I mentioned Barbara Hodgson in my post on adventurous women yesterday but she has a new book out this year that is so unique and beautiful to look at that I want to give it a full post's attention. All of Hodgson's books are illustrated in various ways - either with pictures, drawings and maps or lists, notes and ephemera or combinations of some or all of those. In Trading in Memories, she has written an autobiography of her collecting habits, explaining where around the world she has gone while researching her books (both novels and nonfiction) and what she has found along the way to inspire her work. I've never seen a book like this, but then again I've never encountered a writer like Hodgson anywhere else, so it doesn't surprise that she should work from such a uniquely creative place.

Memories serves partly as a memoir (no big surprise there), as Hodgson reveals some of the places she has lived and visited and why. It is also a travelogue where she shares her impressions of various locales but veers away from the standards of this genre when her focus on "a scavenger's favorite places". Every page is heavily illustrated with examples of her discoveries, but these are bits of paper and history that would likely be passed by most shoppers in search of the shiny and new. Hodgson needs these bits of the past to infuse her books with authenticity and gives even her novels an air of factual truth. As her books are set in such farflung locales (various European countries for The Sensualist, Morocco for The Tattooed Map, Damascus for The Lives of Shadows, South America for Hippolyte's Island), the things she highlights in Memories all have an aura of the exotic. (The Sensualist is ridiculously on sale at Powells right now.)

I'm torn as to what I found most interesting to read about here - Pierre Loti's books and collections on the Far and Middle East (would you believe that Lesley Blanch wrote a book about Loti?), the saga of the Arabic typewriter or the insights to the Forbes Museum in Tangier. Hodgson has collected pictures of criminals in Portland, fossils in Vancouver (where she lives) x-rays in Brussels. In one way or another all of these bits and pieces have influenced her writing and thus are significant to her work. She does not collect merely for the act of collecting; she uses this stuff in really original ways. If you get a chance you must pick up one of her novels and see the illustrations - they're gorgeous - and then consider that she actually travels all over the world and finds the items you are looking at. These truth in all aspects of her writing raises the novels up to a higher level - it makes you appreciate the stories as more than just a pleasurable read (which they most certainly are).

Trading in Memories is not an author Q &A or a long essay on "where do I get my ideas". Hodgson wrote the book to share some of the interesting things she has found and unusual people she has met in pursuit of her stories over the past few decades. If you know a history lover or someone with a travel bug then this book is a must. There is nothing else like it out there and it must be seen to be fully appreciated.

Love it, totally and completely, love it.

[All images from Trading in Memories, courtesy the book's web site. You can read a review of the book from The Ottawa Citizen here.]