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A Paris Year: My Day-to-Day Adventures in the Most Romantic City in the World
by Janice MacLeod
Beautifully illustrated with paintings, drawings, and photos, this jewel box of a travel journal by Canadian artist and author Janice MacLeod traces a year in Paris. Sharing her experiences getting to know and make a home in the City of Light via diary entries (starting with January 1st), MacLeod combines artwork with a newcomer's observation of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes as well as liberal splashes of anecdotes, quotes, and history. Those who appreciate Paris and beautiful things will find this memoir a sensory delight.
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| L'Appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home by David LebovitzIf you enjoy amusing stories about people buying homes in awesome places, L'Appart is for you. Love food? Even better! In his latest book, American expat chef and baker David Lebovitz chronicles his adventures buying and renovating a Paris apartment. Recipes, red tape horror stories, and renovation nightmares are all included, as are details about French idiosyncrasies, Parisian markets, adjusting to life abroad, and so much more. |
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Canoeing with José
by Jon Lurie
"The first time journalist Jon Lurie meets Jose Perez, the smart, angry, fifteen-year-old Lakota-Puerto Rican draws blood. Five years later, both men are floundering. Lurie, now in his thirties, is newly divorced, depressed, and self-medicating. Jose is embedded in a haze of women and street feuds. Both lack a meaningful connection to their cultural roots: Lurie feels an absence of identity as the son of a Holocaust survivor who is reluctant to talk about her experience, and for Jose, communal history has been obliterated by centuries of oppression. Then Lurie hits upon a plan to save them. After years of admiring the journey described in Eric Arnold Sevareid's 1935 classic account, Canoeing with the Cree, Lurie invites Jose to join him in retracing Sevareid's route and embarking on a mythic two thousand-mile paddle from Breckenridge, Minnesota, to the Hudson Bay. Faced with plagues of mosquitoes, extreme weather, suspicious law enforcement officers, tricky border crossings, and Jose's preference for Kanye West over the great outdoors, the journey becomes an odyssey of self-discovery. Acknowledging the erased native histories that Sevareid's prejudicial account could not perceive, and written in gritty, honest prose, Canoeing with Jose is a remarkable journey"
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Where the line is drawn : a tale of crossings, friendships, and fifty years of occupation in israel-palestine
by Raja Shehadeh
"A moving account of one man's border crossings-both literal and figurative-by the award-winning author of Palestinian Walks, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the Six Day War In what has become a classic of Middle Eastern literature, Raja Shehadeh, in Palestinian Walks, wrote of his treks through the hills surrounding Ramallah over a period of three decades under Israel's occupation. In Where the Line Is Drawn, Shehadeh explores how occupation has affected him personally, chronicling the various crossings that he undertook into Israel over a period of forty years to visit friends and family, to enjoy the sea, to argue before the Israeli courts, and to negotiate failed peace agreements. Those forty years also saw him develop a close friendship with Henry, a Canadian Jew who immigrated to Israel at around the same time Shehadeh returned to Palestine from studying in London. While offering an unforgettably poignant exploration of Palestinian-Israeli relationships, Where the Line Is Drawn also provides an anatomy of friendship and an exploration of whether, in the bleakest of circumstances, it is possible for bonds to transcend political divisions"
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| Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara DemickExamining North Korea under the regime of "dear leader" Kim Jong-il (father of current leader Kim Jong-un), journalist Barbara Demick spent seven years extensively interviewing six North Koreans who had managed to escape from the repressive regime. She tells how the country's schoolchildren sang anthems praising their leader even as many of them suffered from malnutrition, some to the point of dying, and how everyone guarded their secrets and complaints lest the government put them in horrific labor camps. This grim though "strongly written and gracefully structured" (Wall Street Journal) book offers an eye-opening look at a land most of us will never set foot in. |
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| Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom... by Blaine HardenWith North Korea so much in the news of late, people may wonder what life is like in this closed-off, authoritarian country. You can read the bestselling Escape from Camp 14 for a glimpse. Telling the dramatic story of Shin Dong-hyuk, who was born in one of North Korea's infamous political prisons and is one of the very few people to have escaped, the book describes brutal conditions, where affection is virtually nonexistent and torture, beatings, and starvation are routine. Follow Shin Dong-hyuk as he makes it to South Korea, China, and the U.S. and deals with culture shock. |
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| Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite by Suki KimThis gripping book reads a bit like a dystopian novel as it vividly depicts life in North Korea. Suki Kim, an award-winning author who was born in South Korea but has lived in the United States since she was a teen, took a job teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during what turned out to be the last six months of Kim Jong Il's reign. She watched every word she said, kept notes on a secret flash drive, and tried to connect with her students, young men who believed all the propaganda they'd been served and had little idea of what the rest of the world is like. Kim's well-written, thought-provoking examination of this closed-off land offers a rare look at the elite of the country. |
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| The Girl With Seven Names: Escape from North Korea by Hyeonseo Lee with David JohnBorn in North Korea near the border with China, Hyeonseo Lee had a relatively happy childhood (her family had enough money for food and some extras), but things changed when her father died. When she first secretly crossed the border at 17, she planned to return to her family -- however, when that proved impossible, she lived in China for years, taking new names for safety reasons, before finally making it to South Korea at 28. Later, she helped her family escape...but they faced many barriers. The presenter of a popular TED talk, Lee offers extraordinary insight into both North Korea and China in her compelling book. |
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