Blogger: Michelle Ule, Books & Such Assistant
Location: Paris
Weather: Chilly but full of romance
The United States publishes the majority of English language books in the world. At Books & Such, we receive queries from all over the globe. Rachel and Janet represent Australian authors, but the rest of the agents specialize in the homegrown variety.
I spent the summer of 1976 with Swiss relatives, desperate to read a book written in English. Unlike my cousins, who spoke and read four languages, I was limited to English, Spanish, and a smattering of Italian. The only books my cousins owned that I could decipher were classics. So I read Madame Bovary (translated from the French), Pere Girot (another translation), and a cheap, 1950s dime-store novel someone must have picked up on a train. Since I had stuffed Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship (yet another translation, this time from German) in my backpack, the entertainment options were slim.
It’s different in Europe now. While the airport bookstores still cater to that nation’s most commonly spoken language, most have sections with books written in my native tongue. This trip the Kindle is loaded with several books and doesn’t take up much space. It would have been a God-send thirty-two years ago. But then I never would have read Madame Bovary. How about you? What treasure did you discover but never would have touched when it was the only book available?
When I was 11 or 12, my family went on a LONG driving-vacation and I quickly finished the books I brought with me. My brother was in high school and had a summer reading list for his AP English class. One of the books was Pride & Prejudice. I read it because it was one of my only options and loved it. My brother didn’t like the book at all!
When my family stayed in a friends’ gulf coast beach condo one summer, I searched shelves and drawers looking for something to read, only to uncover out-of-date home decorating magazines and a cookbook … not my cup of tea. Then, under the tv cart, I discovered a well-worn paperback copy of “Embraced by the Light,” the story of a woman’s near death experience. It fascinated me, with such vivid images of heaven. I remember watching the August moonlight dance across waves, thinking about spiritual things in a fresh way.