Where am I Wearing?

Great travel book, current events update, and thoughtful consideration of the worldwide apparel industry written in language that holds interest for all readers. Writer, traveler Kelsey Timmerman takes his five favorite pieces of clothing: t-shirt from Honduras, underwear from Bangladesh, sandals from China, Jeans from Cambodia, and shorts from USA and does a global tour to understand the lives of the people who make his clothing. Are they really made in sweatshops? How do these people live? IS there some oversight of the conditions in which the people who make our clothes find themselves?

The author manages to enter almost all the factories to see where his clothes are made, and he meets people who make the clothes and talks with them, through interpreters, about their lives in the factories. He meets children in the factories and talks about the effects of boycotts on children specifically. He meets families separated by thousands of miles who work to send money home to their loved ones.

This book is assigned reading for the incoming freshman class at Northern Kentucky University, and I found out about it through my in-laws who read it in anticipation of the author's visit to NKU this fall to speak to that class. The assignment of the books seems timely given the recent fires at the clothing shops in Bangladesh (book was written in 2009).

I really love this book and this writer and look forward to reading his next: Where am I eating?  Available at the library.

On the Noodle Road

Whew!  I've been reading this travel narrative/cookbook for about a month. It was a slow read, and I was often tempted to put it down, but yet there was something endearing about the author/traveler and her insights about food, travel, love and women.

Chinese American Jen Lin Liu founded a Chinese cooking school in Beijing and met an American journalist also living in Beijing who she marries. Upon traveling with him in Rome she conceives of an idea to trace the path of the noodle from China to Rome. She strives to understand where the noodle first originated and decides that following regional cuisine while traveling the silk road would be a fascinating travel memoir.

She travels through China, Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, and finally Italy to answer this one question: did China invent the noodle that Italians have now perfected?  The question, while somewhat intriguing seems (and I think proves to be) a mighty thin thread to hand a 300 plus page travel narrative.

Ms Lin-Liu does dig deep into some more interesting questions primarily about the place of women in most of the countries through which she travels. She also begins to ask difficult questions about her own marriage. She meets lots of friendly cooks and locals who introduce her to the cuisines of the region.

After struggling to get through this memoir, I started to really like this author and stuck with it to hear how her marriage ended up and read her conclusions about the noodle. I won't give it away--I hate to spoil it for others.  I will say that while Central Asia seemed pretty bland food wise, she wrote food porn about the cuisines of Turkey and Italy that made me vow to travel to eat in both of those places.

In the end, some interesting observations in patches, a few recipes, an earnest author who you root for, and some good food writing probably salvaged this memoir.  A must read if you plan to travel in this region.