The Translation of Love [Book Review]

I think that post-war novels deserve as much attention as war-time novels. In fact, post-war novels may even be more important. War-time novels show us the atrocities, and the indomitable human spirit that survives it; but post-war novels show us what happens when those down-trodden spirits have to rebuild, often under the boot of the victors.

Semester at Sea in GIFs

Finding the words to describe a four-month around-the-world-on-a-floating-university experience is often hard. And also, expressing things in GIFs is so much fun, so here you go.

Travel Throwback: Walking Aimlessly

“I refuse to be ashamed that I visited India but not the Taj Mahal, and China but not the Great Wall. Maybe one day I will visit those, but I don’t feel that I have missed out. I had experiences that money could not buy, education that no class could teach, networking that no conference could offer. I will never feel sorry that for a few days at a time, I got caught up in the web of interwoven threads that make us human.”

Book Review: Confessions by Kanae Minato [J-horror]

Her pupils killed her daughter. Now, she will have her revenge. I have a lot of feelings about this book, so I apologise in advance for a rambling review. The first feeling is one of regret: not that I regret reading it, not at ALL; but regret that I did not love it as much

Africa Needs More Books

I was walking through my home suburb (read:village) with my brother the other day. We went to the local library, sampled some books (slim pickings) and as we walked home, I asked about such-and-such a bookshop, and such-and-such a used bookshop. They were all closed down. Anyone wanting to purchase books needs to go to

My First Manga (and Review)

I was fourteen when a friend of mine told me to try Manga. The next time I went to a bookshop I went to the Manga shelf and uttered, “But the book is faulty. It’s back to front!” Genuinely. I felt a little stupid when everyone laughed at me, so maybe that’s why it took

Booking It Around The World

Last week I posted about books for travelers, and I realised I never wrote about my forays into bookstores while traveling. Most Semester at Sea students decide to collect ONE THING in each country. One girl decided to buy a copy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in every country, preferably in a local language. Another

Review: The Big Necessity by Rose George

One of the first things I noticed when I started traveling was international differences in public restrooms. In New York City I was met with the conundrum of a city that has everything except restrooms. In China I saw squat toilets for the first time – and refused to use them. Working in a hospital

CONDOMANIA: Health Promotion in Japan

When in Japan, my friends and I spent a day exploring Tokyo (my feet complained, but not the rest of me). I was surprised by the scope of public health here (and as I would soon find, the rest of Japan). This was perhaps the most surprising:

Kon nichi wa, Sayonara, Japan

Japan… Oooooh Japan. Did I think Japan would be like China, because I’ve been to China before and it’s also in Asia? Maybe I did, and that’s a pretty ignorant assumption I made. Lesson learned. It’s been a day since we left Japan and I’m still overwhelmed. I’m not entirely sure how to put into