http://www.readertravels.com Trip with me... Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:27:16 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In Ahab's Wife, a few shipwrecked characters find themselves adrift at sea in a life boat eating  their dead to live, but blocking out the memory of the trauma. Victims of exposure to sun and salty air, their minds become blurred, and after rescue, they never spoke of what they had ... http://www.readertravels.com/2010/07/surviving-memory/ Once upon a time, I thought I might try to be a lawyer. I found myself in the Houston District Attorney's office pressing charges against a bad boyfriend, and I thought to myself, hey, this might not be a bad job to have. So, I took a pre-law type class ... http://www.readertravels.com/2010/07/is-cannibalism-evil/ With all these stories of cannibals in the Caribbean during colonial times, some of it must be true, right? There are disputes about whether it actually happened, or if the colonists were just afraid of the natives to such an extent that they attributed their worst fears to them. Well, if ... http://www.readertravels.com/2010/06/racism-or-cannibalism/ Hannibal Lector prides himself on having exquisite taste in all things, not just food. He loves fine classical music, great art, wines and liqueurs. He buys only the best in cars, knives, perfumes, clothes, cookware. He can afford to be choosy, but he also takes what he wants and manipulates ... http://www.readertravels.com/2010/06/hannibal-the-connoisseur/ So as part of my food travel adventures, I found myself reading Hannibal by Thomas Harris. I had seen the movie, so I was all prepared for the whole brain eating episode. I'm not as big on organ meat as Dr. Lector is, but I love chicken hearts, and I ... http://www.readertravels.com/2010/06/brain-food/ I sometimes think much of the morality we have manufactured over the centuries comes from humans attempting to deny that they are also animals. After all, the "original sin" is sex, something that we must do to procreate, as animals. So then the next thing to moralize about is what ... http://www.readertravels.com/2010/06/on-food-and-morality/ The Reader Travels is no longer just a solitary blog site feeding into my Facebook account. I've recently started The Reader Travels Vagabond Edition as part of the Vagabond Journey's new blogger community. For now, it just means that I'm posting parallel blog entries each week, but I haven't yet ... http://www.readertravels.com/2010/05/branching-out/ When Arthur Dent found himself in a conversation with a cow at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, he couldn't help becoming a vegetarian.  I mean, what would you do if a cow stood there asking you which piece of her you'd like to eat? Perhaps you'd say, "I'll ... http://www.readertravels.com/2010/05/talking-to-your-food/ In honor of Mother's Day, I'd like to talk a little about guilt. Since my mother instilled in us what she called "a healthy sense of guilt," I became a minor hedonist to balance things out a bit. So I love sex and I love food, and I feel no ... http://www.readertravels.com/2010/05/food-conscience/ So every traveler must face foods he has never eaten before. It's part of the adventure to experience new things. These foods may seem unpalatable at first, but then we find that if we open our minds, they actually come out tasting quite delicious. As in the case of "Green ... http://www.readertravels.com/2010/05/i-do-like-them-sam-i-am/