Imani, Sunday Salon: Trading in Memories (November 25, 2007), says ...

Like many of her previous books, Trading in Memories is a striking combination of compelling writing about places off the beaten track and illustrations of various kinds that bring the subject to life. It’s part travel journal and partly a manual for seeking “the irretrievably obscure.”

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Alexander Varty, Georgia Straight (October 11, 2007) says ...

Trading in Memories: Travels Through a Scavenger’s Favorite Places (Greystone Books, $29.95) jumps all over the map, from Paris to Budapest to Portland, and from antique lace to Arabic typewriters to cigarette tins. It’s a voyage of discovery, but the wonders unearthed don’t involve mountaineering garb, scuba tanks, or the superhuman stamina of a Wilfred Thesiger. Instead, her sport is a kind of extreme shopping, with beautiful bargain-basement prizes.

Hodgson, who is also a book designer, has published both novels (e.g., The Tatooed Map) and nonfiction (e.g., Italy Out of Hand). As always, she evocatively intertwines her design and verbal skills. There is the whiff of Proust here but the hands and heart of a practical rummager; her intellect, her reveries, and her well-traveled feet thread their way through the old markets and dusty shops of the cities she most favors for her adventures, made up as much of browsing as buying.

Toronto Star, September 23, 2007, says ...

“You can’t help but be astonished by the bizarre factoids and tidbits of history Hodgson unearths as she moves between makeshift stalls in London and Los Angeles, Brussels and Budapest, haggling with vendors and coaxing details out of them that otherwise might never have been told, much less recorded for posterity.”