Book Clubs

Choose Trading in Memories for Your Book Club

1. Order Trading in Memories for your Book Club.
2. See the below Discussion Questions for suggestions.
3. Read what Barbara Hodgson has to say about Trading in Memories, travel and found art. See an interview with Barbara Hodgson.
4. Bring your own found object or treasure from your travels. Discuss its relevance to your travels, who you bought it from, how you selected it, why it's special to you.

About the Book: Trading in Memories by Barbara Hodgson

In Trading in Memories, Barbara Hodgson takes readers around the world to flea markets, book shops, courtyards, cemeteries and markets. She is in search of unwanted treasures that capture the essence of each locale.

About Barbara Hodgson

Barbara Hodgson is a book designer and writer. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her books are unique in that they combine her writing with a multitude of illustrations of various types drawn from a wide range of sources, including engravings, lithographs, photographs, stereo-cards, postcards, movie stills, and pulp magazine and novel covers.

Discussion Questions for Trading in Memories

1. Visiting markets, bookstores, cemeteries and courtyards, Barbara Hodgson looks to the world's cast-offs and curiosities to reveal the rich and intimate insights into people, places and times past. What representation of these locales stuck you the most?
2. Does Barbara Hodgson's perspective about what it means to be a traveler change your view of travel?
3. How do you imagine travelers define your city's culture? How do you define it?
4. Discuss the role of travel in the book. What effect does travel have on your perspective of home, and of yourself?
5. If you could choose to own one of Barbara Hodgson's found treasures, which object would would you choose and why?
6. The book ends with Barbara Hodgson discussing travel within her own city. What symbols or treasures would you seek out in your own city? What treasures have you desired from other cities or places you've traveled?
7. Bring an object from your travels to the book club meeting. What does it symbolize, where is it from, what is the story behind its acquisition?

   Trading in Memories
   Barbara Hodgson
   ISBN # 978-1-55365-199-4
   154 pgs with full-color illustrations and photographs
   $29.95 CDN; $24.95 USD

   Available at bookstores across the USA and Canada.