A literary and cultural blog dedicated to book reviews, literary travel, art, museums, and thoughtful reading across borders and cultures.
Dead End Memories by the Japanese writer Banana Yoshimoto is a collection of five poignant stories filled with melancholy and nostalgia. Each story follows a woman who experienced loss and pain in her life. In all the stories each protagonist finds a refuge in the moments of the daily ordinariness […]
I put together another video from my time in the Lake District. This time I took a bus from Windermere to Keswick, and I went for a walk around Derwentwater. I then took a bus to Ullswater and Aira Force Waterfall. Next day I took a ferry from Windermere to […]
The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love. – William Wordsworth In October I visited the Lake District. On my first day I visited the beautiful village of Grasmere, the famous Gingerbread shop that has been selling its produce since the […]
I have prepared a list of books that are comforting and offer a peaceful and calming refuge to escape into. AUTUMN ROUNDS BY JACQUES POULIN Autumn Rounds by the Canadian writer, Jacques Poulin is a gentle, tender, luminous and deeply meditative novel exploring the meaning of solitude, literature in our life, […]
North Woods by the American writer, Daniel Mason is a wonderful, spellbinding novel written in a variety of literary styles, from prose to letters to poems and songs, including cleverly placed illustrations and photographs of natural landscape and artistic expression. It is a tale of one country, the Unites States […]
Thatching is one of the world’s oldest crafts which means building a roof with dry plants such as straw, heather or sedge. On the Roof: A Thatcher’s Journey by Tom Allan explores man’s connection to the nature and land as well as the importance of tradition. Following his work in […]
All the Lovers in the Night by the Japanese writer, Mieko Kawakami is a beautiful novel exploring the quiet tragedy of the ordinary life and loneliness of its inhabitants. Written with profound compassion, this novel is also an ode to the life of introverted individuals and to those who seek […]
I hope you all are doing well and enjoying summertime. I have compiled a list of books below that might make great summer reads. All these books evoke a great sense of place they are set in, from warm Algeria, Tunisia to the mountainous Alps, unknown dystopian land, sunny hills […]
I compiled a short list of books tackling the issues of poverty, social injustice, financial instability and lack of opportunities written by the authors from different countries: USA, France, Tibet, Zimbabwe, and Ukraine. I hope this list will inspire you to pick up some of the titles listed below. 1 […]
“I’d spent most of my life struggling with daily human concerns. (…) Since my childhood I had forgotten how to see things with my own eyes (…); loneliness led me, in moments free of memory and consciousness, to see the brilliance of life again. (…) I don’t know whether I […]