Lightning Book Review: Trading in Memories
posted at 11:28 pm
on Nov. 15, 2007
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So, I got this book in the mail recently. For free!!!!
Tangent: Wouldn’t it be funny if all book reviews started like that? Even the New York Times ones? Because let’s face it—free things in the mail are pretty cool.
Other tangent: If all bloggers were required to mark all their tangents, blogs would look like this.
OK, back to the lightning review. I expressed an interest in reviewing “Trading in Memories”, and like, two days later, knock knock, a parcel on my doorstep.
It’s a quick read—beautiful pictures. It chronicles a long stretch of bric-a-brac tourist-ing in flea markets and curio dealers around the world. I found her descriptions of the places I’d been much more lyrical than my own experiences—in some ways, reading the book was better than actually going there in person. The photos are mostly of what she’s collected, still lifes, which are objectively fascinating, but subjectively, they remind me of all the clutter and knickknacks I have also picked over time and which are, I hae to say, much less photogenic.
The author, Barbara Hodgson, lives in Vancouver, and I’ve put the book next to my bed. I’ve read about 1/4 of it, and I want to read the rest of it over time, like a bunch of little mini-vacations, before I go to sleep.
