Category Archives: Travel/Adventure

The Autobiography of Santa Claus as told to Jeff Guinn

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If you’ve ever doubted the existence of Santa Claus, you should read The Autobiography of Santa Claus as told to Jeff Guinn. No, really. It’s not your usual Kris Kringle tale. It’s fascinating and flush with historical detail.

The book traces Santa’s life from the beginning, from the time he was a boy named Nicholas growing up in what is now Turkey. After his parents died when he was 9, he was cared for by people at his local church. His generous and kind nature manifested itself early when, as a 12-year-old, he secretly gifted a local man’s daughters with enough silver coins for dowries. He credits his parents’ good example.

“As long as people are remembered by someone, they’re never completely gone. My parents were generous people, and I’m sure that somewhere they’ve enjoyed watching their son go on to such an unexpected – and long – career.”

And the rest is history. Literally. Saint Nicholas and his many faithful friends venture through wars, famine, and disease epidemics, and play roles in many world-changing events while spreading love and joy and kindness throughout the globe.

Would you believe the notorious Attila the Hun is part of the North Pole inner circle? Or that Arthur of the famed roundtable helps with the gift-giving? Would you be surprised to learn that Amelia Earhart wasn’t lost to the sea? Or that Leonardo da Vinci, Sequoyah, and President Teddy Roosevelt still shape world history?

The Autobiography of Santa Claus recounts how Nicholas and his wife, Layla, meet each of these men and women who have made major contributions to human development, like electricity, art, navigation, anatomy, and video games. And it describes how Saint Nicholas came to be known as Kris Kringle, Santa Claus, Father Christmas, and Befana.

If you’re not already a believer, this book just might change your mind. Either way, I hope Santa fills your stocking with peace, love, joy, and a good book.

Nobody Knows the Spanish I Speak by Mark Saunders

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Drop out. Sell everything. Move to Mexico. Sounded like a good plan.

Nobody may know the Spanish Mark Saunders speaks, but Dios mio, does he know how to crack wise with the best of them. Take the title. Can’t read it without smiling, can you? That cold sweat you’re feeling? Sympathy pains. For the author as he admits to the sort of realizations only the 20/20 vision of hindsight can deliver. (Yes, that is the sound of your inner teen sneering when you read: “For the first time in my life, I regretted not taking that second year of high school Spanish.”)

Mark Saunders’ memoir is a laugh out loud pleasure that might make you think about dreams you’ve put off till tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong. Picking up and moving to Mexico later in life is apparently as daunting as it seems. And trying to do it with a prima donna poodle and a cat that very proudly lives up to every anti-feline stereotype is exactly the challenge this particular pet owner could imagine and then some.

But like the best humorists, Saunders makes you believe that the only absolute necessity in life is a sense of humor. Whether he is classifying the varied and sundry breeds of dogs he and Cassie (the girlie-girl poodle) encounter in San Miguel or explaining what his wife’s footwear has to do with its reputation as the City of Fallen Women, he is as clear-sighted as he is generous in spirit. Which is to day, I suppose, that he’s human, neither taking himself or anyone else too seriously–something the essay titles capture. (My favorites: “This Lard is My Lard” and “My Body is a Temple That’s been Sacked.”)

Nobody Knows the Spanish I Speak is, in the author’s own words, a memoir about ”the perils and pleasures of dropping out, selling everything, and moving to Mexico when you’re old enough to know better.”  That last bit may be what I enjoyed most about the collection. Who doesn’t want to believe that experience brings wisdom–at least when we’re experiencing something dreadful? And Saunders has plenty of wisdom to spare. (Many of the pieces about his relationship with his wife could double as How-To Guides on acceptance and compromise in marriage.) But even when it’s armed him against the proverbial sea of troubles, it’s not enough to stop the onslaught. A little knowledge about scorpions will never be as dangerous as a little more knowledge. The proper washing and rinising of vegetables may not be adequate innoculation against intestinal parasites. And the biggest life lesson is that there’s still a whole lot left to learn.

Bonjour 40 by Karen Chase

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by Malena Lott

Ah, Paris! I’ve never been, but thanks to author Karen Chase, I got to put a little French in my fall break. While my body was in Texas on a ranch, my mind was in Paris. Chase’s book is based on the blog she kept while living in Paris for 40 days. It’s a travel log, set up by date and numbered 1 through 40 so we get Paris as she saw it versus categories or themes.

Chase wasn’t traveling in search of love or redemption, so don’t expect an EAT, PRAY, LOVE a-ha moment in the quest, but she does do a great job of making her trip enjoyable for the reader and leaving us with some nice takeaways about life and adventure. She also includes history and facts to inform us along the way. The food bits and the Louvre, in particular, were my favorites. -ML

AN EXCERPT – ON FOOD

By Karen A. Chase
Author of Bonjour 40: A travel log
(40 years. 40 days. 40 seconds)

I’ve always said if you want to figure out where exactly those “really comfortable shoes” you bought are going to start giving you trouble, you could just walk around New York and your feet will find the spot. The same is true of Paris. Whenever I wasn’t writing at a café, eating, or sleeping, I was on the move. If not on foot, by bike. One day I walked from the Eiffel Tower to my apartment. That was about four miles. It doesn’t seem like much, but that morning I first biked to an early morning market. Then I walked to lunch. Shopped in the afternoon, wrote while I was at lunch and breakfast, and then after returning to my apartment to freshen up, I walked to dinner. According to my calculations, my total caloric output that day was just over 2,000. Given my average eating habits while I was there, I figure my input was about 1,500. As Ted often tells his therapy patients who are struggling with weight issues, “If the input exceeds the output, it stays put.” My output exceeded the input. So it went kaput.
The most notable difference, however, was the simple fact that not once in five weeks did I think about caloric intake or expenditure figures affecting my figure. Not once. All the above calculations were gathered upon returning home to calorie-obsessed America. (Ironically, the same country where forty-nine states have an obesity rate over 30 percent.) Here, my inbox fills with reminders from www.WebMD.com and www.RealAge.com to eat healthy, cut down, or cut out everything I coveted in France. Here, menus at restaurants tell me how many calories are in each dish. To help me? Shock me? Direct my choices with guilt? Here, magazine ads tell me I can lose unwanted pounds by actually paying for prepared or processed meals, popping pills, or tracking my every move on my new phone app. Ahhhhh! Come on! I want to enjoy life. Shuuut uuuup already!

It was so simple there. The lifestyle I had for five weeks was guilt-free and made me slimmer simply because I was moving around and eating a common-sense diet. So good-bye weight, and hello tight ass. By the time Ted arrived on Day 30, he took one look at my toned calves and thighs in a skirt and said, “Look at those! Where did you get those?”

Yes, I was touring and visiting, which made all the walking easier. But I also wrote. A lot. You can’t walk and write at the same time. But in between the lines, I was moving. Fast. Not sauntering. Not strolling. Speed-walking like every good French woman who refuses to miss a metro train. Even in heels.

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For more on author and to see her pictures of Paris, visit http://bonjour40.blogspot.com/.

Timetripping With Falco

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I’ve been a stickler about my summer reading ever since I had to plod my way through Crime and Punishment while everyone else in my bunk was snickering over Forever by Judy Blume. Let’s face it, even the deepest most sensitive student of the written word–and back then I so did want to believe that was me–would have a hard time cozying up to Raskolnikov, he of the premeditated murder and the belated remorse, when there was a guy with a penis named Ralph hanging around, so to speak.

So this summer I’ve been catching up with an old friend, Marcus Didius Falco, the ancient Roman detective created by British author Lindsey Davis, in his latest mystery Nemesis. I met Falco just a few years after his debut in The Silver Pigs, a romp set in the chill of Roman Britain. I was working for a mystery publisher at the time, and the best perk of the job by far was that I could read every book I could get my hands on. I tore through the first books in days, then began what became an annual object lesson on delayed gratification until the next book’s release. To her credit and my relief, Davis never fails to deliver a new Falco novel each summer, which, given the uproar over the long-awaited release of George R. R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons, is no small feat. (Davis is even gracious enough to encourage far less literarily productive fans on her website while doing it.)

Falco is a wisecracking gumshoe detective whose shoes just happen to be sandals. The mysteries he investigates are deadly serious. Falco is not. Apparently this is a problem for some.  On her official website Davis writes of Falco’s first adventure: “At this early point in his career, he has not only to make his way in the snobbish and dangerous milieu of Vespasian’s Rome, but to overcome the prejudice amongst publishers, booksellers and readers who are wary of historical novels and off-beat settings.”

By now, such misgivings are long gone.  Davis writes with such confidence it’s hard to imagine that Falco’s Rome isn’t real. In Nemesis, he investigates the disappearance of a mild-mannered couple of art dealers and comes up against a violent band of freedmen that may have the imperial authorities’ protection. But as always, the colorful characters he meets on the job are never more colorful than his nearest and dearest at home.  Falco and his wife Helena are the heart of the series, and their relationship is always its most interesting when it’s pushed to the limits, as it is here. Helena is every inch Falco’s equal–she was originally meant to be the first novel’s big baddie until she convinced the author otherwise. She keeps Falco grounded and gives us an all-too-familiar glimpse of what it’s like for a “spirited” woman to negotiate her way around a freewheeling yet unyieldingly patriarchal society.

The beauty of jumping into a series later in the game is that you can get hooked without having to wait for your next fix. It’s like renting the whole season of a TV show instead of following week to week. The Falco novels are a perfect way to get away without leaving home. Falco’s Rome is as alien as Katniss Evedeen’s Panem and as fantastically populated as Hogwarts.  Trust me. I don’t share my summers with just anybody. Falco and Helena are always having a rough go of it, but it wouldn’t feel like summer if I wasn’t getting lost in their latest journey. These days, crime may not be any prettier, and our families haven’t gotten any less crazy. Best way to muddle through may still be to have a healthy sense of humor. But at least we get to do it with central air and indoor plumbing.

 

Je Ne Sais Quoi

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I love when a book is set in Europe. I don’t know what it is about European settings and in essence the people that draws me in. It has that…Je ne sais quoi type of sensation. The thing I can’t put my finger on.

I’ve been to Germany and Austria and the Netherlands. I loved it there. I could wax poetic about the way I felt when roaming the cobblestone streets or touring the spectacular cathedrals and castles. But no one wants to hear my poetry…trust me. I long for the day that I can go back to those places, and add more to my touring schedule…places like France and Ireland and Scotland. I really want to travel through France. My sister lived there in a tiny village for a few months and I envy all the stories she has about her time there and the pictures of all the quaint towns and people she met along the way.

I long to see Paris, and Marseille, and Nice, and Lyon, and Nouveau Monde. Say what? Nouveau Monde? Yes, that’s right. It’s that picturesque city where the Otherworlder community has congregated. Vampires and lycans and witches, and even humans live in relative peace and harmony in the beautiful progressive city. It has much of the same look and feel of Lyon, with a long and wide river winding its way through the bustle of the city. You should go there. It’s gorgeous. Just watch out for the nightlife…they just might bite.

Nouveau Monde is the city in France that I constructed for three of my books in my Valorian Chronicles series. I love when authors make up new places, or give new life to familiar places.

What kind of settings do you love? Europe? Asia? Good old America? What kind of settings do you long for?