The Glass Palace (Burma)

I almost hesitate to call this a book about Burma, because much of the action takes place outside of Burma, in India and Malaysia.  However, that might actually be symbolic of how Burmese history is intertwined with the histories of many SE Asian countries that were under imperial rule--the last Burmese kind and queen were exiled to India, and the characters of this book begin their saga in Burma, but move with the royalty and then go their separate ways and spawn new characters.  Warm industry, family, and passions draw them all over--to a rubber plantation on the slope of a mountain overlooking Penang and the Andaman Sea, the west coast of India, and Rangoon. 

This saga is set against the background of the end of Burma's history as a monarchy, development as a British colony, WWII battleground, and finally a "free" country.  Mandalay, Rangoon, and Yangon all make appearances as places the characters live as they plant rubber, harvest and sell teak, and fight the Japanese invaders.  An interesting part of this book is its description of the teak industry, which results in deforestation and erosion of the Burmese mountains (not to mention the deaths of countless Burmese and Indian workers) for that shiny wood now seen as the style of fancy SE Asian furniture.

I ate takeout Burmese a few days before I started this book; it was good, but not as good as Thai food.  I think I need to try it again in the restaurant and give it a good chance.  Tea leaf salad and duck are what I remember.

Moral of the story:  need to get back to SE Asia to travel and see and most importantly, eat.

Purge (Estonia)

I need to come back and write a post about Purge, this weird Estonian novel that I read.  I also want to fill this with Estonian facts because it's a nutso country.  TWO MILLION PEOPLE!  And almost half are in the capital, Tallinn (which is apparently a great city to visit).

Favorite Estonian fact:  The North Sea freezes over during the winter and you can drive on ice roads to the local islands.  WHAT.

And so it begins.

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently--of what I do, of what I want to be doing, where I want to go, who I want to spend time with.  What is happiness, what brings me joy, and of those things, how I can produce something--not passively enjoy the work of others, but actual create new things out of my passions.  There are quite a few travel blogs out there--not to say I couldn't do that, but it would be a big risk, a lot of work, and might not work out--so I started thinking: of the activities I enjoy doing, how can I do them from New York, on the side, while keeping my day job, at least for now.  I love to travel, and daydream of new places and cultures all the time; I also love to read, novels, cookbooks, memoirs, nonfiction, blogs, you name it.  So where do these things overlap?  What if I made a list of all the countries in the world (and principalities/colonies/whatever you call these places like Greenland and Bermuda that I want to go to/have gone to but don't have seats at the U.N.) and not only start to research where I want to go next, but what if for all of those countries, I read a book by an author from that country to get some insight into the culture and history.  If I can't go there, I can at least experience it through someone else's eyes.

Since I read a book each from Norway and Iceland before I went, I decided that Scandinavia would be first up, and then I somehow got from there to Estonia.  So Estonia it is--I'm about halfway through Purge by Sofi Oksanen.  Once I'm done, I'll write up a post talking about both the book and the country, maybe pulling from a little internet research.  This is going to be a work in progress, though, so it may evolve as I go.

So, let's go!

Tallinn, the capital of Estonia