Summer O' Reading

Well, it took me long enough but I'm finally a card-carrying member of the Ann Arbor District Library! I was browsing at Borders this morning, trying to decide how to spend a $10 gift card, and I realized there were tons of books that I wanted to read but very few I actually cared to own. So I hurried over to the library, got my card, and promptly checked out two books (American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, if you are interested).

Meanwhile this summer (or judging by our week of 45-degree weather, spring), I've already read Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and The Witch of Portobello by Paul Coelho, and I'm halfway through Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. If you're interested in my reviews, I loved Water for Elephants although found it was a very different story than I was expecting. It was a quick and easy read--great for beach bumming. I actually really did not like The Witch of Portobello, which was surprising given how great Coelho's The Alchemist was. I thought this book was pretty one-sided and superficial; it didn't explore in much depth why celebration of the female divine is important. On the other end of the spectrum, I'm loving Three Cups of Tea! I have never traveled to Asia or the Middle East, but Mortenson's experiences in Pakistan remind me exactly of my time in Botswana and Madagascar. Little things that are so difficult to articulate come through in his book--the frustration with the "greediness" of the Pakistanis who fight and manipulate to get Mortenson's school built in their village, at the same time deciding (hoping?) that greediness is maybe explained away by extreme poverty, and the impatience with a society that seemingly never sticks to deadlines and moves at the pace of molasses. And then, the description of Mortenson's disbelief and disgust upon returning to the States, where he stands with a half-empty camping backpack in the middle of swarms of suburbanites dashing to their next espresso. Love it! To anyone who has ever spent time in a developing country, this book does a great job of expressing all the mixed emotions of being a foreigner trying to do good in a world that most fellow Americans don't care to understand.

So, I do hope that the weather here shapes up, quits raining, and decides to actually be summer, but if it doesn't, at least I now have endless opportunities for reading!