Tuesday 11 November 2008

What I've been reading

Image of the book cover
Hokkaido Highway Blues
by Will Ferguson


"After too much saké, Canadian travel writer and English teacher Will Ferguson finds himself following the Cherry Blossom Front, the route Japan's celebrated pink sakura follows. It announces spring, flowering in a wave from the southern tip Cape Sata, through Kyushu, Honshu and Hokkaido islands, to Northern extremity Cape Soya."
This is another book that Lola II has lent me to read, but unlike the others that she's unloaded on me, she's actually read and enjoyed this one and wants it back! She was an English language assistant for a year in Japan, and she said it reminded her of her time there. I only visited for a week or so, but it left me with a longlasting love of sushi. Anyway, it was a nice book to read, full of self-deprecating humour, even though he includes accounts of himself being incredibly rude to Japanese people who are attempting to practise their English, or just being Japanese in an annoying way.


Image of the book cover
The Hippopotamus Pool
by Elizabeth Peters

narrated by Barbara Rosenblat

"A masked stranger offers to reveal an Egyptian queens' lost tomb - and Amelia Peabody and her irascible archaeologist husband Emerson are intrigued, to say the least. When the guide mysteriously disappears before he can tell them his secret, the Peabody-Emersons sail to Thebes to follow his trail, helped - and hampered - by their teenage son Rameses, and beautiful ward Nefret. Before the sands of time shift very far, all of them will be risking their lives foiling murderers, kidnappers, grave robbers, and ancient curses."
My first audio book from Audible was one of this series, so a year later I thought it was time for another. This one's not as good as the other, but still OK. It's a bit disturbing, however, when she writes about the visiting Inglesi in Egypt forcing their way into native houses, confiscating forged antiques, as if that were their right. The inhabitants in question are painted as incorrigible villains, but even so...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those are way off the beaten track as far as my usual reading matter goes, but the second one sounds quite intriguing.

I might have to give it a try!

travelling, but not in love said...

Lola, I read Hokkaido Highway Blues just before going to Japan for the first time. i loved the book but I loved Japan in person so much more....