Believe it or not I have finally gotten around to posting a fresh batch of pictures. In case, like me, you have forgotten where in the world on the world wide web my pictures are, here is the link again: http://picasaweb.google.com/104184428031129256317
The newest album is entitled "The Libulali...and a spider that lives in my house". I think the title is pretty self-explanatory. See if you can find the spider!
August 25, 2010
Term 2 Progress Report
As my lengthy term 1 holiday ended, I was eager to return to teaching. At the same time, I was bracing myself for what I expected to be the dog days of the Namibian winter. The rain had stopped, and it still will not resume until the end of the year. What problems this would pose for me I wasn’t exactly sure. There were fewer national holidays in the term 2 months, and there were also fewer “volunteer get-togethers” planned. I envisioned this second term as a challenge that would have to be slogged through, and at some points even endured.
At first my prediction was almost palpably incorrect. I was hard at work and full of energy, and I was amazed at how rapidly the term was passing. Wow, three weeks done already, I would think, that’s about 30 percent finished. Hey, now a whole month is gone. My work was enjoyable, I delighted in the progress I could observe in my learners, and my weekends were unexpectedly eventful. I watched World Cup matches, visited Etosha National Park, spectated at cultural dance festivals (at one a Namibian teacher demanded I allow her to take the microphone and introduce me to the entire audience), and I was flying faster through Harry Potter than the eponymous hero could move on his Firebolt broomstick.
Then it all came to a sweaty, cramping, vomiting, moaning halt. I only missed three days of classes, but I quickly fell behind in my work. Despite this, when I returned I continued to take on more responsibility with the library and computer lab, and on top of that, it seemed I would be battered every Wednesday at the staff briefing with more tasks to complete. I was foolhardy and at any given moment worked with as much energy as my recovering body would allow. One afternoon both my principal and the science HOD implied in the Namibian way that I should sign out to go home and rest. “I can tell you are tired”, “Don’t force anything”, “You are not yourself.” It was obvious what they were communicating to me, but I declined their offer and returned to my office. It was weeks before I could go a whole working day without worrying about needing to rush to the nearest toilet during a class (or having to do just that), over a month before my appetite truly returned, and almost two months before I first feebly attempted exercise again. Goodness knows how long lingering symptoms affected me throughout the term, or how much I prolonged my own illness with over-exertion.
By the time the most salient of the symptoms had subsided, it was a few weeks into July, and I had already started counting down the days to the term’s end. At the end of each evening study session I would clean up the library and then exhale audibly as I crossed off that day on the library’s wall calendars. I peeked into my multivitamin container every morning to keep tabs on my progress to the term’s conclusion based on how many tablets were left. I conceived of every weekday in its relation to “hump day” (Wednesday), and I even realized that June 15th through July 16th, was the year’s “hump month”.
At the end of each week I would jet for town as quickly as possible. With my frustrations intensifying every week I was more willing to cut loose on the weekends instead of just relaxing. I was drinking larger quantities, and on Sundays rather than returning to school refreshed, I would be just as tired as when I left on the previous Friday. That meant that on the next Friday, after a full week of work, I was even more fatigued and ready to hop in a car out of Oshikunde, and wanted even more than the last weekend to blow off some steam. All of you are perceptive enough to see already how this cycle worked against me; it didn’t click in my head for several weeks.
Now the second trimester is ending, so it is time for another progress report. When I first arrived in Namibia, days were journeys in themselves. Absolutely everything that I saw, heard, or did was completely new. Each moment demanded my utmost attention and concentration. In term 2 I had found routines. Large portions of my day became automated, and the lack of needed conscious attention made this tougher term subjectively shorter. These past two entries may make term 2 seem pretty bleak, and although it’s true that portions were quite difficult and it didn’t contain as many “do before you die” events, it had more extraordinary moments than I could have justifiably expected. The whole process of building the media center and even just the smiles I got from observing kids flip through books or scroll through computer articles, were worth many years of frustrations - it is one of the most meaningful things I have ever accomplished.
Making kids laugh as I goofily acted out definitions during music night, leaving the classroom after a great lesson, riding back to school as the sun set, fetching water or brushing my teeth at night under the slowly rotating Namibian firmament – these are moments that I am willing to endure almost anything to experience. I am prepared to put up with dirt roads on ancient suspensions, the bell ending the period 10 minutes late, 9 power outages in one library session, incomprehensibly slow comprehension in English class, 5 hour long staff meetings, knocks on my door at 6:30 am, and everything else, just for those brief instants, because as long as you are awake and your head is up, no amount of fatigue can make the stars less beautiful.
At first my prediction was almost palpably incorrect. I was hard at work and full of energy, and I was amazed at how rapidly the term was passing. Wow, three weeks done already, I would think, that’s about 30 percent finished. Hey, now a whole month is gone. My work was enjoyable, I delighted in the progress I could observe in my learners, and my weekends were unexpectedly eventful. I watched World Cup matches, visited Etosha National Park, spectated at cultural dance festivals (at one a Namibian teacher demanded I allow her to take the microphone and introduce me to the entire audience), and I was flying faster through Harry Potter than the eponymous hero could move on his Firebolt broomstick.
Then it all came to a sweaty, cramping, vomiting, moaning halt. I only missed three days of classes, but I quickly fell behind in my work. Despite this, when I returned I continued to take on more responsibility with the library and computer lab, and on top of that, it seemed I would be battered every Wednesday at the staff briefing with more tasks to complete. I was foolhardy and at any given moment worked with as much energy as my recovering body would allow. One afternoon both my principal and the science HOD implied in the Namibian way that I should sign out to go home and rest. “I can tell you are tired”, “Don’t force anything”, “You are not yourself.” It was obvious what they were communicating to me, but I declined their offer and returned to my office. It was weeks before I could go a whole working day without worrying about needing to rush to the nearest toilet during a class (or having to do just that), over a month before my appetite truly returned, and almost two months before I first feebly attempted exercise again. Goodness knows how long lingering symptoms affected me throughout the term, or how much I prolonged my own illness with over-exertion.
By the time the most salient of the symptoms had subsided, it was a few weeks into July, and I had already started counting down the days to the term’s end. At the end of each evening study session I would clean up the library and then exhale audibly as I crossed off that day on the library’s wall calendars. I peeked into my multivitamin container every morning to keep tabs on my progress to the term’s conclusion based on how many tablets were left. I conceived of every weekday in its relation to “hump day” (Wednesday), and I even realized that June 15th through July 16th, was the year’s “hump month”.
At the end of each week I would jet for town as quickly as possible. With my frustrations intensifying every week I was more willing to cut loose on the weekends instead of just relaxing. I was drinking larger quantities, and on Sundays rather than returning to school refreshed, I would be just as tired as when I left on the previous Friday. That meant that on the next Friday, after a full week of work, I was even more fatigued and ready to hop in a car out of Oshikunde, and wanted even more than the last weekend to blow off some steam. All of you are perceptive enough to see already how this cycle worked against me; it didn’t click in my head for several weeks.
Now the second trimester is ending, so it is time for another progress report. When I first arrived in Namibia, days were journeys in themselves. Absolutely everything that I saw, heard, or did was completely new. Each moment demanded my utmost attention and concentration. In term 2 I had found routines. Large portions of my day became automated, and the lack of needed conscious attention made this tougher term subjectively shorter. These past two entries may make term 2 seem pretty bleak, and although it’s true that portions were quite difficult and it didn’t contain as many “do before you die” events, it had more extraordinary moments than I could have justifiably expected. The whole process of building the media center and even just the smiles I got from observing kids flip through books or scroll through computer articles, were worth many years of frustrations - it is one of the most meaningful things I have ever accomplished.
Making kids laugh as I goofily acted out definitions during music night, leaving the classroom after a great lesson, riding back to school as the sun set, fetching water or brushing my teeth at night under the slowly rotating Namibian firmament – these are moments that I am willing to endure almost anything to experience. I am prepared to put up with dirt roads on ancient suspensions, the bell ending the period 10 minutes late, 9 power outages in one library session, incomprehensibly slow comprehension in English class, 5 hour long staff meetings, knocks on my door at 6:30 am, and everything else, just for those brief instants, because as long as you are awake and your head is up, no amount of fatigue can make the stars less beautiful.
August 18, 2010
Trying Times
I am officially burnt out. No matter how many hours of sleep I get black marks are permanently under my eyes. At first I was surprised after sleeping ten hours to see them in the mirror, but now I am resigned to their presence. I find myself getting irritable, something that would never have happened in term 1, almost every day. Each week it gets more difficult to return to school from town, and Sunday, a day which throughout high school and college I would reserve for doing all of my work, is now a day when I begrudgingly return home, unload my groceries, eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and immediately fall asleep. One night during our weekly Skype call I unexpectedly started free-associating, harangued my family with my frustrations, and although they couldn’t hear me because my microphone was broken, I cried.
I tell myself that after eight months this is perfectly natural, and I try not to add to my aggravation by criticizing myself for my own attitude. Still, my lows are low, and recently the positive moments have been brief respites from a consistent melancholy. It is a testament to the beauty of some of the people and places of this country that they can still momentarily puncture this understandable but heavy weariness.
One source of happiness has been our school cleaner, Tate David Shapwanale. He is a hard worker and a kind, good-humored man. His English is much better than he thinks and more than good enough to make me laugh. I wouldn’t call his smile pretty, but it is pure. He has enthusiastically participated in my weekly staff computer training sessions, and he routinely is the first to sign up.
On several occasions this term he has unknowingly lifted my spirits. After one particularly taxing day I walked to the local store to buy a few food items. The chance to walk by myself was revitalizing, and when I saw David 25 meters off the road carrying an infant, I felt up to more than just a wave and smile, so I hollered, “Is that one yours?” He beamed, and when I drew nearer he responded, “This is my son, the last born.” He introduced me to his boy, Antonious. We then spoke of his family, he told me he had another older son, and about how David was currently on the lookout for birds to shoot for food, something that he does every morning and evening but I never knew he did. After saying goodbye I continued my walk back to school, and shortly thereafter I had one of those, “That’s what this is all about!” moments, nodded my head vigorously, and grinned like a doofus.
This Wednesday I posted another computer training sign-up sheet and was in the middle of preparing the lab for the teachers’ arrival when Meme Anna, the powerful, intelligent, Oshikwanyama teacher, stopped in my doorway and told me that the lesson would have to be canceled. A child of David Shapwanale had passed away. The teachers gathered and spoke while those with cars arranged the transportation. I sat on the concrete of the school blocks next to a colleague who told me that David’s eldest son, who was still no more than a baby, had died, and he understood this to be the third of David’s children to die young.
The fourth grade teacher, Tate Haiduwa, pulled up, and I hopped into his truck. We drove down the road a ways, stopped, and walked toward the traditional home where David resides. The home is a small plot of land surrounded by a low fence of logs and three lengths of wire. Inside the gate there are a few “rooms” or stone huts. Each hut is constructed on a square patch, no more than six feet by six feet, that is dug about 4 inches into the ground. The sloping thatched roof begins maybe four feet off the ground so that one must crouch to pass through the threshold and then can stand with a little hunch once inside.
David’s tears were audible from outside his room, and a group of male teachers and I slowly entered and sat around him silently. A few comforting words were said, and after several minutes we rose to say goodbye. Being a novice at the language, as I exited I simply placed my hand on his shoulder and whispered, “Ombili”, which means “I am sorry.”
The other men drove to a bar, so I walked back to school alone. Thinking about David, there were several times when I nearly burst into tears. Three children. None of them older than a few years. A six by six stone house. I remembered how I noticed his work boots on the floor and heard the methodical ticking of a small battery powered clock he kept by the head of his bed. I have on several occasions criticized some of my colleagues for having what I consider a poor work ethic, but tears pressed forcefully against my eyelids as I began to understand how hard David had to work, just to live. I thought of how exhausted I was after eight months, and I have light! And a stove! His is an existence that must be so hard, so…tiring. It is not an existence that many people would choose, but with the way he carries himself daily, it is an existence of which he can be proud, and an existence which I enormously respect. He deserves so much better.
I tell myself that after eight months this is perfectly natural, and I try not to add to my aggravation by criticizing myself for my own attitude. Still, my lows are low, and recently the positive moments have been brief respites from a consistent melancholy. It is a testament to the beauty of some of the people and places of this country that they can still momentarily puncture this understandable but heavy weariness.
One source of happiness has been our school cleaner, Tate David Shapwanale. He is a hard worker and a kind, good-humored man. His English is much better than he thinks and more than good enough to make me laugh. I wouldn’t call his smile pretty, but it is pure. He has enthusiastically participated in my weekly staff computer training sessions, and he routinely is the first to sign up.
On several occasions this term he has unknowingly lifted my spirits. After one particularly taxing day I walked to the local store to buy a few food items. The chance to walk by myself was revitalizing, and when I saw David 25 meters off the road carrying an infant, I felt up to more than just a wave and smile, so I hollered, “Is that one yours?” He beamed, and when I drew nearer he responded, “This is my son, the last born.” He introduced me to his boy, Antonious. We then spoke of his family, he told me he had another older son, and about how David was currently on the lookout for birds to shoot for food, something that he does every morning and evening but I never knew he did. After saying goodbye I continued my walk back to school, and shortly thereafter I had one of those, “That’s what this is all about!” moments, nodded my head vigorously, and grinned like a doofus.
This Wednesday I posted another computer training sign-up sheet and was in the middle of preparing the lab for the teachers’ arrival when Meme Anna, the powerful, intelligent, Oshikwanyama teacher, stopped in my doorway and told me that the lesson would have to be canceled. A child of David Shapwanale had passed away. The teachers gathered and spoke while those with cars arranged the transportation. I sat on the concrete of the school blocks next to a colleague who told me that David’s eldest son, who was still no more than a baby, had died, and he understood this to be the third of David’s children to die young.
The fourth grade teacher, Tate Haiduwa, pulled up, and I hopped into his truck. We drove down the road a ways, stopped, and walked toward the traditional home where David resides. The home is a small plot of land surrounded by a low fence of logs and three lengths of wire. Inside the gate there are a few “rooms” or stone huts. Each hut is constructed on a square patch, no more than six feet by six feet, that is dug about 4 inches into the ground. The sloping thatched roof begins maybe four feet off the ground so that one must crouch to pass through the threshold and then can stand with a little hunch once inside.
David’s tears were audible from outside his room, and a group of male teachers and I slowly entered and sat around him silently. A few comforting words were said, and after several minutes we rose to say goodbye. Being a novice at the language, as I exited I simply placed my hand on his shoulder and whispered, “Ombili”, which means “I am sorry.”
The other men drove to a bar, so I walked back to school alone. Thinking about David, there were several times when I nearly burst into tears. Three children. None of them older than a few years. A six by six stone house. I remembered how I noticed his work boots on the floor and heard the methodical ticking of a small battery powered clock he kept by the head of his bed. I have on several occasions criticized some of my colleagues for having what I consider a poor work ethic, but tears pressed forcefully against my eyelids as I began to understand how hard David had to work, just to live. I thought of how exhausted I was after eight months, and I have light! And a stove! His is an existence that must be so hard, so…tiring. It is not an existence that many people would choose, but with the way he carries himself daily, it is an existence of which he can be proud, and an existence which I enormously respect. He deserves so much better.
August 11, 2010
The Libulali
During the first term of the school year one of the school’s classrooms was used as a boys’ dormitory. Sometime during March the school was informed that technicians from Windhoek would arrive by the end of the month to set up the school’s computer lab using the computers being held in storage. The boys were asked to leave their room and move into tents on the ground, but the technicians never came. My HOD (head of department) Vilo and I decided that it was time to see if we couldn’t plug the machines in ourselves, but the Principal asked us to wait because he had just been told that technicians would be coming sometime before the end of the term in April. They never came.
So for approximately two months a classroom from which learners were evicted sat empty and unused; it bugged me. During the examinations, when learners stopped coming to school regularly, and lessons basically ceased, I decided to busy myself with converting the empty room into something productive. After acquiring keys to unlock storerooms I had learners help me carry boxes of books (fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, books on tape, that had been collecting dust for years - plural) across the school blocks into the new library. Other teachers and I unscrewed shelves that stood bare in different offices and placed them next to the library walls instead. Each night I loved going to the library to sit at my computer alphabetizing and cataloguing all of our books while playing hip-hop music at just slightly above a reasonable volume. The light in the room must have given away my habits because I was once asked by another teacher, “What time do you wake up and what time do you go to sleep?”
Included in the pile of things rotting in storage were 11 unassembled computer desks. I enlisted Vilo’s help to spend a few good hours lifting and hammering pieces of wood, and by the end of the night the library was outfitted with some pretty sharp looking workspaces. That night just so happened to be the most rewarding, and best night’s work I had ever performed.
At the start of term 2 I adorned the shelves with signs and the walls with posters, printed a library contract, and in the first few weeks of the term I took classes into the library one by one to receive a library orientation (“Fiction means False”, “be nice to the books because they are your friends”, etc). As classes learned how to use their new resources the library opened in the afternoon and in the evening with different classes having different scheduled times for them to use it.
Some things that the learners did in the library were quite frustrating, but I had to keep reminding myself that these kids had no idea what to do because they had never been in a library in their whole lives. For example, when I originally shelved our magazines I divided them into piles based on subject matter. Then within categories I had magazines alphabetical by title, and then within titles I had them in chronological order. It took maybe two nights before I realized that just keeping like magazines in a pile together was sufficient. The kids’ disorganization was partly due to an immature messiness and also partly due to the fact that many of them didn’t even recognize that the piles were organized in the first place.
As the library found its rhythm I decided it was time to start opening computer boxes – and time to stop asking permission to do so. Plugging in the computers wasn’t exactly difficult, certain cords can only fit in certain holes, but I hadn’t the foggiest how to connect them as a network or to manage a server. A Peace Corps volunteer I had befriended who lived in a town nearby was nice enough to pop in one day and set-up a mini-network for me with the school’s server and three client computers, and she gave me a crash course on how to be the server administrator myself. Another WorldTeach volunteer from town was also willing to come by a few weekends later to spend an evening with me listening to hip-hop music at nowhere near a reasonable volume, hooking up the rest of our computers, and zip-tying all of the cords together (a crucial step). That so happened to just surpass my night with Vilo to become the best night of work I have ever completed.
So Oshikunde now has a full-fledged media center, and the kids have become so accustomed to it that I can sit at my desk typing this blog while they read and only have to utter the occasional “Quiet please”. Computer lessons at first were exhausting, running around making sure no one broke anything and repeating myself over and over again. To give you an idea, in lesson one it took every class a full forty minutes to simply turn on and then turn off their computers. But just this afternoon I had a full computer lab with learners doing everything from flipping through encyclopedia software to playing mouse practice games and using typing training programs while we all listened to a local Kwaito (a Namibian form of up-tempo hip-hop) musician at a reasonable volume.
In conclusion, which is a way you should never conclude an essay, I just wanted to mention some other pieces of the library. The library has more substance than just desks, computers, shelves, and books. It also has all sorts of educational posters (world map, dinosaurs, marine life, my skeleton, etc). It also has cuts of traditional Owambo cloth patterns that protect the machines from dust after hours. It has a clock above the blackboard (something quite foreign to your average Owambo). It has a CD-case full of local and international music, speakers, and headphones. It has board game box sets complete with chess, checkers, and what has proven to be the crowd favorite, snakes and ladders. All of these items were purchased using funds that were donated by my faithful readers, and I have only spent about half of what was raised. So on behalf of everyone at Oshikunde I wanted to say thank you.
One night my principal observed as learners lined up outside the library door waiting for it to open and then filed in quietly, took out books and began to read and study. I could not have been more proud of the “libulali” that you helped me build.
So for approximately two months a classroom from which learners were evicted sat empty and unused; it bugged me. During the examinations, when learners stopped coming to school regularly, and lessons basically ceased, I decided to busy myself with converting the empty room into something productive. After acquiring keys to unlock storerooms I had learners help me carry boxes of books (fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, books on tape, that had been collecting dust for years - plural) across the school blocks into the new library. Other teachers and I unscrewed shelves that stood bare in different offices and placed them next to the library walls instead. Each night I loved going to the library to sit at my computer alphabetizing and cataloguing all of our books while playing hip-hop music at just slightly above a reasonable volume. The light in the room must have given away my habits because I was once asked by another teacher, “What time do you wake up and what time do you go to sleep?”
Included in the pile of things rotting in storage were 11 unassembled computer desks. I enlisted Vilo’s help to spend a few good hours lifting and hammering pieces of wood, and by the end of the night the library was outfitted with some pretty sharp looking workspaces. That night just so happened to be the most rewarding, and best night’s work I had ever performed.
At the start of term 2 I adorned the shelves with signs and the walls with posters, printed a library contract, and in the first few weeks of the term I took classes into the library one by one to receive a library orientation (“Fiction means False”, “be nice to the books because they are your friends”, etc). As classes learned how to use their new resources the library opened in the afternoon and in the evening with different classes having different scheduled times for them to use it.
Some things that the learners did in the library were quite frustrating, but I had to keep reminding myself that these kids had no idea what to do because they had never been in a library in their whole lives. For example, when I originally shelved our magazines I divided them into piles based on subject matter. Then within categories I had magazines alphabetical by title, and then within titles I had them in chronological order. It took maybe two nights before I realized that just keeping like magazines in a pile together was sufficient. The kids’ disorganization was partly due to an immature messiness and also partly due to the fact that many of them didn’t even recognize that the piles were organized in the first place.
As the library found its rhythm I decided it was time to start opening computer boxes – and time to stop asking permission to do so. Plugging in the computers wasn’t exactly difficult, certain cords can only fit in certain holes, but I hadn’t the foggiest how to connect them as a network or to manage a server. A Peace Corps volunteer I had befriended who lived in a town nearby was nice enough to pop in one day and set-up a mini-network for me with the school’s server and three client computers, and she gave me a crash course on how to be the server administrator myself. Another WorldTeach volunteer from town was also willing to come by a few weekends later to spend an evening with me listening to hip-hop music at nowhere near a reasonable volume, hooking up the rest of our computers, and zip-tying all of the cords together (a crucial step). That so happened to just surpass my night with Vilo to become the best night of work I have ever completed.
So Oshikunde now has a full-fledged media center, and the kids have become so accustomed to it that I can sit at my desk typing this blog while they read and only have to utter the occasional “Quiet please”. Computer lessons at first were exhausting, running around making sure no one broke anything and repeating myself over and over again. To give you an idea, in lesson one it took every class a full forty minutes to simply turn on and then turn off their computers. But just this afternoon I had a full computer lab with learners doing everything from flipping through encyclopedia software to playing mouse practice games and using typing training programs while we all listened to a local Kwaito (a Namibian form of up-tempo hip-hop) musician at a reasonable volume.
In conclusion, which is a way you should never conclude an essay, I just wanted to mention some other pieces of the library. The library has more substance than just desks, computers, shelves, and books. It also has all sorts of educational posters (world map, dinosaurs, marine life, my skeleton, etc). It also has cuts of traditional Owambo cloth patterns that protect the machines from dust after hours. It has a clock above the blackboard (something quite foreign to your average Owambo). It has a CD-case full of local and international music, speakers, and headphones. It has board game box sets complete with chess, checkers, and what has proven to be the crowd favorite, snakes and ladders. All of these items were purchased using funds that were donated by my faithful readers, and I have only spent about half of what was raised. So on behalf of everyone at Oshikunde I wanted to say thank you.
One night my principal observed as learners lined up outside the library door waiting for it to open and then filed in quietly, took out books and began to read and study. I could not have been more proud of the “libulali” that you helped me build.
August 4, 2010
The Reading List
I have been rather busy recently. Working 11, 12, and 13 hour days, and keeping your home, clothes, and self clean without running water leaves little time for writing blog posts. All of the free time that I have enjoyed, I have made sure to spend reading (because it makes me happy). So here is a lazy blog post, a list of all the books I have read thus far this year....
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Vol. 1 – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
My Bondage and My Freedom – Frederick Douglas (tremendous)
Getting Stoned with Savages – J. Maarten Troost
A Concise History of the Rehoboth Basters
Giving – Bill Clinton
Desert Notes - Barry Lopez
The Inferno - Dante
Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
The Aeneid - Virgil
Papillon – Henri Charriere
The Geography of Bliss – Eric Weiner
Carry on Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse (delightful)
It Can’t Happen Here – Sinclair Lewis
The Reader – Bernard Schlick (overrated)
Mozambique – I forget who wrote this travel book
Three short novels by Herman Melville (Benito Cereno, Bartleby the Scrivener, Billy
Budd)
Nichomachean Ethics - Aristotle
The Truth: With Jokes – Al Franken
The Life of Pi – Yann Martel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
Don’t Run, Whatever You Do: My Adventures as an African Safari Guide – Peter Allison
Profiles of the Future – Arthur C. Clarke
Harry Potter #1 – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter #2 – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter #3 – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter #4 – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter #5 – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter #6 – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter #7 – J.K. Rowling (you may infer that I liked these books)
Messiah – Gore Vidal
Different Seasons – Stephen King (This book contains "Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption")
Over the Top – Joel Don Humphreys (the absurd Sly Stallone star vehicle in which he plays an arm-wrestling truck driver trying to reconcile with the son he left at a young age, was apparently actually based on this book)
A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning – Lemony Snicket
A Series of Unfortunate Events #2: The Reptile Room – Lemony Snicket
A Series of Unfortunate Events #3: The Wide Window – Lemony Snicket
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
I plan on putting more effort into my post next week!
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Vol. 1 – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
My Bondage and My Freedom – Frederick Douglas (tremendous)
Getting Stoned with Savages – J. Maarten Troost
A Concise History of the Rehoboth Basters
Giving – Bill Clinton
Desert Notes - Barry Lopez
The Inferno - Dante
Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
The Aeneid - Virgil
Papillon – Henri Charriere
The Geography of Bliss – Eric Weiner
Carry on Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse (delightful)
It Can’t Happen Here – Sinclair Lewis
The Reader – Bernard Schlick (overrated)
Mozambique – I forget who wrote this travel book
Three short novels by Herman Melville (Benito Cereno, Bartleby the Scrivener, Billy
Budd)
Nichomachean Ethics - Aristotle
The Truth: With Jokes – Al Franken
The Life of Pi – Yann Martel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
Don’t Run, Whatever You Do: My Adventures as an African Safari Guide – Peter Allison
Profiles of the Future – Arthur C. Clarke
Harry Potter #1 – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter #2 – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter #3 – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter #4 – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter #5 – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter #6 – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter #7 – J.K. Rowling (you may infer that I liked these books)
Messiah – Gore Vidal
Different Seasons – Stephen King (This book contains "Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption")
Over the Top – Joel Don Humphreys (the absurd Sly Stallone star vehicle in which he plays an arm-wrestling truck driver trying to reconcile with the son he left at a young age, was apparently actually based on this book)
A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning – Lemony Snicket
A Series of Unfortunate Events #2: The Reptile Room – Lemony Snicket
A Series of Unfortunate Events #3: The Wide Window – Lemony Snicket
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
I plan on putting more effort into my post next week!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
