Trading in Memories: Travels Through a Scavenger's Favorite Places [Hardcover]

Barbara Hodgson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 2007

Those who wish to understand a city's history visit museums, but Barbara Hodgson prefers a different approach. She explores the streets, bookstores, and markets, where a city reveals its most private self, displaying the contents of its attics and trash bins. Back alleys, obscure cemeteries, and hidden courtyards also offer up surprising finds and capture the essence of the city. Covering a wide cultural and physical geography from Brussels to Marrakech and Damascus to Portland, Trading in Memories follows Barbara Hodgson's travels through markets and other repositories of material culture around the world. The book looks deep into history through such objects as chandeliers left by French expatriates fleeing Shanghai in 1937 and glass lantern slides and stereoscope cards from around the world that attest to the human impulse for wanderlust, free or forced. This sumptuous book presents a wonderful visual and textual record of the true life and character of a place.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There are books and then there are extraordinary portals to the imagination. Vancouver author, book designer, and globe-trotting packrat Barbara Hodgson crafts the latter. Whether writing fiction (The Tattooed Map, The Sensualist), non-fiction (The Rat: A Perverse Miscellany) or angular travel journals (Italy Out of Hand), Hodgson drops readers into palpable netherworlds with exquisite storytelling and accompanying images. Imagine that--books with pictures for grown-ups! It may be a simple formula, but it's Hodgson's and it works like a charm every time.

Trading in Memories, Hodgson's diary of her journeys through the flea markets of Europe, North Africa and North America and presented scrapbook-like with snapshots of her amazing finds, is a revelation that guides readers down back alleys and into musty shops. In each, we flank Hodgson as she gently fingers trinkets and seashells, sifts through distressed maps, stacks and unstacks slides and expired passports, all the while conversationally remarking on what this detritus represents--or could represent, given the right context and a bit of back story.

Of course, the people we meet through Hodgson's travels (some living, some dead) add yet another remarkable layer to these richly detailed vignettes. Like Hodgson, we can only step back and marvel at those who have tiptoed through history, scattering biographical fragments here and there before retreating to destinations where sepia-toned photographs, house deeds and wooden boxes are unnecessary. Thanks to Hodgson, the departed can rest easy knowing their worldly goods, however meager or displaced, have at last found a warm and loving home. --Kim Hughes

Review

"As always, [Hodgson] evocatively intertwines her design and verbal skills. ...Readers will find themselves tripping along after her, charmed as she picks up a long-ago discarded passport and half-imagines, half-explains the travels that the document surely knew. ...Highly recommended for armchair travel and material culture collections." -- Library Journal Starred Review

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Greystone Books; First Printing edition (September 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1553651995
• ISBN-13: 978-1553651994
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #296,873 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Delightful, December 25, 2007

By 

Lesley West (St James, Western Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Trading in Memories: Travels Through a Scavenger's Favorite Places (Hardcover)

This little book is almost a treasure trove in itself. The author discusses her penchant for finding all manner of interesting bits and pieces, much of it discarded, in flea markets, bazaars, fetes and even rubbish bins on her travels throughout the world. The book itslelf is beautifully bound and reproduced, with gorgeous illustrations of bits and pieces and observations. I especially liked the chapter which tells of the punishments meted out to people who attempt to acquire a "Danger Landmines" sign in the Falklands.

But a small criticism - this would have made a wonderful, much longer book. We have only a taste of the author's penchant for the odd and discarded - I would have liked many more tales. I'll have to satisfy myself with wondering what her house looks like!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Random Collector's Treasure Trove, April 28, 2008

By 

E. Hodge "A Scribbler" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Trading in Memories: Travels Through a Scavenger's Favorite Places (Hardcover)

This book is so much fun; especially for those who love to loiter in dusty shop corners looking for mementos from the past...If Ephemera is your middle name, this book is for you. Ms. Hodgson takes you through years of her wanderings in world capitals and byways looking for whatever takes her fancy...things which might include old picture albumns, theater and sports stickers and tickets from the early 1900s or earlier, old containers and other cast off treasures. The only problem with this is that it's too short...More books like this, please!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This book is like a Confession, May 26, 2009

By 

Stephanie Goodell "starwildflowr" (Kailua-Kona, HI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Trading in Memories: Travels Through a Scavenger's Favorite Places (Hardcover)

Certainly not for everyone.I enjoyed this book because I am big fan of Barbara Hodgson and having read her other works, I was able to make the connections between her travels and how they influenced her books. However I do believe that someone who just happened to pick this book up might be bored to death. It was like an "inside joke" in that respect. It reminded me a little of Nick bantock's 'Artful Dodger'; the behind the scenes look at his other published work. Hers was not so disclosing. I am not sure exactly what the intention of this publication was meant to be now that I have read it. It isn't a guide to these places, nor is it a biography or memior of the author exactly, it is almost a confession of someone plagued by obsession. Which isn't to say that a passion for ephemera is sick and wrong but, her writing almost suggests that it is a affliction she can't escape and this is were it has brought her.The photos are (as always) absolutely lovely and are what makes this book a page-turner as you find yourself eager to discover the story behind each strange and unusual image.It isn't her best so don't judge her work by this if you haven't read her other books, but if you are familiar with her writings then you may be one of the select who will find this book interesting.