Books I've Read

One of the things I've enjoyed so much about studying abroad is the abundance of time and lack of distractions that have given me a chance to read a lot. Here's a list of what I've read so far, in semi-chronological order (as best as my memory can produce) with a few comments.


On the Road - Jack Kerouac: I really enjoyed this, I can see how it would have been totally radical in its time, but it wasn't so much for me. Still, it captures 50's America in a really lucid way.

Far and Beyon' - Unity Dow: Required reading with great dialogs and painful narration.

Place of Reeds - Caitlin Davies: A vivid and powerful account of one English woman's life in Botswana.

Mountains Beyond Mountains - Tracy Kidder: A really amazing story about a doctor, Paul Farmer, who travels the world trying to improve healthcare for all. In one of the greatest coincidences of this century, I actually met a doctor who worked with Paul Farmer while I was interning at a hospital in Molepolole. She also went to Pomona. Madness.

Bel Canto - Ann Patchett: A sappy and not-believable romance novel about hijackers and such, lame.

IV - Chuck Klosterman: A collection of essays, magazine articles, and fiction writen throughout Klosterman's career. Really great social commentary on pop culture, completely hilarious. He can make you interested in people, music groups, etc that you never cared about before.

Everything Is Illuminated - Johnathan Safran Foer: Ooo, I loved this book a lot. The way Foer writes is hilarious as the Romanian character Sasha, who's in love with his thesaurus even though he uses incorrectly.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows - J.K. Rowling: I pissed off a lot of Harry Potter diehards in my group by reading the last book first. I enjoyed it a lot, certainly a lot more than I thought I would.

The Slate Diaries - Various: This is a compilation of essays written from slate.com, basically blog before "the blog" existed. Famous writers/important people and also the average citizens contributed in a daily diary style fashion for a week each. Really interesting and humorous insights.

Death and the Penguin - Andrey Kurkov: One of those darkly humorous post-Soviet satires, I guess, that's what the back cover says. A funny and quirky story about a struggling Ukrainian writer who writes obituaries for a local paper but gets accidentally entangled in the mafia. The main character also has a pet penguin that Kurkov renders perfectly, as if we all knew exactly what it's like to have a pet penguin.

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote: Almost finished with this one. This story is what I imagine you'd get if you combined Fargo and On the Road. I had seen the movie Capote, which is about Truman Capote's experience writing the book (not a movie of the book at all, per se). So I definitely had a different perspective going into it, knowing that writing In Cold Blood took such an emotional tole on Capote that he was never the same again. Really good and completely fascinating.

I'd strongly recommend all of these books, except Bel Canto which felt more like drug store book rack melodrama than legitimate fiction. Far and Beyon' did reveal insights into Setswana culture, sure. But man, Dow would just keep beating you over the head with the morals/lessons she wanted you to take away from the book, even though they were obvious to begin with.

At 11 books in four months, that's easily a personal record. It would have been more, but I ran out in Molepolole about a week into the three week stay.