Central Asia: the Making of a Booklist

Allie left me a comment asking how I find the books on Sunday that made me so excited I decided to devote a whole post to it:

I have a question for you. How do you research what you are going to read? You read so diversely and read so many authors and books that I have never heard of; do you have a system?

Oh, Allie. You do not know the monster that you have unleashed. I *love* to research. Some might say, I’m a little too into research.* In fact, my college gave out an award every year to the senior who had made best use of library resources on a research project.* Guess who won it the year I graduated? Oh yeah.*

The short answer would be: yes, I do have a system. Most of my reads come from the lists that I create for challenges (which have gotten longer and longer with each passing year, lol). I typically spend anywhere from 1-3 hours creating these lists (that includes all the formatting stuff so I can share them with you).*

For the long answer, well, I realised that the best way would be to create a booklist, talking you through the whole process! And for my topic, I picked the most central part of Central Asia: the ‘Stans and Mongolia. Why that bit? Mainly because I know nothing about their literature, could stand to know more about their history, and I’ve never researched it before. Oh, and Uzbek food is delicious.*

So, last year I only read one fiction book set in Central Asia: Blue Sky by the Mongolian author Galsin Tschinag. I popped over to Amazon, and looked up that title. Then, I looked at both the ‘similar books’ that they suggested, and scrolled down to see if any of the So You’d Like To… or Listmania options sounded helpful. This list sounded like a good bet, and even though most of the list is about Turkey, it did bring up one possible lead: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford (nonfic). This in turn led me (thanks to the ‘Customers Also Bought’ feature) Hearing Birds Fly by Louisa Waugh (nonfic). Then I found another neat-sounding travelogue about Mongolia: Eagle Dreams by Stephen Bodio. All that was fine, but a) I want to make sure I have more than just Mongolia on the list and b) these are all books by Western authors, which I’m not usually as excited about. So in this case, Amazon wasn’t being a great help (in the past, on less obscure topics, it’s been an incredible resource).

Time to move to my library’s catalogue*! First, I looked up Blue Sky. Then, I clicked on the ‘Catalog Record’ tab, which shows me all of the subjects that the book is filed under. One was ‘Mongolia — Fiction,’ so I clicked on it. This brought up 11 titles, of which I found the following interesting: Wolf Totem by Rong Jiang (this is a Chinese bestseller that I’d vaguely heard of before-it’s set in inner Mongolia & is about wolves and Communism and the effect of Han Chinese on the region), I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade by Diane Wilson (a YA novel about horses set in 1400s Mongolia…I then looked up the author and found out she’s Californian), and The Shadow Walker by Mike Walters (a mystery novel set in modern-day Ulan Bataar by a British author). Ok, so I don’t actually have any Mongolian authors yet, but I wanted to take check out the other countries before worrying more about that.

I vaguely remembered reading about a book that had to do with how apples originated in Kazakhstan. Back to Amazon, where a quick search brought me to Apples are From Kazakhstan by Christopher Robbins (a nonfic travelogue). Clicking on the ‘Kazakhstan’ subject on Amazon’s site wasn’t particularly helpful, although it did bring up Inside Central Asia by Dilip Hiro, which sounds really interesting to me, since I’m an international relations junkie. Going back to my library’s catalogue, doing a ‘Kazakhstan’ subject search brings up a few titles (including Borat. Sigh). The most interesting of these to me is The Silent Steppe by Mukhamet Shaikhemtov, since it’s a memoir by a Kazakhi. I return to Amazon to look it up, and it sounds good! I also check out When God Looked the Other Way by Wesley Adamczyk, which is a memoir by a Polish author whose family was exiled to Kazakhstan under USSR. It would certainly provide a different viewpoint, rounding out my reading list. I’m briefly curious about Chasing the Sea, which looks to be another travelogue, but then I remember how strongly I disliked the author (Tom Bissell’s) short story collection God Lives in St. Petersburg and dismiss it. Finally, I see a photography/coffee table book entitled The Soul of Kazakhstan, and the catalogue record shows that the essays are by Alma Kunanbay. That sounds like it has potential!

Still not finding many native authors. But I do a similar catalogue search for Uzbekistan, bringing up The Dancer from Khiva, a memoir by Uzbek woman Bibish…the summary makes it sound a bit sketchy though. Land Beyond the River by Monica Whitlock sounds helpful and interesting, even though it is another nonfiction book by a Westerner. I’m beginning to sense a theme here! Still, I optimistically do searches for Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. I turn up one memoir by John Kropf, a US State Department official, who served in the latter, Unknown Sands. Looking that title up on Amazon leads me to an interesting sounding Peace Corps memoir: Chai Budesh? Anyone for Tea? by Joan Heron.*

So, at this point, I feel like my ‘Nonfiction by Westerns’ limit has been reached. I’m on the hunt for some fiction, or any authors who are actually from the region. Time to turn to Google! A simple ‘literature central asia’ search brings me to a Salon article. I note Chingiz Aitmatov and am disappointed that he’s the only native author mentioned. Skimming this article turns up a few more names: Mamadali Mahmudov, Alishir Ibadinov, Tolongon Kasimbekov, Azize Caferzade, and Ilyas Esenberlin. I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll be able to ILL at least one or two of these. Hamid Ismailov’s The Railway sounds interesting, although the webpage is frustratingly uninformative.

Finally, I pop over to Library Thing to do a Central Asia tag search. I am reminded of a book I actually have on my shelves (and haven’t yet read): Jihad by Ahmed Rashid. I find that the most popular title of Aitmatov is The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years.

At this point, I’m getting a bit cranky. And concerned that I’ll end up with no fiction, and thus not be able to publish this post! So I open WorldCat, which I can access for free thanks to my library, to begin looking up the author names that I have. First up: Chingiz Aitmatov, and I’m happy to see that several of his novels are available at libraries close to mine!* I also have semi-good luck with The Railway by Hamid Ismailov; some libraries in California have it, so I might be able to get it. Unfortunately, the other authors are all too obscure-they’re available in Russian, but not in libraries near me.

In one last ditch effort before just accepting that my list will be Western-author and nonfiction heavy, I decide to visit Three Percent and Words Without Borders. While both of these sites are excellent sources for anyone interested in translated works, in this case, I come up empty.

Since this post has become ridiculously long, and because I’m out of bright ideas, it’s time to just list the books I’ve discovered. But if anyone has any fiction suggestions, I’d love to hear them! So here’s the final product, and what normally would pretty much be its own post…

Fiction Books about the ‘Stans and Mongolia:

• The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov
• The Railway by Hamid Ismailov
• Wolf Totem by Rong Jiang
• I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade by Diane Wilson
• The Shadow Walker by Mike Walters

Nonfiction Books about the ‘Stans and Mongolia:

• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
• The Secret History of the Mongol Queens by Jack Weatherford (I just edited the post on Wednesday night to include this. It’s a newly released nonfiction, and it’s rather like a sequel! My nerdy heart is going pitter-patter, and you better believe I’ll be getting Genghis Khan from the library soon.)
• Hearing Birds Fly by Louisa Waugh
• Eagle Dreams by Stephen Bodio
• Apples are From Kazakhstan by Christopher Robbins
• The Silent Steppe by Mukhamet Shaikhemtov
• When God Looked the Other Way by Wesley Adamczyk
• Land Beyond the River by Monica Whitloc
• Chai Budesh? Anyone for Tea? by Joan Heron
• Unknown Sands by John Kropf
• Jihad by Ahmed Rashid
• The Soul of Kazakhstan
• Inside Central Asia by Dilip Hiro

I hope that all of this was helpful to you! I chose a kind of obscure subject this time, which definitely made things harder, but I still ended up with quite a few books that sound really interesting. I always love making book lists, so if you have a topic you’d like to see me make a list on, just ask! When I’m making them for my own reference, I don’t include books I’ve already read, but if I’m making it for someone else, I suppose I should. lol So, do y’all have systems for finding books to read? Are they more or less involved than mine?

-*-

Footnote One: For example, when I was trying to decide between my top 2 college choices, I took each of their catalogues and planned out which classes I would take for all four years. My randomly assigned advisor during First Year Orientation week was a bit taken aback when he saw my colour coded plans.

Footnote Two: AND it came with a $200 check! Exciting, right?!

Footnote Three: In the interest of full disclosure, since I was doing a year-long honors project, I had a reference librarian ‘assigned’ to me (he really had all the social science students, but whatever) at the beginning of the year. He was brand-new, and young, and incredibly hot. This might or might not have influenced my decision to meet with him regularly. ;)

Footnote Four: I usually watch movies while I’m researching. For example, I’m watching The Skeleton Key right now. I lurve that movie…it’s my style of horror (not gorey, just creepy), it’s set in New Orleans & the Bayou, and it has not only the adorable Kate Hudson but also Gena Rowlands, who I aspire to be like when I grown up, and Peter Sarsgaard, who is such an amazing actor. Y’all should rent it if you haven’t seen it before.

Footnote Five: Seriously. Moscow has this great Uzbek place on Arbat that I went to at least four times during my 11 days there. And I devoted a significant amount of time in Krasnodar to trying to find an Uzbek place. Although, I’m heard that most of Central Asia subsists on horse meat and yak’s milk. So perhaps it’s just Uzbek restaurants abroad that are so magical?

Footnote Six: And if your library catalogue sucks, you can always use mine to look things up! Of course, you couldn’t borrow things but better than nothing.

Footnote Seven: I planned to join the Peace Corps after college, and was assigned to francophone sub-saharan Africa, but didn’t get my medical clearance. I’ve had a thing for RPCV memoirs ever since! And maybe one day, when I’ve retired, and I’ve had my fibro under control for decades, I’ll manage to join anyway.

Footnote Eight: Whenever I try to ILL (interlibrary loan) something, I make sure there’s at least a few copies in my state. Otherwise, I figure the chances decrease the further away the available books are.