would do well to read this book even if they are not planning or hoping to someday plan a long international journey.

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I have to say right off, going in, that I really wanted to like Clifford A Wright’s Bake Until Bubbly– The Ultimate Casserole Cookbook.   But Wright in several ways made that very hard for me to do.    The first time in the early pages he decried using canned cream of whatever soups in favor of freshly prepared bechmael sauces.  All of what I would call the easy steps in casserole-preparation have been replaced with extremely labor-intensive recipes which seem as though designed to show just how much hard work is normally replaced by the use of canned soup in casseroles that by the end of the 450 page plus new 2008 release I was mainly seized by an imperative urge to hurl the bloody book across the room.   This one is Not Recommended.

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I have to confess, right off, that there is no theme, no connection no rhyme or reason behind today’s book selections.   These are five that just caught my eye and found their way home with me and each is just so unusual and interesting that I just had to share it.    Ranging from a huge 10 inches tall by 14 inches wide to a squat and chunky 6 inches square, from the Duba plains in Botswana (Africa) to the foot, err feet  of Texas, from the islands of the South Pacific to the crayon factory, these five books are just All over the map.

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I really wanted to like Faith Willinger’s Adventures of an Italian food lover.   Recipes from 254 chefs all over "The Boot"  collected by a woman in Florence, Italy famous for writing about the best of its native restaurants and cuisine, charmingly illustrated with water colors of the featured chefs and food.    It seemed like a sure thing.

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