Wow… yesterday I finished Anathem by Neal Stephenson and I have to say, it was quite some work to get through over 900 pages of rather amazing ideas. The book is a world-building exercise on the level of Tolkien’s best work, with a wide swath of fictional geography, history, local languages and culture fleshed out [...]
I’ve been talking about vintage MJB Coffee ads in San Francisco before, and while I was researching that blog post back then I remember seeing references to a second “Why” ad in San Francisco, but I could never find an address for it. A few weeks ago that problem solved itself when I was walking [...]
I’m a happy owner of a Sony eBook Reader and I’d like to share some of my thoughts after using the device for a few months now… So first of all – happy, yes. I saw an very early version of the Sony eBook reader a few years ago in Tokyo in the Sony building [...]
Thanks to MapSkip it’s not really much of a secret anymore that I am permanently fascinated by maps. I always loved to look at maps, trace routes across them, read the foreign-sounding place names… As a young boy I spent many hours traveling across the beautiful, large maps in my parent’s world atlas, imagining myself [...]
I’ve just finished Michael Palin’s Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years and the book was a revelation in many ways. First of all, it is quite interesting to read so much about the back story of the Monty Pythons and how the magic worked. Palin describes in quite some detail the creative sessions, the business meetings [...]
This book was love on first sight: Transit Maps of the World I got my copy yesterday, and for under $20 there is absolutely nothing wrong with this book. Actually, it is perfect. No, really. It is literally a collection of all the transit maps in the world, many with very thoughtful and insightful commentary, [...]
Yes, it’s that time of year… November is approaching fast, and the National Novel Writing Month is again upon us! I’ve finished editing my first novel which I wrote as participant in the NaNoWriMo back in 2004, and I am getting close to self-publish that book early next year. Writing that novel was exhilarating and [...]
“A World Of Sounds” is the title of a sidebar article that appears in this month’s Travel + Leisure magazine’s online feature about the Top 25 Travel Websites. The sidebar article features ten audio recordings from places around the world, including my Competing Chinese Operas, that has before been listed on the Quiet American. I’m [...]
I wanted to talk about this movie for a little while, but we were traveling and I have now a backlog of blogging material to work through… Paprika is the new movie by Satoshi Kon, the director of Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers, two of my favorite Japanese animation movies. This new movie is very [...]
Over the years I’ve been collecting books by westerners who traveled or lived in China in the late 1930s and during the second World War years. It’s an interesting subject and a satisfying area for a collector since there is only a limited number of authors and books and what I really love – almost [...]