I admit I’m a bit of a book monster. I blame it primarily on my mother, who would read Agatha Christie murder mysteries, westerns, or pretty much any other genre of book out-loud to my brother and me until the wee hours of the morning. Or perhaps is was my father, who was somehow able to captivate my 6 year-old attention span while reading us accounts of the Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic. Either way, the habits stuck with me, and I’ve normally got a book stuffed away in my purse.
The point is, I’ve always found that what I’m reading is a formative part of my everyday experience, so for those of you curious about what this year has been like, you should know what books I’ve been leafing through in the early hours of the morning when normal people are sleeping. Here’s my book list since arriving in Peru. I’ve starred the ones that I particularly enjoyed…
Fiction
Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
*The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge – Ranier Maria Rilke
*Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
*Eva Luna – Isabel Allende
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
Eleven Minutes – Paulo Coelho
The Devil and Miss Prim – Paulo Coelho
*Little Bee – Chris Cleave
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
El Coronel no tiene quien le escriba – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Sophie’s Choice – William Styron
Iqbal – Francesco D’Adamo
Inés of My Soul – Isabel Allende
*A Fine Balance – Mistry Rohinton
Chinese Cinderella – Adeline Yen Mah
*Stories – Anton Chekhov
Empire Falls – Richard Russo
Theological/Spiritual Readings
Life of the Beloved – Henri Nouwen
*Gracias – Henri Nouwen
Jesus for the Non-Religious – John Shelby Spong
We Drink from Our Own Wells- Gustavo Gutierrez
Spiritual Direction – Henri Nouwen
Academic
Mountains Beyond Mountains – Tracy Kidder
Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Paulo Freire
Currently Reading…
La cuidad y los perros – Mario Vargas Llosa
The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics
Binding the Strong Man – Ched Myers (been struggling through this one since Sep…)
Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century – Marc H Ellis
that’s a great picture. and that’s totally my book.
what a stellar reading list!!
I recommend “Everything Is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer. So good. That seems to be the only book I’ve been able to finish this year though
Still truckin through Les Miserables…two years later.
Love you@
Good suggestion. That’s one of my favorite movies, and I loved Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by him…I’ll have to look for it when I get back state-side.