The latest writer to be interviewed by AbeBooks is Jeff Rubin - author of Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller. Rubin, one of North America’s leading economists, explains how globalization is coming to an end as the world faces up to a dwindling and increasingly expensive supply of oil. He explains how the modern world has been built on cheap oil and how it’s going to change radically under high priced oil.
I initially feared this book would be very boring, but it’s extremely readable. Like most people, I equate the price of oil to the price I pay at the pump when I fill up my car. In reality, the price of almost everything in our global economy is influenced by oil and its price. We’ve spent three decades marvelling at global business and now, according to Rubin, it’s going to implode.
Lucy Mangan, from the Guardian, visits the Puffin archive. AbeBooks has 163,000 Puffin books for sale by the way. My six-year-old and I are reading a Puffin book right now - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis. It’s the 1975 paperback - the edition I read as a child. We’re steadily ploughing through the Narnia books at a rate of knots.
Daddy, what does honour mean?
Daddy, what’s a centaur?
Daddy, what’s an archer?
Daddy, how can I get into Narnia?
I liked the dreamy, awestruck quality of this narrated video demonstrating the vastness of Chamblin BookMine in Jacksonville, FL.
Drat. Another bookstore I might want to see as much as Powell’s. One day, I’m going to have to take a North American bookstore road trip.
….and I’m going to need a really big van for souvenirs.
I’d like to introduce a very worthy charity project - BookBridge Mongolia.
Four years ago, a group of scouts from Neumarkt in Germany traveled to Mongolia for the first time and started an annual youth exchange program between the two countries. The German scouts discovered the ability to speak English was a key factor for Mongolians looking to avoid poverty. However, a lack of books in English makes learning English very difficult.
In the town of Arvaikher, there is an initiative to build a local youth development centre which also includes a central library for all local schools in town. BookBridge Mongolia is committed to putting books on the shelves of this library.
They are collecting books from schools, libraries, publishers as well as private donors. In June, the scouts will transport the books to Arvaikher in Mongolia. The plan is to open the library on 1st September.
How can you help? Well, BookBridge Mongolia needs books in English. If you have unwanted books then we urge you to donate them to this very worthy organisation.
BookBridge Mongolia has ambassadors in three countries - Germany, UK and the US. Click here for their contact details and addresses for your donations.
If you have books in English that you can donate, contact your nearest BookBridge Mongolia ambassador and they’ll take it from there.
The Telegraph has chosen the 20 most inspiring travel books of all time.
1. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
2. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee
3. Naples ‘44 by Norman Lewis
4. Coasting by Jonathan Raban
5. Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
6. Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson
7. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
8. The Beach by Alex Garland
9. The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux
10. The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron
11. Venice by Jan Morris
12. In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
13. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
14. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
15. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby
16. Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger
17. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
18. Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
19. The Journals of Captain Cook
20. Among the Russians by Colin Thubron
Since I don’t live under a rock, and in fact work in a position where I am fairly thoroughly (gloriously!) immersed in books, I’d been hearing a lot about Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time since it skyrocketed to bestseller status in 2007. When published in 2006 in hardcover, it used its original title (which Mortenson never liked) of: Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism And Build Nations One School at a Time. It sold poorly, only 20,000 titles, and was sorely lacking the attention and acclaim it deserved. In 2007, the paperback came out with the proper subtitle and was soon on the New York Times bestseller list.
Seems obvious to me - why have two negative words like fight and terrorism glaring up from the cover, when you could have two positive, hopeful words like promote and peace. If you ask me, despite the media’s best attempts, we’re all pretty fed up with fear, terror, war, fighting, and whatever-colour-alerts, and good and ready for some peace and hope. And “nations” is such a political word that it’s almost lost meaning otherwise.
I digress.
Three Cups of Tea is a very easy read. It’s written primarily as a linear narrative, and remains engaging throughout, which is no easy task for a text largely concerned with political, historical and geographical facts. But it managed to hold my interest from start to finish.
I didn’t love the writing. I really, really didn’t love the writing. For one thing, it’s ripe with some of the worst (and unnecessary) similes and metaphors I can remember encountering. One particularly cringe-inducing one went something like “he was so grateful for this food, though the meat was as tough and stringy as the mountain people who served them”. I paraphrase, and probably inaccurately, but the basics are there. There’s a lot of that type of stuff throughout, and it detracted from the narrative, rather than adding to it. The book could really have benefited from a stricter editor.
Another continually frustrating theme throughout was Mortenson’s almost apologetic humility and humbleness, his refusal to take any credit or be in the spotlight. I understand where it comes from - he sounds like a man uncomfortable with attention, who’s doing what feels right to him, doing what he believes in, doing what makes him feel good about his life, doing what gives him a sense of purpose. I understand his not wanting that to be mistaken for heroism, and the associated embarrassment. But real heroes are seldom those who set out to be. 
The thing is, regardless of his being made uncomfortable by accolades, he needs to accept them and quit trying to be so damn humble. What he has done is tremendous. What he has done is important, and beautiful, and it needs to get attention because then people will give him more money to do more of it, or people will volunteer, or people will host fundraisers, and at bare minimum people will understand just the smallest bit more about a part of the world that to many North Americans is not only completely unknown, but also even frightening.
Mortenson himself mentions in the book the media’s role in portraying Pakistan, and especially Afghanistan, as largely fundamental Jihadists bent on the destruction of evil America. As a result, the American people have a skewed perception of the people there. He mentions that the schools he builds there help to give a balanced education and teach critical thinking and choice, rather than the Madrassas sprouting up everywhere, often the only schools available for children, which teach only fundamental Islamic schools of thought.
It would be easy to criticize and call that egotistical American thinking, or call it ethnocentric, but the truth is we learn -particularly as children- only what we have access to learn. Just like the Americans here who watch TV and see Muslims cheering at attacks on America and form an opinion based on what we are shown, students of jihadists will learn that American infidels hate them and want to make their loved ones suffer. They will learn what they are shown.
Thankfully, Mortenson has shown both sides a very different side of the other.
I don’t think Mortenson can be applauded enough for the lengths he went (and goes) to to further understanding, promote peace, make education possible, and empower people. I desperately hope that his building schools on the Middle East side gets enough attention to make us learn more on the North American side.
To sum up, I don’t think Three Cups of Tea was all that great a book. From reading it, I can’t even say whether Greg Mortenson is all that great a man, in some ways. But it is absolutely clear that he is a man doing great things, when great things are urgently needed.
Read it.
After all, the Nobel Prize people can’t all be wrong.
Staying with our Valentines and Romance theme…
Nora Roberts has decided to get into the hotel business. Not exactly the best timing, what with the travel industry tanking so badly at the moment; although i’m sure she can afford to ride out the downturn.
The idea itself sounds quite fun with several rooms being based on the theme of literary couples:
“The whole idea was the rooms’ themes had to be linked to literary couples who ended up with happy endings,” says Roberts, who says she was challenged to find enough couples to fill the bill. “Romeo and Juliet? Dead. Tristan and Isolde? Dead. Not happy. Dead, dead, dead. Rhett Butler and Scarlett? He didn’t give a damn. You try finding seven of them.”
She did end up finding enough examples, basing rooms on her own In Death series, The Scarlet Pimpernel, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and The Princess Bride.
Greg Mortenson’s inspiring book Three Cups of Tea has officially been nominated for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
The book details Mortenson’s journey in Pakistan, beginning with his becoming sick and lost while climbing a mountain, and continuing with his building first a school, and then an institute, all with the goals of educating children and paying back the kindness he was shown. It does seem to exemplify exactly what the Nobel peace Prize is all about, and clearly the powers that be thought so.
Mortenson was apparently very surprised by the nomination:
He said he was “stunned” and “humbled” and considered it “a great honor,” but that the announcement put him in an awkward position.
“I thought nominations were supposed to be secret,” he said in an interview at his Bozeman home.
He then opened the Nobel Prize Web site on his computer and read aloud, “Two hundred to 300 names are submitted as nominees annually. And the names of the nominees are not revealed until 50 years later.”
But this time, word was out. Reporters from around the country were already trying to reach him for comment about the nomination.
You can bet that if he wins, signed copies of his book will increase in value.
Pilot/superhero Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger didn’t get everything completely right when he ditched a stricken airliner into the Hudson River and ensured 150 passengers and crew escaped without any loss of life. He left behind his library book. Luckily, the library have let him off the hook and won’t be charging him late fees or a fee for the loss of the book. I knew he wasn’t perfect, everyone has their skeleton in the cupboard.
The story goes he walked the length of the sinking plane twice to make sure no-one was left behind. I wonder if he considered doing a third sweep for the missing book?
What if you were carrying a first edition of The Hobbit, The Great Gatsby or some other valuable rare book? Would you emerge from the plane with your arms above your held and the book grasped tightly in both hands? I guess it depends on the book.
Conde Nast Traveler picks Berlin, Dublin and Boston as the three best cities for bookworms to travel to
Berlin
Artists aren’t the only creative types flocking to Berlin, Europe’s new cultural capital. The city has been attracting both fledgling and established writers from around the globe, including Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides. And don’t forget the stars of Berlin’s lettered past: critic and writer E.T.A. Hoffmann; playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht; Alfred Döblin, author of the classic “Berlin Alexanderplatz”; and Herwarth Walden, editor of the avant-garde magazine Der Sturm.
Dublin
Dublin abounds with literary landmarks, from George Bernard Shaw’s birthplace, now a museum (33 Synge St.; 353-1-475-0854), to bronze statues of James Joyce, Oscar Wilde and Brendan Behan on North Earl Street, Merrion Square and the Royal Canal, respectively. McDaids was the drinking haunt of Behan, Joyce, and Sean O’Casey (3 Harry St.). Among the exhibits at the Dublin Writer’s Museum are a first edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Samuel Beckett’s telephone
Boston
Many of the country’s most enduring writers lived and worked in Beacon Hill during the nineteenth century. Downtown’s Old Corner Bookstore, once the offices of the publisher Tick-nor and Fields, was the unofficial meeting place of writers such as Emerson and Hawthorne. The Boston Public Library, overlooking Copley Square, is the nation’s first (and still largest) municipal public library. Boston by Foot’s informative Literary Landmarks tour hits all the highlights
A town unfortunately named Forks, just across the border from us in Washington, is under going a revival thanks to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books. Meyer set her teenage vampire tales in Forks. Shame she didn’t use Moose Jaw in Canada or Puddletown in Dorset.
“Twilight” has quickly turned this soggy spot that gets 12 feet of rain a year into a strange tourist destination full of teenage fans. And with the coming release of a movie based on “Twilight,” townspeople are bracing themselves for an even larger influx.
“It’s amazing for our town, nobody could have anticipated any of this,” says Mike Gurling, who works at the local Chamber of Commerce.
