nomadreader

Livia Lone, the first in a series featuring the titular character, was my favorite mystery of 2017 . I've been looking forward to The Night Trade  since I finished Livia Lone . I loved Livia Lone  so much that I also wanted to read Eisler's other books, and I read the first in his John Rain series, A Clean Kill in Tokyo , earlier this month. I knew from the blurb that Livia returns to Thaiand in this book, and I managed to wait until I was in Thailand to read it. The Night Trade  picks up shortly after Livia Lone , and, as should be expected, there are tons of spoilers from the first book. It's clear this series is not one that can be read out of order. Livia Lone is a critical foundation for both the characters and story of Livia. Eisler recaps the highlights well in The Night Trade  in case you've forgotten, but there's no substitute for reading the book itself. What I wansn't expecting in The Night Trade  was Dox, a character from the Rain books. I didn...

Good morning (again) from Thailand! It's my last morning waking up in Chiang Mai, Thailand. This afternoon, we fly to Krabi, where we relax at the beach for a few days before beginning the long, long journey home. Two of this week's highlights were our visit to the Elephant Nature Park and the night we spent in a rural village with beautiful mountain views: This trip has been wonderful but challenging in many ways. I try to focus on the positive, and one of the things I've most enjoyed is how well I've integrated my reading and blogging into this trip. It's helped me stay connected to reality, as life in Thailand sometimes feels like I'm temporarily living in a different world. I'm thrilled that I've managed to still post each day this year. Considering I only managed 45 blog posts all of 2017, I think I've finally found my rhythm again, and it feels really good. If you only read one thing I wrote last week... Read my letter to Caroline...

Good morning from Chiang Mai, Thailand! What a crazy, fun, exhausting week it's been. Last Monday at 3:30 a.m., I met my co-professor and the fourteen students taking our J-term travel course at the Des Moines airport. After delays in both Des Moines and Chicago (fuel pump issue requiring us to change planes), we arrived in Tokyo after our flight to Bangkok departed. The airline arranged a charter bus to take us from one Tokyo airport to the other, where we finally boarded a flight to Bangkok and arrived at 6 a.m. instead of midnight. We spent two days exploring Bangkok, then we took the overnight train to Chiang Mai, where we're settled in for another week before heading to Krabi. After so much travel, it's nice to be in the same place for awhile. It's also nice to be in Chiang Mai, a city I adore and have had the privilege of visiting three times in the last year and a half. It's my last time in Thailand for awhile, so I'm trying to soak up every minute of i...

The backstory: The Road to Wanting  was longlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize . The basics: The Road to Wanting  is the story of Na Ga, who was born in Burma but left as a child. She's now on a journey back, but she isn't going by her choice, for reasons that slowly unfold along with how she left Burma and got to where she is. My thoughts: Near the end of The Road to Wanting , I told Mr. Nomadreader it might be the most depressing book I've ever read. I'm not one to avoid depressing novels, but this one is harrowing. How many horrible things can happen to one person? Yet despite how depressing this book is, it's most depressing because Na Ga's story isn't unique. Although fictional in this sense, there are many women who endure the things she does. As I read, I learned a lot about Burma, an area about which I knew very little. There is a large Burmese refugee population in Des Moines, and I appreciated this insight into modern Burmese history. Fa...

The backstory:  Cross Currents  was on the shortlist for the Indie Lit Award for Fiction this year. The basics: Leading up to the devastating 2004 earthquake and tsunami on the Thai island of Ko Phi Phi, Cross Currents  explores the island through its inhabitants, a three-generation family with two children who run an island hotel, and tourists, young American traveler Patch, who is soon joined by his brother, Ryan, and Ryan's girlfriend, Brooke. My thoughts: The novel opens with an author's note about the tsunami and how it inspired him to write about this island he had visited and loved before. He wanted the world to understand this island before its devastation. What I found surprising given the author's note at the beginning was at what point in the novel the tsunami occurred: not until the novel's final pages. The author's note impacted my expectations of how this story would be told, and ultimately it left me disappointed and wishing Shors saved his author...