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I don’t why it’s so hard for me to talk about the books I’m reading, but it’s something I love to do more than anything. It relaxes me when I’m stressed, keeps me focused, gives me comfort. It is my escape when I can’t travel. I climb into pages when looking for photo inspiration, and then I crawl out again, ready to take on the tasks that need to be done. Sometimes the tasks are the afterthought, and the book is my world, one where I can’t wait to go back to, like when I first walked through the dense, dark forest with Nick Adams and his sister, Littless, in the “The Last Good Country” and saw a human, tender side to Hemingway that no longer made me think of him as simply a man’s writer.

He had already learned there was only one day at a time and that was always the day you were in. It would be today until it was tonight and tomorrow would be today again.

I have read this story so many times and those words didn’t hold weight as they do in my journey through grief. They were simply part of someone else’s story, and now, as I type them again, they have become a part of my story.

"Sun in the Afternoon," Lou Bernstein

I found Leica World hiding in a magazine rack for a buck last weekend at a flea market in Cheswick . Published in 1957, the book showcases a myriad of well-known and now-forgotten photographers whose primary tool was the 35 mm Leica, a film camera that pioneered portable photography. Think about how amazing it was in 1923 when people were introduced to a small machine that could take pictures with rolls of film that you could fit into your pocket. I loved looking through the pages Saturday morning, listening to the rain, my eyes adjusting to the light. Timeless images are always more startling to me — how much has changed and not changed over 50 years.

"Girl With Long Hair," Sandi Nero

"Frost at Dawn," Hermann Eisenbeiss

"Dancing Children," Hugh Bell. (The guitar player looks like a young Jeff.)

"Rock and Rollers," Y. Ernest Satow

"Miriam," Mottke Weissman

"Operating Room," Fee Schlapper

i love blogs!

Recommended end-of-summer Internet exploring:

Crumbling Spires

The online photo diary of my friend Eric, an ode to Pittsburgh through virtual postcards of forgotten pockets of the city. Back in the early ’90s, Eric and I used to work together at Cash Market, which could be a few blog entries of their own (a photo essay of CM would be pretty awesome. Eric?)

Deep, Dark South

A journal by a talented young writer who is a “questioner of tradition.” She collects beautiful photos of women in menswear and posts them along with her short fiction. We ‘met’ via blogging, and she’s a great writer – her voice, strong and wise beyond her years.

The Vintage Traveler

I love Lizzie’s blog full of vintage travel and fashion history. Reading her posts is like walking with her through the most amazing fleatique. 

Trundle Manor

Why haven’t we been here yet? This is totally what Jeff and I want our house to look like when we finally buy one. Our friend Laura told us about this ‘house of oddities’ in Swissvale – a giant, creepy cabinet of curiosities packed with taxidermy, pickled animals in jars, skulls, a big old stuffed bear (I’m doing happy dance here). They’re even mentioned on Roadside America (jealous). Take a peek inside. 

Cabinet of Curiosities

Speaking of strangeness, check out Jeff’s artwork and instruments. He’s been super busy all summer, collecting trash and wood scraps and building more guitars. 

for the deep, dark south

"If you tell him I am from Mr. Carson Drew on important business, I am sure he will see me," Nancy replied.

My mother started my girl detective addiction when she gave me a copy of The Haunted Bridge for my 9th birthday. I loved that the 1960s Nancy had ‘titian-colored’ hair, and that she ate tea sandwiches while traveling cross-country to hunt ghosts and track thieves. The predictable plots  were comforting in the chaos of my childhood, like having your hair brushed or being read-to before falling asleep. And best of all, the books are by Carolyn Keene, a woman; I wouldn’t read books written by men (I’m sure there’s a Freudian explanation for this, but this is a nostalgic post). 

"A stolen clue. Hurrah!" exclaimed the girl excitedly.

In college I discovered that Edward Stratemeyer created Nancy (A man. Hmm). The original 13 books were written by journalist Mildred Wirt Benson. Nineteen thirties-Nancy wasn’t as gosh-darn nice as the later Nancy. She tended towards bossiness, vanity, classism and racism. In the late 1950s, editors rewrote Nancy to be more politically correct, a little more startled and wide-eyed. Where the early Nancy didn’t put a bad deed past anybody, the later Nancy  believed in the good of the world.

my first nancy drew

the clue of the black keys

ghostly nancy

the era of abstract, psychedelic nancy covers

I also watched a documentary on George Eastman this afternoon, and I was excited to see that he too made compulsively detailed notes of all transactions in his life. As I watched it, I thought, oh shit – I know how this one ends – and it wasn’t pretty.

I want to travel to Rochester this fall. I’m sure the whole city must be haunted. 

1. Camilla Dickinson – Madeline L’Engle

This book makes me want to run through the streets and shout and laugh and cry – it’s that kind of book. You can really feel the soft snow blanketing the streets of NYC as you read this.

2. Behind the Attic Wall – Sylvia Cassidy
One of the best ghost novels, for any age.

3. The Unbeliever – Lisa Lewis
poetry – read “The Accident,” it’ll blow you away.

4. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
I read this in 9th grade on the suggestion of my English teacher, Mr. Ristanovich. I remember staying awake long past bedtime, wanting to know the identity of the woman in the attic. 

5. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
Lo and behold, the first book I ever read about a family more dysfunctional than my own.

6. Charlotte Sometimes – Penelope Farmer
Turn of the 20th century time travel creepiness. The artwork is pretty amazing.

7. Valley of the Dolls – Jacqueline Susann
Surreal trashy novel. This one doesn’t have a happy ending, it’s just weird – love the pink cover with the cut-outs of pills making little frames for the characters. 

8. My Mexico – Diana Kennedy
When I used to stay at my ex boyfriend’s house, the only things to read were Chistopher Hitchens, the Atlantic (yawn) and this book that his mother bought him for Christmas. It was my first taste of how cooking could be made into literature.

9. Maus – Art Spiegalman
Pulitzer prize winning graphic novel about a father-son relationship in the midst of family history. I think I’ve read the complete volume about 3 or 4 times, and I never tire of it. I always find something new in the art and the text. 

10. Nancy Drew mysteries – Mildred Wirt aka Carolyn Keene
The danger, the car thieves, jewelry heists, train travel and Titian blond hair. I love the formulaic plots, the one steady thing in my childhood.

11. Therese Raquin – Emile Zola
Freaky novel about what happens when you marry your first cousin who is a big loser and you plot to kill him with his best friend. I first read this on a bout of the flu, so the scene in the Paris morgue circa 1880 only heightened in creepiness under the influence of my meds.

12. Out – Natsuo Kirino
I can’t get enough of her books, and it’s a shame because only 3 have been translated into English. Her novels concern women in contemporary Japanese culture that transcend the mystery genre. Out is particularly gory — you really get caught in their lives. 

13. Burning Your Boats – Angela Carter
Fairy tale reinterpretations. Read the “Fall River” one, about the Lizzie Borden murders. 

14. Home Cooking – Laurie Colwin
I love her food essays so much. They are a chicken pot pie on a cold winter afternoon.

15. Lunar Eclipse – Alona Kimchi
Years ago, I had bought this book because I loved the photo on the front of a young woman sitting on the floor of her shower. The photo was tinted blue and the book was a nice square shape that I love in books (I sometimes do that – buy books because of their shape and pretty pictures on the covers). A few years more went by, and I finally decided to read it. I was so sorry that I let it sit for so long. “I, Anastasia,” the opening novella has a voice so strong in translation that the text must be freaking amazing in its native Hebrew. I love, love this and wish Anastasia would appear in English so I can read the novel.

I’ve been a closet photographer for years, living in denial every time I’d go for my camera instead of sitting in front of the computer to write stories. In grad school, my friend Dan and I would spend afternoons going for drives, looking for places to take pictures when we both should have been writing (he’s a writer too, although he is a talented photographer as well), but instead we told stories through the lens.

Julia Margaret Cameron was a late-Victorian photographer who explored literature and mythology through portraiture. Prior to her turning to photography at the age of 48, she was an aspiring writer who was friends with the likes of Alfred Tennyson and Henry Taylor. Learning this bit of information, I now study her photographs in a completely different way. Why did she abandon writing? What made her embrace photography with such enthusiastic fearlessness?  She would still make a print from a cracked glass negative just to preserve the image.

Sappho c. 1866

Lewis Carroll‘s photography was considered merely a hobby, but has now gained respect in the art world, as well as generated controversy with his photos of naked children. With his mathematician’s attention to detail, he viewed photography as more of a science to be explored rather than an art.

After reading one of my favorite creepy novels of all time, Therese Raquin, I was curious to discover that Emile Zola was also a closet photographer. I have been trying to find examples of his work online, but I only came across this self-portrait from someone’s Flickr page.

While browsing at Barnes & Noble one afternoon this past spring, I bought The Well and the Mine simply because of the photograph of a barefoot young girl sitting on a porch railing. Eudora Welty had taken the photograph when she worked for the WPA during the Great Depression. In a New York Times 1989 interview, Welty is modest about her photographs, calling them ‘snapshots.’ I was hoping, as the interviewer seemed to hope, that Welty would make connections with photography and writing, let us in on the big secret – did one art fuel the other?

Welty compared her photographic ‘snapshots’  to short stories in that each, if done well, captures a moment that could have been lost. She had proposed a book of short stories accompanied by her photographs to her publisher in the 1950s, but there wasn’t a market for this sort of project. Knowing that she was also a photographer allows me to read her fiction through the eye of her lens.

But what I love most about this book is that it affirms my views on travel as being not just about physically going to a place, but about stepping outside of your everyday world and into another world. In the chapter “Domestic Travel,” the author asks readers to do just that: Trade places with a family member or friend and live their life for one day, or even a week. “Literary Journey” asks us to walk over to our bookshelves or local libraries and simply read. I spent most of my childhood (and adulthood) buried in books – I love their smell, the cover art, an irregular book size, their tight, clean pages crinkling as I turn them to find out what happens next. They are portable worlds. When I can’t go anywhere, books or exploring my neighborhood as a tourist are all I have to escape ordinary life on days when I really need it.

These suggestions seem really obvious, but it’s hard to put into words sometimes why travel is so much a part of me. I am always dreaming about the next adventure. I remind myself that travel is not about the place, but the people who make up that place. Sometimes I can remember in faded terms the names of monuments or city streets, but I can remember very strongly the people who have affected me.

I miss Tamara in Nova Gorica and Andrija in Osijek and in my mind’s eye I am walking along the train tracks in Nova Gorica. It is March, very windy, my hands in my red coat pockets.  There are palm trees planted in somebody’s back yard on the Italian side of the border, in contrast to the Julian Alps view on the Slovene side. I have a few weeks till I am home again in the States, but I don’t yet know this. It is just enough to be here with no plan, even though it is frightening. It is where I am meant to be at that moment.

The Moon by Night by Madeline L’Engle

Madeline L’Engle is better known for her science fiction rather than her spiritual writings in the Episcopal church, but it’s her non science fiction chronicles that make me love her writing so much. The church I attended as a kid was chockfull of her young adult books,  and The Moon by Night was one of my favorites. In the second book of  the Austin family series, Vicky Austin confronts growing pains and first love while traveling cross-country with her family in a ramshackle camper. While the thoughts of traveling with my own family would have me running for the hills, I always thought it would be so cool to live in a house on wheels, and I loved the groovy 1970s bookcover, and the interconnected world of L’Engle characters.

Nancy Drew Mystery Series

Who the hell knows which state River Heights actually exists, but it’s in close proximity to New York City and Chicago, as well as Shadow Ranch, Moonstone Castle and the ghostly Blackwood Hall. I was always envious that Nancy and her chums were lucky enough to encounter mysterious mannequins in Turkey, or solve crimes in such exotic locales as Japan and Scotland. They had all the time and money in the world. It wasn’t until I was an adult who could afford her own travels that I asked, how did Nancy do it? When I want to escape to the Forgotten City, I think of eating tea sandwiches at roadside inns, lunch always interrupted by the next adventure.

Culinaria Hungary

This beautiful cookbook is more travelogue than recipe collection. With its stunning photography and detailed historical research, each region of Hungary comes to life through the pages. It makes me want to climb into the book and emerge from Budapest on the other side.

The Oblivion Seekers by Isabelle Eberhardt

Isabelle Eberhardt was a late-Victorian female traveler who spent much of her time primarily in Algeria. She dressed in men’s clothes, converted to Islam and traveled through the North African deserts alone. Unlike Isabella Bird or Gertrude Bell, women travelers who made a living through their travel writings, Isabelle was addicted to morphine which often clouded her judgment as well as hampered her writing ability. The Oblivion Seekers, translated by Paul Bowles, is more a collection of diary-like pieces rather than short stories. Most of her journals were washed away in a flash flood, which killed her at the age of 27.