Some Books I´ve Been Reading

I have quite a bit of free time here.  The Chinchillas often spend their nights watching telenovelas, but I find them nearly impossible to follow.  The most popular one in the Chinchilla house comes on every day, and I swear that someone dies or gets married or puts a voodoo spell on someone or changes their mind about being in love with someone every five minutes.  That´s a lot to keep up with at half-speed Spanish!

So, I´ve been reading.

Here´s what I´ve read so far - have any of you read any of these?

Say You´re One of Them - Uwem Akpan
     Short fiction stories set in Africa.   Some are very, very hard to read, but it is a book I found myself thinking about days later, which says something good about how powerful it is.

The Geography of Bliss - Eric Weiner
     This is a non-fiction book about a guy visiting the five "happiest countries on earth."  I found it vaguely interesting and liked some of the common threads between the happy countries, but didn´t at all enjoy the author´s writing.

A Gate At the Stairs - Lorrie Moore
     A novel by someone I had never heard of, this follows a young college girl through her first (?) year at school in the post 9/11 midwest.  It is a strange story, and I think it could have been told well while cutting a third of the length, but I looked forward each day to the next time I´d get to read on in it.

Possible Side Effects - Augusten Burroughs
     This was a nice break from the more serious reading I´d been doing - by the author of Running with Scissors and Dry, both of which I enjoyed.  I liked having something light to sit down to, but missed the narrative that the other two books had.  This one is more a collection of essays than the other two - but still very funny.

A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby
    I really liked this story.  Nick Hornby also wrote About a Boy and High Fidelity, and his love of music is in this book too.  It´s a story about four strangers who all arrive at the top of a building one night as jumpers, and the friendship they begin from there.  It´s lighter reading than it sounds like, and I devoured it in one hammocky afternoon.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid
     This story is told entirely by one man talking to another (who never speaks) in a restaurant in Lahore, Pakistan.  It´s interestingly done, and definitely an unusual way to tell the story.  I found it a quick read, one that I didn´t want to leave to do my daily chores (which doesn´t sound like much, but I like my daily chores!)


So - let me know if you have read these, and if you have, what you think!