A consistency amongst Peace Corps Volunteers the country over seems to be the amount of reading that we do. When living in another country, surrounded by the strange and foreign, reading is a great way to retreat away while still maintaining some semblance of brain activity. Apparently this theme has been pretty consistent throughout the history of the Peace Corps, returned volunteers laud the libraries volunteers have access to in the main office, and book swapping is extremely common.
But as with everything else, the information age changes things a bit and now most volunteers have Kindles, Nooks, or Sony eReaders. Besides the computer, the Kindle is probably the most important thing I've brought as it allows me to have a full library of books at my fingertips. I'm still a poor volunteer so I don't really have the money to be purchasing books, but the Kindle has a massive library of free books available for download. These tend to be the classics, which is another side benefit, as I'll return back to the US with a large amount of these classic books under my belt.
Anyway, since I don't have anything terribly positive to write in this email (the weather...has been...terrible...) I figured I would share my reading list.
Free: The Future of a Radical Price - Chris Anderson
The Book of Three - Lloyd Alexander
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel - Rolf Potts
The Blue Fair Book - Andrew Lang
The Pink Fairy Book - Andrew Lang
Japanesse Fair World: Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan - William Elliot Griffis
The Black Cauldron - Lloyd Alexander
The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles - Padaric Colum
Autobiography of a Yogi - Paramhansa Yogananda
The Art of War - Sun Tzu
The Gambler - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Grey Fairy Book - Andrew Lang
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Celtic Tales Told to the Children - Louey Chisholm
Ozma of Oz - L. Frank Baum
The House of Llyr - Lloyd Alexander
How to Tell a Story and Other Essays - Mark Twain
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin
The Lilac Fairy Book - Andrew Lang
An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth - Ghandi
I highly recommend The Golden Fleece, or any book you find by Padaric Colum. He's my favorite storyteller. Also, I was surprised how much I enjoyed both the Autobiography of a Yogi and of Benjamin Franklin. And Crime and Punishment probably has the best ending of read in a long time.
Somewhere I read that there are two types of readers, those who read one book at a time and those who read many books at the same time. I am definitely of the latter, usually in the midst of three different books at a time, switching between them as one might change channels after a show finishes. Here are those I'm currently reading as well:
Making Ideas Happen - Scott Belsky
Processing the Experience: Strategies to Enhance and Generalize Learning - John Luckner and Reldan Nadler
The Witch and Other Stories - Anton Chekov
The Patchwork Girl of Oz - L. Frank Baum
The Sayings of Confucius - Confucius
Thus Spake Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietchze
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