Reading

We do still have something in mass quantity…reading time. Here is the entire list of our digested literature so far: The Last Life by Claire Messud, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead, both by Orson Scott Card, The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin, Franny and Zooey and Catcher in the Rye, both by J.D. Salinger, The Comedians by Graham Greene, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, The Dispatches by Michael Herr, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Krick? Krak! and Breath, Eyes, Memory, both by Edwidge Danticat, “A” is for Alibi, “C” is for Corpse, “D” is for Detective, and “G” is for Gumshoe, all by Sue Grafton, Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama, and My Unwritten Books by George Steiner, Sometimes a Great Notion and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez and finally, The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason. Nearly all of these books have “cross-pollinated,” among us, and all have been satisfying, to say the least. We found some new favorites this trip. Mariam adored The Piano Tuner and is really enjoying My Unwritten Books. Genevieve takes the award for crazy fast reader, recommending both Poisonwood Bible and The Piano Tuner after downing each in two days flat. Max likes to talk about what he has read, including his faves of the trip, The Dispossessed and, surprise, The Piano Tuner.

An apt quote we read during our trip was this, about traveling:

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravel’d world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”