Genre Kryptonite Guidebooks to Wonder

Genre Kryptonite Guidebooks to Wonder In my professional life, I pin down the documented facts of historical events big and small. While the lingering presence of the past has an incredible amount of power, and I will always read books about the magic that happens inside an archive, I sometimes worry that history-as-facts drains it of anything resembling awe. When I get too hung up on this worry, I turn to books about the worlds real wondrous places. In descriptions  of places that dont quite make sense or events that cant be easily explained, I find  places where the past and the present butt up against each other, illuminating both and inspiring astonishment  that were all  here,  now. Books about the worlds mysteries seem to be having a moment. Maybe its because this year  has been one giant kick in the teeth, so the thought of running off to caves hidden along a shoreline or setting out to the worlds most isolated place is especially appealing. Maybe its because, paradoxically, as technology makes knowing where you are geographically  simpler, it makes knowing existentially where you are that much harder. Whatever the reason, Ill happily take it. When I need to imagine being someplace else, Ive been dipping in and out of  Atlas Obscura: An Explorers Guide to the Worlds Hidden Wonders, edited by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thomas, and Ella Morton. This book is beautiful color photographs, maps, excellent graphic design and has over 600 short entries about extraordinary places and things all over the world. Each includes an address and GPS coordinates so you can set off on a journey right now, if you want. Because of this book, Im now daydreaming about the thousands of fireflies that flash in unison by a group of  mangrove trees in Kuala Lumpur. Closer to home, I am now desperate to visit the Weeki Wachee Mermaid Show. Thats got to feel a bit  like walking in to Karen Russells amazing book Swamplandia!, right? Atlas of Improbable Places: A Journey to the Worlds Most Unusual Corners  by Travis Elborough, with maps by Alan Horsfield, is a curated guide  to places that just dont quite make sense. Elborough organized the book by  theme Dream Creations, Floating Worlds, Otherworldly Spaces, and more rather than geography, which makes it easy to  decide what genre of oddity or  improbability you want to consider based on your mood. The large black and white photographs, coupled with beautifully simple maps, gives this book an air of sophistication and inspires more than a little awe.  After browsing through this atlas, I have an  intense desire to visit The Lost City of San Juan Parangaricutiro, abandoned after an eight-year volcanic eruption in 1943! Thats 73 years ago but still  feels so recent to just abandon a city. As much as I love lusciously illustrated atlases books that will help me plan my next adventure, as a format, the atlas  is wrapped up with notions of conquest and consumption. When I want a break from books that encourage  viewing the worlds wonders as something to reach or obtain, I turn to Judith Schalanskys lyrical, meditative  Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will  (translated from German by Christine Lo). This book is a visual and textual guide to islands of self-discovery. Neither fiction nor non-fiction, Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands  presents the reader with  50 different islands and their stories. Schalansky used various real  events, historical figures, and scientific studies as the starting point for essays in which she reflects on what space, wonder, history, geography, and isolation mean. Finally, sometimes the only way to consider a place is without images of that place to distract you. Lauret Savoys  Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape will make the familiar unfamiliar. This incredible book is explicitly about confronting the ways that Americas history is all around us, rich with meaning and tempered by ironies. This book inspired  awe (and more than a little horror) in me as I saw the American landscape anew. So, where are we off to next? Full disclosure: I do freelance writing and event planning for Atlas Obscura. However, I genuinely like their book. They did not ask me to write this piece.