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Excerpts: Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica by Sara Wheeler . . . The author’s conversations are just as likely to address “how to avoid frostbite while taking a shit” as they are to include feminism, religion and the Nicaraguan debt crisis. As readily as she offers awe-inspiring descriptions such as “the sky was mottled with cirrostratus like fish scales, and shafts of sunlight fell on the creased surface of an ice tongue,” she also portrays a 12-foot Elvis illustration at the South Pole or a dead, moldy penguin . . . Namako: Sea Cucumber by Linda Watanabe McFerrin Imagine being plunked into a world where cryptic language, looming spirits and kimonos replace average American mornings with Cornflakes and television. Imagine a place where so much is foreign and new that almost nothing seems normal and comfortable. Contemplate dipping tiny toes in two cultures simultaneously while still trying to think about first kisses, new hairstyles and the boy next door. Welcome to the fictional world of 13-year-old Ellen, in which elements of America and Japan diverge into a plane where people, textures, food, objects and vegetation have minds of their own . . . A Journey with Elsa Cloud by Leila Hadley . . . Elsa Cloud is Hadley’s pet name for Veronica, who once told her mother that she wanted to be “the sea, the jungle or else a cloud.” . . . . . . Although the author experiences a series of epiphanies, she never embraces a true conversion to asceticism and non-attachment. It is this particular fact which enables Hadley to write such a detailed travelogue. She becomes attached to everything about India, from the objects in the New Delhi market to the religious myths and celebrations. Hadley is overcome with emotion when the exiled Tibetan monks tell her about the atrocities they endured during the Chinese takeover of the 1950s. Veronica responds to her mother’s outpouring of emotion by saying, “Please don’t hug the monks, Mummy. They won’t like it.” . . .
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