I didn’t expect to buy many books during my trip to South America. The language was my main reason–as I don’t read Spanish or Portuguese–but nevertheless I did come home with nine new books. Irony of ironies is that the first book I acquired had nothing at all to do with our holiday, but was in fact related to our holiday last year. I enjoyed book hunting in Stanley, Falkland Islands the most. There were new imprints in the souvenir shops and a generous selection of older editions in a combination bookstore and philatelic shop called Falkland Collectibles. None of the books had prices on them so I had to ask the owner, Mr. Middleton. We chatted about older books, which in my case were books published before the war in 1982. I am happy to have found this:
The Falkland Islands by M. B. R. Cawkell, D. H. Maling and E. M. Cawkell was published in 1960, and was in immaculate condition with dust jacket. Chapter titles include Britain Takes Possession; The Port Louis Murders; and The Falkland Islands in Two World Wars. Black-and-white photo inserts were included among its 252 thick pages.
I like books on regional languages and was pleased to find Diddle-dee to Wire Gates: A Dictionary of Falklands Vocabulary by Sally Blake, Jane Cameron and Joan Spruce. The first term refers to a low-growing shrub which produces tiny berries which are used to make jam and jelly. The berries on the cover are diddle-dees. I wanted to buy some diddle-dee jam while there and was happy to purchase three small jars. Wire gates are also featured on the cover, and are used to pen in flocks of sheep. Photos supplemented the text. This was a birthday gift from Mark.
Before, During and After the Falklands War (and Part II) by Richard Stevens were both published in 2017. The war years are shared between both books, which are large-format paperbacks, so the Before portion only applies to part one and the After portion to Part II. Each book is filled with multiple colour photo inserts.
During our trip I learned about the native peoples of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. I liked the Museo del Fin del Mundo in Ushuaia which had exhibits and films about the indigenous peoples. In spite of this interest I did not get At Home with the Patagonians: A Year’s Wanderings Over Untrodden Ground from the Straits of Magellan to the Rio Negro by George Chaworth Musters (published with a blue cover, possibly an Argentine imprint) at any of our Argentine ports of call. I was fortunate to find it in Punta Arenas, Chile. It was originally published in 1871. The appendix includes a partial vocabulary of the Tsoneca language as spoken by the Northern Tehuelches.
Patagonia: History of Patagonia by Jaime Said had chapters on everything I was interested in learning about: The Origin of Human Civilization in Patagonia; Indigenous Peoples of Patagonia; Survival and Organization of the Patagons; The Discovery of America; Developments After the Exploration and Conquest of America and Patagonia; Religious Missions in Patagonia in the 17th and 18th Centuries; Times of Change in Europe and Migration to Patagonia.
Fotografías de Martin Gusinde en Tierra del Fuego (1919-1924): Imagen, materialidad, recepción by Marisol Palma Behnke is in Spanish, but I bought it because of its extensive illustrative content, which are the photos of the indigenous peoples who used to live on Tierra del Fuego a century ago.
¡Qué quilombo, che! Barron’s guide: Beware of the chanta by Nestor Barron is a short dictionary of lunfardo, or Buenos Aires slang for English speakers. The title translates to What a mess! and chanta has several definitions, yet the first sense is a chatterbox or a talkative person. Judging by the blurb on the back cover, which flat-out states “By the way: we talk so much. Chatting is a kind of national sport.” I’d say that the front cover is warning readers of loquacious porteños. A short English-Argentine guide is included at the end to guide English-speakers to the correct term in lunfardo.
The first book I acquired on this trip was this curiosity, the first edition of the Lonely Planet guide Madagascar & Comoros: a travel survival kit by Robert Willox, published in 1989. I found this book in the outdoor R 1.000 bin outside a closed second-hand bookshop that looked like a hoarder house inside. The book was filthy, and I had to wipe the front and back covers clean several times as it had tactile stains on it, but overall the condition was decent to take home. I had visited Antsiranana last year yet oddly there wasn’t a single word about the tuk-tuks that scoot around the city. How could the author not mention them? Unless they were introduced after 1989, but I doubt it. Editorial policies can change over 35+ years and I found Willox to be more opinionated than objective. Granted, travel was different in the late 80’s without the Internet and perhaps the infrastructure in Antsiranana was less developed, yet Willox’s commentaries came off more like a drinking buddy complaining about his travel hardships than as an objective travel journalist giving sensible advice. Even in the late eighties travel to the Comoros was rare so I appreciated his advice on how hard it can be to get there and what to do.
I picked up this travel guide in an unnamed bookstore adjacent to our hotel, the Principado Downtown, on Paraguay, before we left on our cruise. The bookstore was closed on the weekend, yet I had a chance to visit when we returned to Buenos Aires after the cruise. Inside was a hoarder nightmare, with nothing in any order whatsoever, and books piled high on tables. It was amazing that anyone could find anything in there. I saw two books that grabbed my interest, but the prices for both combined was R 50.000 which was almost $50 CDN and definitely not worth it. Both books were in English. One was on English communities in Argentina; the other was on the Falklands War. When Mark came into the store he wondered how ever I was able to find any English books at all. The lighting was dim and the aisles were narrow. I could not read the spines on the books because it was so dark, even when I was standing directly in front of them. Books were stacked on the bottom shelves which were inaccessible unless you sat on the floor. I never bothered to get down to see any shelf below waist level–not that I could have seen anything. Just way too much of a bother to figure out the titles of the books even at eye level. My photos of the interior of the store belie its dimness as I enhanced the brightness for my post.