So I think this will be my last post before the year is out. Tomorrow I am off to Mali. I will be there for two weeks. I am returning on the 22nd. Next, we have Christmas and New Year's and a birthday. I will be very busy with all of this. So I thought that for the people who read this I would talk about completing my first year of service in PC. So when I first arrived to The Gambia I didn't know what to expect; I still don't. I am able to kind of speak my language. The people here are incredible. Some of the kindest human beings out there. I was placed with a great host family. My projects are slowly coming together. I made a lot of good friends here over this year. The PC experience is what I have always been looking for, it feels like one large family. Life is good. I have read lot since being in The Gambia and here are the books I have read:
1. No One Gets Out of Here Alive - Danny Sugarman and Jerry Hopkins
2. All The Strange Hours - Loren Eiesley
3. Blood River - Tim Butcher
4. Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
5. In Dubious Battle - John Steinbech
6. In Patagonia - Bruce Chatwin
7. A Burnt-Out Case - Graham Greene
8. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - Bill Bryson
9. About a Boy - Nick Hornby
10. The Great Escape - Kati Marton
11. The Wizard of the Nile - Matthew Greene
12. Welcome to Hell - Colin Martin
13. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
14. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris
15. Post Office - Charles Bukowski
16. I'm a Stranger Here Myself - Bill Bryson
17. The Zanzibar Chest - Adian Hartley
18. Heart of Darkness - Joesph Conrad
19. A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn
20. Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
21. Naked - David Sedaris
22. The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran
23. Posioned Wells - Nicholas Shaxson
24. Dubliners - James Joyce
25. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
26. A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
27. Don't Go There - Peter Greenberg
28. A Continent for the Taking - Howard W. French
29. The Back Country - Gary Synder
30. The Motorcycle Diaries - Ernesto 'Che' Guevara
31. Fargo Rock City - Chuck Klosterman
32. The Rum Diary - Hunter S. Thompson
33. Blue Latitudes - Tony Horwitz
34. Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs - Chuck Klosterman
35. The Orchard Keeper - Cormac McCarthy
36. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzergearld
37. The Subterreans - Jack Kerouac
38. Gulliver's Travels - Johnathan Swift
39. Ishmael - Daniel Quinn
40. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
41. The Mystic Masseur - V. S. Naipaul
42. The Night Country - Loren Eiesley
43. The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
44. Visions of Gerard - Jack Kerouac
45. Blue Clay People - William Powers
46. The Worst Hard Time - Timothy Egan
47. Child of God - Cormac McCarthy
48. No Longer at Ease - Chinua Achebe
49. A Discourse by Three Drunkards on the Government - Nakae Chomin
50. Islam, A Mosaic, Not a Monolith - Vartan Gregorian
51. Maggie Cassidy - Jack Kerouac
52. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
53. Sweet Thursday - John Steinbech
54. The First Man - Albert Camus
55. The Beat Motel - Barry Miles
56. The Book of Honor - Ted Gup
57. What We Say Goes - Noam Chomsky
58. First They Killed My Father - Loung Ung
59. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
60. Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl
61. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
62. Shadow of the Sun - Ryszard Kapuscinski
63. A Bend in the River - V. S. Naipaul
64. The Immense Journey - Loren Eiesely
65. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
66. Catch-22 - Joesph Heller
67. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgav
68. The Memory of Old Jack - Wendell Berry
69. Songs of the Doomed - Hunter S. Thompson
70. A Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold
71. Dark Star Safari - Paul Theroux
72. Dream Story - Arthur Schnitzler
73. Captain's Courageous - Rudyard Kipling
74. Round Ireland with a Fridge - Tony Hawks
75. Half the Sky - Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn
76. White Nights - Fyodor Destoyevsky
77. Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
78. The Glass Castle - Jeanette Walls
79. The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
80. The Call of the Wild - Jack London
So yeah, I read a lot of this year. I want to make a New Year's Res. I hope to write more and to write better blogs. Until Next Year! Much Love to All.
That's some serious readin' sir! How 'bout those eiseley books? some of my favs ever, especially The Night Country and All the Strange Hours. There's something about his lonerish character that I can't get enough of- and such an unromantic and yet strangely big-hearted relationship to nature. I love that story about the turtle in the beginning of all the strange hours. I read that Dostoevsky story once too: so sad! I recommend Notes from Underground if you liked it at all.
ReplyDeleteI envy you; my free time to read is mostly shot now that I have a mortgage to pay and a little baby to take care of. Oh yeah, that: sorry I haven't kept you better informed. I have a little girl named Anna Wren born in July at my house, right in our bedroom. Things are good here. We eat well, mostly local food, I'm working for a local food distributor, we have 5 residents in the house and someone cooking a hot meal for us 5 nights a week. Anna's already changed so much since the beginning, making all kinds of sounds and faces, grokkin' the world real hard. Things are good.
How's that soccer tournament going?
I don't know if you got my email with that other post a while back, but its medwards1983@gmail.com.
Happy holidays,
Peace and best of luck to you.
-Matt
Ah man, you've read some GOOD ones! I loved, loved, loved Confederacy of Dunces; Catch 22 - classic!; Clockwork Orange - fascinating!; and No One Here Gets Out Alive is the best bio I've ever read (and I've read a lot!) Anyway, sounds like I'd be in heaven there with all that time to read....you should try to find some of Tim Dorsey's books if you haven't read any. An expert on Florida, his novels feature a serial killer named Serge Storms and his sidekicks. Serge is a likable killer, with very bizarre and varied modus operandi, and the books will make you laugh out loud at some parts....anyway, very entertaining if you can find them.
ReplyDeleteIt's really good to hear you sounding happy with your choice to do the PC thing. Wish I'd had that kind of courage when I was younger.
Well, take care. We missed you at Christmas, and every day.
Happy New Year!
I love you.
Aunt Kathy
Oops, P.S. I recommend Triggerfish Twist to get you started on Dorsey...if you get that one, then you'll love them all.
ReplyDeletekathy