[.ca] Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana (ISBN 0812967607)

Travels with Stephanie:
The chief thing wrong with this book is that it was written by a journalist. Throughout, our author displays naivete, gullibility, superficiality, and ignorance - the ever-recurring stigmata of Grub Street. Compounding her faults is her extreme youth and an oddly stubborn resistance to education. She repeats what she hears at second and third and fourth hand, displaying no sophistication about sources and (apparently) no inclination to check facts. She appears to know very little about history. Perhaps a 21-year-old (her age when she started her travels) couldn't help some of this - but she was a lot older by the time she published, and it's not too much to expect more balance, more sophistication, in a word more intelligence from the Miss Griest of today. It's not her fault that I don't much care about fashions in clothes, makeup, pop music, dating, or the bar scene, but it -is- her fault for filling so many pages with her quite real and sincere concerns with these things. Early on, she brings up her very personal concerns with her ethnic identity, and returns to them repeatedly throughout her book. This might make an interesting topic as a separate memoir (although I can't really make out what she's so exercised about), or even if she could relate it in some significant way to her travels. But it feels dragged in; it looks in places too much like padding. Or a big ego chewing a pretty small bone. Miss Griest thanks a number of people for editorial help. She shouldn't. Her style is potholed with clichés, malapropisms, and faulty syntax. Even newspaper scribblers should be able to do better than this, especially when they sit down years later to compose at leisure. In sum, it's just not a grownup's book.

Travel by book:
As someone who has always planned/thought/meant to travel and have lots of adventures of my own (but never actually had the means or time to travel), I can really appreciate all the detail and descriptions in Ms. Griest's Around the Bloc. I may not always agree with her conclusions, but I actually am grateful for them. I would so much rather hear opinions that cause me to think than feel affirmed or bored. It is almost as if she is an incredible, funny, and lively travel companion throughout this journey around the "Communist Bloc" and I get to hear her end-of-the-day assessment of her adventures and then begin to form my own. Her openness throughout the book about her experiences and mistakes help to endear and make her experiences much more "real" than a flat newspaper-style book. I have learned SO MUCH from this book about places that I will likely never visit and very much enjoyed having my eyes open to new perspectives on some very old issues.

Move over Bryson:
I rarely buy into the "so good you can't put it down" rhetoric when talking about books to read. Stephanie Griest's Around the Bloc is an exception. Reminiscent of my favorite, Bill Bryson, she has an amazing combination of detail, brilliant humor, and historical research that both teaches and entertains. This is a book that can profoundly change the way young people look at foreign travel or foreign study. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to study abroad as a guidebook for how to truly capture the essense of cultural immersion. Griest's re-discovery of her own culture through learning about others is an inspiring gem of a lesson.

Breezy Summer Read:
Our 21 year-old author takes us to Russia, China and Cuba, and shares with us her 21 year-old perspective. While there is nothing earth-shattering or enlightening here, this is a good breezy summer read. Perhaps the author's most interesting comparison of these three cultures is this: The Russian bond by drinking vodka together, the Chinese by eating lavish meals, but the Cubans by dancing. And that's the level of analysis the book leaves us with, for better or worse.

A Taste of Communism:
This seems like a pretty good idea for a book: adventures of a twenty-something in three Communist capitals. Throw in the kicky title and a punchy attitude and it can't lose. I enjoyed Griest's stories. Her writing style is light. I can understand the criticisms of one earlier reviewer here who thought Griest was too superficial and didn't learn anything. I'm not sure that's really the case, but Griest does keep her narrative in the moment, without spending too much time analyzing what it all meant. This makes for a smoother telling of the story. Griest spends the most time in Moscow and knew years ahead of time that she would go to Russia someday. This section was not surprisingly the best part of the book. The part about Beijing was okay, in which Griest works for an English-language Chinese newspaper. She never fits in and is constantly reminded of the fact. Her journey to Havana is a spur-of-the-moment trip, and it is more fun than Beijing. She doesn't have to worry about upsetting the boss or embarrassing her friends. Even though she's there for only a short time, she falls in love. She also falls in love in Russia, but only after she has been there quite awhile. And she never gets close to having a serious relationship in Beijing. Around the Bloc is a good first book. It isn't as good as Almost French by Sarah Turnbull, another book about a journalist who finds adventures halfway around the world. Although it's more revealing, somehow it isn't as personal. But I suspect that Griest will only get better and I look forward to more from her.