Latest Bookshelf

Being on the road always allows me some time to catch up on my long list of "books to read."

Here's what I brought on this trip:

Three Cups of Tea
Trans-Sister Radio
Plain Truth
White Teeth (this one is for the plane ride home)

Currently reading: Catfish and Mandala
A review of Catfish and Mandala from the Guardian

All have been great reads, ranging from a true story of a single man's mission to build schools for girls in Pakistan & Afghanistan (Three Cups of Tea) to a lesbian transsexual awaiting her surgery, who in the meantime, falls in love with one of his female students (legal-she's an adult from his summer film class) (in Trans-Sister Radio) to an unwed Amish girl birthing a baby in her family's barn, claiming the event never occurred, then is charged with first degree murder by PA state police and must appear in a US court (Plain Truth) to an eloquent account of a Viet-Kieu's experience touring his homeland on a bicycle. Pham's account is so poetically written that I feel almost drunk off his words as he leaves me satiating for more at the end of each chapter. He flips back and forth between present day on his cycling tour to sending us back into his childhood to relive his harrowing sea-escape from a war-torn Vietnam, which is only the beginning of his family's long, arduous journey to the US (Catfish and Mandala).

All of them have been great reads.