A book I‘ve been reading on and off for the past eight years; sometimes forgetting about it and then returning, always dreading getting to the final page and the end of this journey across the oceans. I did hit it today, but luckily I have little to no memory of most of the beautiful, anecdotal essays contained in this volume. Though I will likely never see any of Schalansky‘s islands in person, I will return to them in reading for sure.