My passion for everything Tintin

Are you a Tintinologist? I am. Although my knowledge of Tintin and the other characters from the Belgian Hergé's famous comic-book series cannot match a true Tintinologist's - not by any chance.

Tintin comics are immensely popular all over Europe with both kids and adults, but I am not familiar with their popularity in Northern America, Australia and other places around the world. If you know anything about this, please enlighten me, as I am very curious.

In Belgium, in Louvain-la-Neuve, there is a Tintin-museum. Or rather, it is an Hergé-museum. What I find completely adorable is, that the museum is located on Rue du Labrador, which is the same street Tintin lives at in the series, although the town/city he lives in is not clear. I always suspected it was Brussels, but could be Louvain-la-Neuve of course. A real Tintinologist will know, so already here, I have failed ;o)

Late in the 1950'es, Tintin was launched in the US. This article is very well written and not too long, yet it gives all the details, and if you are just a bit interested, you should check it out. Here is a snippet from the article's beginning:

In 1958 Georges Duplaix wrote to Casterman to express his interest in publishing
Tintin in the USA. At the time, the dust was still settling after the ‘horror
comics debate’. There had been articles condemning comic books since the
Forties, and a New York Senate panel had actually banned them in 1955. Comics
had been described as debased and semi-literate, and were accused of keeping
children from reading ‘proper’ books. This was probably not the best environment
in which to try to launch a major work of the comic-book tradition. However,
Tintin appeared to have a good, clean image, and he was becoming more and more
popular in Europe, so why not America?

Also, don't forget to check out the official Tintin-page. Some of it is in French, but the English version is adequate. Here you can see the map of where the different books took place, you can get an overview over the characters and see when the different books were published. The Tintin-albums has been read, researched, talked about and discussed for years. Recent years has seen the political correct removal of some of the alcohol, tobacco (and firearms, I almost wrote) and profanity in the albums, but not all "personality" has been taken out of the albums.

And you don't have to be a Tintinologist to notice (if you get your hands on some of the old editions) the European outlook on the world back then. Please not that Hergé was neither nazi nor racist. But yes, some of the pictures in the albums strike us as racist today. They were not intended as such, Europeans just didn't know better (some may argue they still don't).

As a part of the Dewey Reading Challenge, I am re-reading one of the Tintin-albums - The Secret of the Unicorn - and will review it here shortly. This post is meant as a little forerunner to that review. I will also make a little post later with my fave characters from Tintin.

Have you read any Tintin-albums?

Guide Books Travel Wiriting

I guess that most of us at one point or another has used some sort of a guidebook and/or map of a location. For travelling abroad or to a neighboring town, for finding our way around a city, a museum, a theme park. There are many guidebooks on the (English-speaking) market, and I am familiar with many of them: Rough Guides, Lonely Planet, Frommers, Blue Guides, Time Out, DK and more. In our day and age, sites like Tripadvisor and Holiday Watchdog are popular, and can be used as a more or less real time guidebook, provided your are online as you go - which is unlikely if you are hiking in the Amazonas, but not that unlikely if you are, say, in New York. E-zines and blogs about travelling (pro as well as amateur) are also very popular. Vagabondish is just one example. There are plenty more.

So, what I am trying to say is, that the travel- and guidebook industries are somthing that we have all touched upon, one way or the other. Even in the current economic climate, people are still travelling. They may not spend as much on their vacations and trips as they did in 2007, but they are still travelling. And some of them will buy guidebooks.

Last year there was a "scandal" involving the whole Lonely Planet-industry. One of their writers, a Thomas Krohnstamm, admitted that he had not actually visited Colombia, which he was writing a guidebook about, but had done all his writing from a hotel-room in San Francisco, getting info from a Colombian girl he dated at the time. Naturally, this had an impact on all Lonely Planet guides (and guidebook-writers and other guidebook-series as well), but obviously not all of their books are "fake", and it seems like while Krohnstamm was probably not the only rotten apple in the basket, Lonely Planet guidebooks are still going strong.

They've been my preferred English guidebook for a long time, but I have always had a love/hate relationship with them. First of all, they are written mainly for an English-speaking audience, and not a Danish audience. Danish guidebooks does not dwell so much on whether a city is "safe" or not - LP has a whole entry in each of their guidebooks called "Dangers and Annoyances" - Danes on the other hand want to know where they can smoke or whether a place sell decent beer or not. Not that Danes are taking more stupid risks abroad than other nationalities, they just care more about the other things. For many Danes, despite initially being made for the travellers wanting to thread the not-so-beaten-paths, Lonely Planet has too much of an overtone of "not being written for them". This is very generally speaking and also written somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I hope you know what I mean. But on the other hand, LP has far more info than the average Danish guidebook. I have a little collection of LP guidebooks, and I love to just browse through them for inspiration and day-dreamning.

Aside from the fact that many Danes prefer to read in Danish, we also have our own guidebook-series, written in Danish by Danish authors. The series is called "The Trip Goes To" and has existed since the 1950'es. This series is why other guide-series, like LP, doesn't sell as well in Denmark as they do in other parts of the world.

I am right now in the United Arab Emirates doing some research. Not for a guidebook though (I wish). And I brought the LP Arabian Peninsula with me :-) So far it has not let me down, I only wish it had more info!

Do you own guidebooks? Or do you prefer the related genre travel-memoirs? Or do you prefer not to travel at all, or, if you travel, not to bring any kind of guidebook with you? Maybe you go to the same place every year and doesn't need a guidebook?

Oh - and where would you go if money and time was no objection? And don't say around the world ;o)

Lovely new books

I don't buy or loan as many books as some - and since I am in Denmark I am unable to do Paperback Swap - it would cost me double the price of the book to ship an old paperback across the pond anyway. So I have never done the Library Loot/Mailbox weeklies. I don't think I get enough in my mailbox or from the library to do that.

But in the past month, I have both been to the library and also bought some books. All of them are loaned or bought through blogger's recommendations, for which I am eternally grateful!

While I love to browse old books and make cheap finds, I also think it is lovely when a package filled with brand new books arrive. New books are wonderful and they smell good! This past month I bought the following books:

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson (Southern Reading Challenge. I read Jackson's two previous novels. Loved the first one -Gods in Alabama - the second one was so-so - Between, Georgia)

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan (Southern Reading Challenge. So many bloggers raved about this one, and I hope its as wonderful as they say)

Stuck by Herman Bang (Danish author from 19th Century, writing at the same time as the Impressionists painted their famous paintings)

We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver (because I've heard so much about this book the past years, and then saw it mentioned again, and thought that NOW I will read it)

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (this is part of my own personal quest to try reading the much-talked-about YA, and this one came very higly recommended)

Tender Graces by Kathryn Magendie (a blogger reviewed this one, and I just felt like that was a book I really wanted to read)

The Curse of the Mummy and other Mysteries of Ancient Egypt by Charlotte Booth (Ms Booth is an Egyptologist herself, and this book is the Egyptologist's take on those mysteries, which may not be mysteries after all)
Property by Valerie Martin (This one I chose to read a long time ago when I compiled my list for the Dewey Reading Challenge, and I think it looks very good)

Did you read any of the books I bought? Heard any good/bad about them? Then please share :-)

Going away for 10 days

I am going to be away on a work-related trip from July 2 - 12, and while I will bring my laptop, I don't know how much time I will have to blog. I hope I will be able to check in here, but since I am going to be out and about most of the time researching, I am not sure. I have prepared some posts to be published while I am away, so that this blog doesn't die down completely.

I am going to United Arab Emirates. I will be landing in Dubai and then travel directly to the small, northern Emirate called Ras al-Khaimah or RAK as it is called for short. RAK begun developing tourism only a few years ago. They were standing in the shadow of big brother Dubai, and since they have some wonderful beaches and amazing natural scenery in RAK, they thought that, hey, let us try and lure some of the many visitors to Dubai up here to our little emirate. So now there has been build some wonderful hotels on the beaches, which are perfect for relaxing and sunny vacations, but still only about an hour's drive from Dubai with all its trademark craziness, mega-buildings and what not.

Our base will be at the great Al Hamra Fort Beach Resort, which you can see a part of on the image below, lower right corner.

I have never been to UAE, and am looking much forward to it. I am going to do some research on various tours like beduoin camel-trips, dune bashing, shopping-trips (YAY) and much more.

The image on top of the Dubai skyline has been taken by momentaryawe.com and the beach image was shot by Henzelle - be back soon. Both images can be found on flickr.

Strange Affair by Peter Robinson

Strange Affair is no. 15 in the Inspector Banks series. When we left Inspector Banks, Annie Cabbott and the other policemen and women in Eastvale, dramatic stuff had happened. Everyone are still licking their wounds, mainly Banks, who has withdrawn into himself. When the book begins, he is on vacation. Not abroad, but at home. He receives a mysterious call from his somewhat estranged brother Roy, but he is not home to answer the call. Mystified and intrigued he leaves for London to ask Roy what is up, but Roy has disappeared, leaving only his cell phone behind. As Banks digs into the disappearance, he finds out things about Roy that he had never suspected, and he meets some of the people who were Roy's friends, business partners and lovers. Meanwhile, Annie Cabbott is trying to get hold of Banks, but he has left his cell phone back in Eastvale. He is desperately needed in Eastvale, as a young girl has been found shot, and traces are leading in all directions. Biggest fear is that the Eastvale police are dealing with a serial killer.

This was an exciting read, and I really liked it. I will take a break from the Banks-thrillers now and concentrate on some of my challenge reads instead. But if you begin reading the Banks-series, I can definitely recommend this one.

Wordless Wednesday

Bodega Bay, California, post office. May 2007.

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Wordless Wednesday

This image was shot in July 1916 and it is of my grandmother on my father's side and her siblings. They were 12! My grandmother is second girl from right in the back row. The text beneath says: Youth in Togeby (Togeby is a location in Denmark), July 1916. Most likely this was shot by my great-grandfather who was a painter.

Click on image to view in large size.

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My passion for vintage Duckburg and its inhabitants

In Denmark (in fact most of Scandinavia, I think), the most popular cartoon from Walt Disney has always been Donald Duck. I have heard that Mickey Mouse is more popular in the US, but here we always loved Donald Duck (who is called Anders And in Denmark) and all the other inhabitants of Duckburg. Each week for the past 60 years, the Anders And & Co-magazine has been on the shelf every Monday at the magazine-stands all over the country. The image to the left says: 60 years in Denmark

I remember getting the magazine each Monday, and since I was the oldest out of three siblings, I got to read it first ;o)

As an adult, I do not read the Donald Duck magazine at all, and am not interested in the new stories and all those spin-off type series (like Disney Babies and stuff like that).

Carl Barks (1901-2000). Image is from Wikipedia.

The stories that I like best and the artist I like best is without any doubt Carl Barks. Carl Barks is also in my opinion the REAL duck artist, and I truly adore the stories written and drawn by him. They are not only vintage in the cool way, they are also very the funniest and most clever stories. Don't gimme any of that secondary c*** the writers cook up now-a-days ;o)
The image above is from one of my favorite Carl Barks-stories. Donald has written a hit-song, and he has earned a lot of money. He and the nephews celebrate by going on a ski-trip to Avalanche Valley in The White Mountains. The nephews are seriously tired with Uncle Donald's hit, which he is singing to them: "Oh, lend me a grave by the ice-green sea, where only the waves will hear me cry". After reaching Avalanche Valley, strange things start to happen every time the jukebox in the hotel is playing Donald's hit.
What about you? Do you like Donald, Mickey, Uncle Scrooge, Goofy or any of the other characters from Duckburg?