Books

I read some good books, I read some embarrassing books, I read whatever I could get my hands on while I was in Togo.  I read some books more times that I can remember.  I spent more money on flashlight batteries and candles than on food.  Here’s a list from my journal of the books I wrote down that I read; I *ed some of my favorites:

*1) Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

2) The House on Mango Street ­­– Sandra Cisneros

3) Yo! – Julia Alvarez

4) Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress: Tales of Growing up Groovy and Clueless – Susan Jane Gilman

5) I Am Not Myself These Days – Josh Kilmer-Purcell

6) Whose Panties Are These? ­– Jennifer L. Leo

7) This is Not a Book – Michael Picard

8) Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

9) Scattered Poems – Jack Kerouac

*10) Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

11) Yesterday I Cried – Iyanla Vanzant

12) A Life Inspired: Tales of Peace Corps Service (50 years)

13) Invisible Life – E. Lynn Harris

14) For One More Day – Mitch Albom

15) Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

16) Buddha’s Little Instruction Book – Jack Kornfield

*17) A Useful Woman – Gioia Diliberto

18) Three Cups of Tea – Greg Mortenson

19) Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Lifestyles (8^th Ed) – Schaefer & Zellner

20) First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria: How a Peace Corps Poster Boy Won My Heart and a Third World Adventure Changed my Life – Eve Brown-Waite

21) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

22) Away From Home: Letters to My Family – Lillian Carter

*23) Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes

24) Prozac Nation – Elizabeth Wurtzel

25) Pages for You – Sylvia Brownrigg

26) Train Go Sorry: Inside a Dead World – Leah Hager-Cohen

27) Rough Translations – Molly Giles

28) A Sophisticated Savage – Carla Siedl

29) The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey – Che Ernesto Guevara

30) Ordinary Life – Elizabeth Berg

31) The Village of Waiting – George Packer (read this if you want to learn more about my experience)

32) Choke – Chuck Palahniuk

33) Memories of my Melancholy Whores – Gabriel García Márquez

34) The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game – Michael Lewis

*35) White Teeth – Zadie Smith

36) Plainsong – Kent Haruf

37) Bee Season – Myla Goldberg

38) Good in Bed – Jennifer Weiner

39) Illegible

40) The Glass Castle – Jeanette Walls

41) Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen

42) For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf – Ntozake Shange

43) Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris

*44) Bachelor Girl: 100 Years of Breaking the Rules- A Social History of Living Single – Betsy Israel

45) Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life (or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door) – Lynne Truss

46) Death of a Salesman – Arthur Miller

*47) The Lost Kingdoms of Africa: Through Muslim Africa by Truck, Bus, Boat and Camel – Jeffrey Tayler

48) Keeping You a Secret – Julie Anne Peters

49) The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

50) Then We Came to the End – Joshua Ferris

51) The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

52) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson (What the F is the big deal about these books?)

53)  People I Wanted to Be – Gina Ochsner

54) Anthem – Ayn Rand

55) Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

56) Running with Scissor – Augusten Burroughs

57) A Life Inspired: Tales of Peace Corps Service (45 years)

*58) Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in Mali – Kris Holloway

59) Dear Exile: The True Story of Two Friends Separated (for a year) by an Ocean – Hilary Liftin & Kate Montgomery

60) The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir – Stephen Elliott (thanks for mailing me this, Moe!)

61) Dry – Augusten Burroughs

62) This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women – NPR

63) Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut

64) Holidays on Ice – David Sedaris

65) Ceremony – Leslie Marmon Silko (thanks again, Moe!)

66) Oh the Glory of It All – Sean Wilsey (thanks, Moe!)

67) Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim – David Sedaris

68) Travel as a Political Act – Rick Steves (lol)

69) Whiteman – Tony D’Souza

70) Vanishing Acts – Jodi Picoult

71) About Yvonne – Donna Masini

72) Laughing Without an Accent – Firoozeh Dumas

73) The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho

74) The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

*75) Travels with Charley in Search of America – John Steinbeck (I hesitantly gave this a star… I’d read it again)

76) All We ever Wanted Was Everything – Janelle Brown

77) Obedience – Will Lavender

78) The Namesake – Jhumpha Lahiri

79) Polio: An American Story – David M. Oshinsky

80)  The Good Society: The Humane Agenda – John Kenneth Galbraith

81) I Know This Much Is True – Wally Lamb

I’m missing a journal list… + a dozen or so books in French that I had a difficulty comprehending so they don’t count.

Emily "Naka" Jones alphabetizing the Atakpamé library