We realized the other day that we spend a lot of time reading, whether it’s online or offline. This led to an idea to start a new monthly feature where we will link to the best things we read this month, as well as recommend some good books. So here is our best in reading for May!

Rachel’s Reads

Blogs

• Traveling 9 to 5 just posted a great and funny guide to ordering food in another language.
• Around the World in Four Jandals has an extremely useful list of basic Arabic words for travel in Egypt.
• Legal Nomads has a very interesting post on how it is very easy to be gluten-free in Italy, and why.
• The Expert Vagabond posted a great Travel Banking 101 article.
• Here’s a list I want to complete: BootsNAll‘s 10 Best Horse Treks Around the World.
• Migrationology made me drool with a trip to a fruit buffet.
• I also want to go to all the places on Wild Junket‘s culinary travel list.
• Jack and Jill Travel wrote about how they both love and hate Morocco.
• A Little Adrift has an excellent guide to being vegetarian in Burma.
• The Everywhereist wrote about 7 Bavarian foods to try.
• Adventurous Kate challenges travelers to make a priority list rather than a bucket list.

Books – I finished six books in May, but I only recommend two of them.

• Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi. You’ve probably heard of Persepolis – at least the movie. This is the first part of the graphic novel about growing up in Iran. It’s very good!
• Beasts of New York: A Children’s Book for Grown-Ups by Jon Evans. This is a book about a squirrel’s grand adventure, from the perspective of the squirrel. Like the title says though, it’s not really for kids. It’s definitely quite violent. The animals aren’t special, they can’t actually talk or anything – they communicate in ways that you can believe could be real. It’s very epic and I really enjoyed it, though it gets pretty ridiculous at the end.

Jeff’s Reads

Links -

• 30 Great Pillows Send your enemies a horse head in the most comfortable way possible.
• Most Delicious Looking Thing I’ve seen recently. Adding one of my favorite foods (duck confit) to poutine!? Sounds incredible.
• Actual Graveyard for discontinued Ben and Jerry’s flavors.
• Guar Bean prices are skyrocketing because of natural gas mining.
• How Has Hormel dealt with all the bad press that junk email has caused for their product, SPAM?
• Head Trauma Can Cause Genius. Don’t try this at home.

Books – I don’t keep as close track of the books I read as Rachel, I’ll just give you a few highlights.

• King Rat by China Mieville. It’s certainly good. His style is very distinctive, but I would recommend some of his other books over this one. Try Perdido Street Station  instead, it was one of my favorite books of last year.
• 1632 by Eric Flint. Whenever I read history, I’m always imagining what I would do if I was suddenly transported to that time by surprise. This book is about exactly that so I really enjoyed it. My only complaint was that it was a bit too neat and there are never any obstacles that are very difficult to overcome.
• Tales of the Otori Trilogy by Lean Hearn. They are well written historical fantasy novels set in fictional Japan. If that sounds good to you, I would definitely recommend them.

What were your best reads this month?