Explore: Vancouver

Explore The World 2022
through books, films, etc.
December: Vancouver
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READ:

Little Eyes
by Samanta Schweblin
translated Megan McDowell, Eugenie Schoolderman, Arie van der Wal
Horror, SciFi | Published: 2020 | Goodreads

They've infiltrated homes in Hong Kong, shops in Vancouver, the streets of Senegal, town squares of Oaxaca, schools in Tel Aviv, bedrooms in Ohio. They're following you. They're everywhere now. They're us.

In Samanta Schweblin's wildly imaginative new novel, Little Eyes, "kentukis" have gone viral across the globe. They're little mechanical stuffed animals that have cameras for eyes, wheels for feet, and are connected to an anonymous global server. Owners of kentukis have the eyes of a stranger in their home and a cute squeaking pet following them; or you can be the kentuki and voyeuristically spend time in someone else's life, controlling the creature with a few keystrokes. Through kentukis, a jaded Croatian hustler stumbles into a massive criminal enterprise and saves a life in Brazil, a lonely old woman in Peru becomes fascinated with a young woman and her louche lover in Germany, and a motherless child in Antigua finds a new virtual family and experiences snow for the first time in Norway.


VISIT: someday...

The Paper Hound
344 West Pender Street
in downtown
Vancouver, BC, Canada
website
The Paper Hound is a new, used and rare book store at 344 West Pender Street in downtown Vancouver, BC, Canada, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. We don’t specialize in one particular kind of book, but we favour the classic, curious, odd, beautiful, visually arresting, scholarly, bizarre, and whimsical.

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* part of Explore the World (here)

Explore: London

Explore The World 2022
through books, films, etc.
November: London
~*~
READ:

Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
by Jenny Bayliss
Contemporary, Romance, Holiday, Christmas | Published: 2022 | Goodreads

Elinor Noel—Nory for short—is quite content running her secondhand bookshop in London. Forever torn between her working-class upbringing and her classmates’ extravagant lifestyles at the posh private school she attended on scholarship, Nory has finally figured out how to keep both at equal distance. So when two of her oldest friends invite their whole gang to spend the time leading up to their wedding together at the castle near their old school, Nory must prepare herself for an emotionally complicated few days.

The reunion brings back fond memories, but also requires Nory to dodge an ill-advised former fling. When she falls quite literally into the arms of Isaac, the castle’s head gardener, who has nothing but contempt for the “snobby prep school kids,” the attraction between them is undeniable. And as Nory spends more time with Isaac during the wedding festivities, she finds herself falling hard for the boy she used to consider an enemy. Nory and Isaac explore their common ground, but pressures mount on all sides, and Nory must decide what kind of life she wants to live and what sort of love is worth the risk...


VISIT: someday...

Word on the Water
The London Bookbarge
instagram| website
An independent bookshop on a 1920s Dutch barge situated in Granary Square, King's Cross.

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* part of Explore the World (here)

Explore: New Zealand

Explore The World 2022
through books, films, etc.
September: New Zealand

READ:

The Luminaries
by Eleanor Catton
Literary | Published: 2013 | Goodreads
It is 1866, and young Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unexplained events: A wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely ornate as the night sky.

WATCH:

The Stolen (2017)
Director/Writer: Niall Johnson
Writers: Emily Corcoran
Stars: Alice Eve, Graham McTavish
Action, Adventure, Drama, Western, New Zealand | imdb | my rating: 4
The story of a woman who must find her kidnapped son, navigating a world she doesn't know, on the edge of danger with every heartbeat.

VISIT: someday...

The Women's Bookshop
105 Ponsonby Rd
Ponsonby, Auckland, New Zealand
(details)

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* part of Explore the World (here)

Explore: Marrakesh

Explore The World 2022
through books, films, etc.
August: Marrakesh

READ:

Mother Country
by Jacinda Townsend
Contemporary, Feminism, Africa | Published: May 3, 2022 | Goodreads

WATCH:

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner (2019)
Netflix series
Episode 2: Marrakesh with Chrissy Teigen
Stars: David Chang
Documentary | imdb
Chang accompanied by a different celebrity guest exploring a single city, its culture and its cuisine. As the pair travels through each city, they will also uncover new and surprising things about themselves.

PUZZLE:

Marrakech Riad
from Better Co. (here)

VISIT: someday...

Fnaque Berbere
(bookstore and cafe)
Derb Ksour (details and photo)
Medina, Marrakech Morocco

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* part of Explore the World (here)

Explore: Rio

Explore The World 2022
through books, films, etc.
July: Rio

READ:

The Hour of the Star
by Clarice Lispector
translated by Benjamin Moser
Novella, Classics, Brazil | Published: 2011 (first 1977) | Goodreads
Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Colas, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid the realization that for all her outward misery, Macabéa is inwardly free/She doesn't seem to know how unhappy she should be.

WATCH:

Girls from Ipanema (2019)
Netflix season 1
Creator: Giuliano Cedroni, Heather Roth
Stars: Maria Casadevall, Pathy Dejesus
Drama, Romance, Brazil | imdb
After her husband's disappearance, Maria Luiza opens a Bossa Nova club in defiance of her normally conservative demeanor.

EAT:

Cafe de Casa
in the Castro (here)
Coxinha on mixed greens with fresh passion fruit juice
VISIT: someday...

Livraria Argumento
(details) Rua Dias Ferreira, 417, Leblon
Rio de Janeiro/RJ, Brasil

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* part of Explore the World (here)

Explore: Hawaii

Explore The World 2022
through books, films, etc.
June: Hawaii
AUDIOBOOK:

Bones of Hilo
by Eric Redman
Mystery, Hawaii | Published: 2021 | Goodreads | my rating: 4
A young, inexperienced detective from the wet, working-class side of Hawaii's Big Island, Kawika Wong faces an uphill battle to gain the respect of his more seasoned colleagues. And he has the chance of a lifetime when Ralph Fortunato, the Mainland developer of an unpopular resort on the island's tourist side, is found murdered on a luxury golf course, an ancient Hawaiian spear driven through his heart.

With the other detectives desperately trying to solve another string of grisly killings, Captain Terry Tanaka has no choice but to send Kawika to investigate. As Kawika joins forces with his father and girlfriend to help read the signs and make sense of the ritualistic murder scene, they uncover a cache of secrets reaching far back to the Island's ancient past. And the journalist who found the body has her own theories about Fortunato's demise--but do they line up with the evidence?

On a perilous journey that stretches from the Big Island to Washington State and back, Kawika finds danger at every turn. But he still has much to learn about Hawaii, and about the rugged terrain of the North Cascades. And he'd better learn it fast, because his instincts may not be enough to catch a killer who's closing in even faster.

WATCH:

Patrick Makuakāne’s Nā Lei Hulu dancers performance
at the Yerba Buena Gardens festival
PUZZLE:

Ravensburger puzzle with tropical scene
VISIT: someday...

da Shop: books + curiosities
local + independent + community (details)
3565 Harding Ave
Honolulu, Hawai'i
~*~
* part of Explore the World (here)

Explore: Paris

Explore The World 2022
through books, films, etc. March: Paris

READ:

The Paris Apartment
by Lucy Foley
Mystery, Thriller, Paris | Published: 2022 | Goodreads | my rating: 4

FLIP THROUGH:

The Little Pleasures of Paris
by Leslie Jonath
illustrated by Lizzy Stewart
Travel, France, Art | Published: 2016 | Goodreads | my rating: 5
Take an enchanting tour of Paris's most charming places, objects, and pasttimes in this lovingly compiled Francophile handbook. Organized by season, The Little Pleasures of Paris takes the reader through a year's worth of quintessentially Parisian experiences, from secret gardens bursting with roses to exotic plumage at the city's bird market, candied violets at Paris's oldest sweet shop, dazzling colors in the stained glass at Sainte-Chapelle, and more. The friendly text and whimsical illustrations make this delightful volume a poetic letter to the City of Light. Unusual details that might otherwise go unnoticed are celebrated and offer a uniquely intimate perspective in this triomphe of je ne sais quoi and joi de vivre!

VIRTUAL VISIT: Heygo with Florent (here), my virtual postcard pics

Saint-Eustache church

Stravinsky Fountain near Centre Pompidou
VISIT bookstore: someday...

Halle Saint Pierre
(details)
Specializing in writings on art, artists' books and works concerning all forms of contemporary non-standard creation, the Halle Saint Pierre bookstore also functions as a resource and documentation centre. Its specificity comes from the networks it has set up with private and public institutions in France and abroad. The bookstore publishes or co-publishes exhibition catalogs and organizes exhibitions of raw and singular art.

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* part of Explore the World (here)
* image source: bookstore

Explore: Rome

Explore The World 2022
through books, films, etc. February: Rome

READ:

The Marble Faun
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Classics, Mystery, Italy | Published: 2002 (first 1860) | Goodreads
The fragility-and the durability-of human life and art dominate this story of American expatriates in Italy in the mid-nineteenth century. Befriended by Donatello, a young Italian with the classical grace of the "Marble Faun," Miriam, Hilda, and Kenyon find their pursuit of art taking a sinister turn as Miriam's unhappy past precipitates the present into tragedy.

Hawthorne's 'International Novel' dramatizes the confrontation of the Old World and the New and the uncertain relationship between the 'authentic' and the 'fake' in life as in art. The author's evocative descriptions of classic sites made The Marble Faun a favorite guidebook to Rome for Victorian tourists, but this richly ambiguous symbolic romance is also the story of a murder, and a parable of the Fall of Man. As the characters find their civilized existence disrupted by the awful consequences of impulse, Hawthorne leads his readers to question the value of Art and Culture and addresses the great evolutionary debate which was beginning to shake Victorian society.

RECIPE:

Bucatini all'Amatriciana
by Bon Appétit & Epicurious (here)
Yummy!
VIRTUAL VISIT:

HeyGo livestream: Fairytale Trastevere and the Island of Rome (upcoming tours)

VISIT bookstore: someday...

Libreria Giufà
(details)
grab a coffee and book in this shop that gives off a fun and funky vibe
~*~
* part of Explore the World (here)

Explore The World 2022

Explore The World 2022
through books, films, etc. January: New York
February: Rome
March: Paris
April: Kyoto
May: Oaxaca
June: Hawaii
July: Rio
August: Marrakesh
September: New Zealand
October: Kenya
November: London
December: Vancouver

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* header image source: Explore the World calendar
* links will light up when monthly post goes live