Get ready for a number of excellent books coming out this year! Here's a few recent and upcoming March releases.
On the Hippie Trail - Rick Steves
Travel guru Rick Steves delights readers with this travelogue of his 1978 backpacking trip on the infamous Hippie Trail. Not only did he have his act together at the young age of 23 to trek through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan to reach the high mecca of India and Nepal, he meticulously journaled daily and allotted only nine photographs a day so he would have enough film to last. This is the trip that changed his life: when he returned home to Seattle, he left his job as a piano teacher to become the travel writer that's made "Rick Steves" a household name. This is a wonderful read for world — and couch — travelers who will vicariously enjoy a journey that, after Russia's invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979, is no longer possible to reach overland.
Memorial Days - Geraldine Brooks
Geraldine Brooks' memoir opens with the shocking sudden death of her 60-year old husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Horwitz, who was on a book tour while she was home writing her new novel "Horse." Memorial days refers to the solo retreat she took to Flinders Island on the Tasmanian coast three years after his death to truly mourn and process the loss of her life partner and best friend. Rather than creating a morose tale of her grief, Brooks has unveiled that grief in this touching memoir of her marriage and the importance of honoring what was and the life-altering changes of what comes next.
Red Dog Farm - Nathaniel Ian Miller
Nathaniel Ian Miller's talent as a fiction writer is at creating a bleak landscape that he warms up with characters who survive by the seat of their pants, people who could be your next-door neighbor or relative. His hauntingly bleak "The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven" is, still, on my top-ten reading list. "Red Dog Farm" takes place in western Iceland on a cattle farm, depicting a hard-working family's struggle with every season's bitter assault on the land, the farm, the animals, and the human psyche. This is the crux of the novel but with a positive note, thanks to the power of friendship and belief in love and hope and family. I highly recommend if you're not looking for a warm, fuzzy read.
The Paris Express - Emma Donoghue
A terrific portrait of 19th century class bias - both the upper echelon and the underprivileged - who share a days-long packed train ride through France into Paris. Inspired by an 1895 train disaster at the Paris Montparnasse train station, author Emma Donoghue of the blockbuster "Room," created an engrossing historical novel inspired by photographs and records of the bizarre train wreck. She built the story around an impoverished, angry, and anarchistic young French woman who boards the train with the intention of blowing it up as it fills up with members of Parliament who board at different stations. The reader is left to their imagination as to when . . . and if . . . she sets off the bomb she hides in her lunch bucket.
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