World Hum’s Most Read: Aug. 30-Sept. 5

What We Loved This Week: Jose Feliciano, Rub’ al Khali and Raw Oysters

Don’t Be Cruel: Traveling ‘Elvis’ Draws Attention, Groans

It’s Not Easy Being Green and Crucified

A Tourist With a Shovel and a Hoe

When she arrived in Kenya to volunteer with the Maasai, Daniela Petrova looked down her nose at tourists there to have a good time. But was her own motivation much different?

How Should I Spend My Time in Spain?

Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel

Paul Theroux: Invisible Man on a Ghost Train

Jim Benning asks the author of “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star” about his new book, aging and the challenge of disappearing in the age of the BlackBerry

Eat Ceviche in Lima

Grab a Cusqueña and get comfortable. As Nicholas Gill explains, a trip to a Peruvian cevichería can be an all-day immersion in good conversation and raw seafood.

Unsentimental Journeys: Wrestling With Paul Theroux

Bronwen Dickey considers “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: 28,000 Miles in Search of the Great Railway Bazaar”

My Travels, My Feet

After taking one too many headless torso shots of herself, solo traveler Sophia Dembling started snapping photos of her feet around the world, from the Grand Canyon to Red Square

Seven Reasons to Have a Foreign Fling

Sure, having an overseas romance is fun. But Terry Ward points out seven other benefits to cross-border love, mon petit chou.

Historic Canadian Bookstore to Close

Huh, wow, I had no idea The Bookroom was Canada’s oldest! I walked past it a few hundred times in undergrad but rarely went in - not because “kids these days” just don’t read anymore, but because a block further down there was an amazing used bookstore, and a block further up there was a great little place that catered specifically to liberal arts students (with discount to match). Now I wish I’d checked it out.

Hi Ben:

Though Canada is a major exporter of Moosehead, maple syrup, SCTV comedians (Rick Moranis) and game show hosts (Alex Trebec), our neighbor of The Great White North is not reknowned for its writers.

I can only think of a couple novelists--Margaret Atwood, Mordechai Richler--and these are hardly names that jump off the Borders bookshelves into our bags. Yes, it’s sad that such an old bookseller is going bust, but the big news is that the blonde from Heart is still a babe and continues to stylishly strut and strum “Barracuda.”

I feel sorry for the ample one, though, who looks a little like Grace Slick in her sorrier years. “We Built This City on Rock and Roll” is perhaps the second-most insipid song ever written, next to the Pet Shop Boys’ redundant no-brainer: “You’ve got the brawn, I’ve got the brains, let’s make lot’s of money!” But the Pet Shop Boys are Brits, not Canucks. Give me Brian Adams over Neil Young. Oh, and Canada invented Hockey (all the good puck-handlers, like Ore and Hull, are named “Bobby")! I guess Rush is Canadian, too.

Nevertheless, we’ll miss Canada’s The Book Room, a bit of obsolete Victoriana hidden away in Nova Scotia (New Scotland), fading away from the Commonwealth and the uncommon mind. But at least we can still order Canadian ecrivain Steve Martin’s “Cruel Shoes” on Amazon.

Hey John,

Though Steve Martin used to run in that Second City crowd of (mostly) Canadian comedians, he’s not actually a Canuck himself. (Much as I’d like to claim him!)

I’m also going to have to disagree with you about our literary output, though obviously I’m a little biased (not to mention brainwashed by the Canadian public school system). Atwood and Richler may not be bestsellers these days but I’ll take either of them over Danielle Steele - sales aren’t exactly the measure of a novelist. I’ll also throw in Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient), Rohinton Mistry (okay, India claims him too - but he moved here in 1975, well before he wrote A Fine Balance), W.P. Kinsella (Shoeless Joe, which became the movie Field of Dreams), Alice Munro (one of the most decorated short story writers of recent decades), Elizabeth Smart (By Grant Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, a prose poetry classic), Ann-Marie Macdonald (Fall on Your Knees - an Oprah’s Book Club selection!), Robertson Davies (Fifth Business).... I could go on and on.

As for ‘We built this city’, “the 2nd most insipid song ever written”, you Yanks will have to take credit for that one. Jefferson Starship was American! :D

And yes, my yearbook quote when I went to grad school in the UK was “Did you know that [insert celebrity name here] is Canadian, eh?”

"Give me Brian Adams over Neil Young.”
You’re joking, right John?

If not, I’ll have to nominate Heaven for for the #1 most insipid song ever written:

“Baby you’re all that I want
When you’re lyin’ here in my arms
I’m findin’ it hard to believe
We’re in heaven”

I had no idea bookroom was Canada’s oldest. thats sad its closing, but times are hard these days.