Touring with a Book (vs. Touring with a Band)

Authors

Date of this Version

2010

Document Type

Article

Citation

May 21, 2010 in The China Beat http://www.thechinabeat.org/

Comments

Copyright 2010. Used by permission.

Abstract

My “book tour,” which has had me adding a lot of miles to my frequent flyer account,has finally started winding down. I’ve got some things still to come, including an upcoming event in this area with Ian Johnson in June and then during the summer some book-related talks across the Pacific, including several Shanghai gigs (details to follow in a future post) and a July 24 presentation at the Suzhou branch of the Bookworm bookstore, and so on. Still, the pace has slowed down, which put me in a reflective mood and gave me time to finish writing a piece that had been forming in my mind since the start of the tour. It explores the contrasts (but also parallels) between touring with a band (something I grew up thinking I’d do some day, but have never done) and touring with a book. If you are interested in seeing the results of my ruminations on this theme, you can find them at the Huffington Post, with an accompanying slide shows made up of three of my own photos and two great shots they came up with to illustrate my “top 5 list” of parallels.