Books of 2018

Outbox - only the latest editions here.

Before I came to Peace Corps, everything I read talked about how I would have so much time that I wouldn't know what to do with myself, and that when I came back to America I would miss that. I don't believe that will be case. Peace Corps Georgia seems to lend itself to overwork by volunteers, and between my lessons, English Club, collaborations with regional groups, my work writing grants for GLOW, my English Cabinet renovation grant, language learning, Peace Corps trainings and meetings and tasks, personal writing projects, community relationship building, grad school applications, and general life (and fun things like exploring all ends of Georgia and showing visitors around and growing plants), I'm busier here than I ever was in the U.S. - I never got home from work there and then sat at my computer to work for another 4 or 5 hours, but that has been the case here on many more than one occasion.

Nonetheless, my remote location has provided me with some time to read, in the form of excessively long public transit journeys - 9 hours to Tbilisi, 2 hours just to my closest city. But I am blessed to be able to read on marshutkas, and so here we have it: a list of what was read in 2018. Not quite a book a week, but not terrible. The good, the bad, the dumb:

1. Red Journeys: Inside the Thai Red-Shirt Movement - Claudio Sopranzetti - first week of January: This was a long time ago. I know almost nothing about Thai history or politics (ok, a lot more than the average American, but a lot less than the average Thai), so this slice of life/protest experience book was a little confusing, but still interesting. Plus! It was a book in English, which is much more common on the island (I was visiting my dad in Thailand) than it used to be, but pickings are still slim.
2. Stalin - Unknown Author - early January: Another random island book, this time a Soviet biography of Stalin published in 1947 or 1949 (I gave it away so I don't have any of the details). A simplified depiction of events, no famines, almost nothing about Georgia that I recall 11 months later. 
3. Confronting the Classics - Mary Beard - late March: A gift from a wetland ecologist friend, who was reading it and then no longer wished to carry it. My classics education has been somewhat slim, not much beyond some early childhood acting as Hestia, goddess of the hearth, some books of Greek myths for kids, and AP Art History in senior year of high school, so while this book presented some intriguing perspectives on the study of classics, I feel like I have quite a bit of reading to do before I can have any of my own ideas on these topics. Reading this before reading the "classics" does provide some good background and a large pile of salt to consume while reading.
4. The Far Away Brothers - Lauren Markham - sometime in spring: My mom's cousin's book about the lives of two Salvadoran students at the immigrant and refugee high school she works at, that I also volunteer taught at for the summer before I came to Georgia. A timely and empathetic insight into the refugee experience, and something I think more Americans should read, especially in this time of caravan scares and border walls.
5. The Iliad - "Homer" - finished in the first week of May: See above for explanation, the first "classic" I found in the Peace Corps library. An easier read than I was expecting because I always get it confused with The Odyssey and then I confuse that with Ulysses. Probably better in Greek or if I knew what dactylic hexameter is. I'll get there eventually.
6. The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger - first week of May: Fruits of the Keda Center for English Education library. If only I had read this during the angsty high school years. It was fine. Made me miss America a little bit.
7. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess - first week of May: Another Keda library hit. I distinctly remember trying to read this in 9th or 10th grade and being so frustrated with the "made-up" words that I stopped after a few pages, a rare thing for me. Now that I've finally read this, all that's left on that list are the Bible and Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown (a failed attempt at reading what my mom was reading in middle school). Anyway, after a year of college Russian the fake words make much more sense, and it was a fun, occasionally cringe-inducing read. I've never made it to the end of the movie either (it's something that people always seem to put on at the end of the night & then I immediately go to sleep), so I have no idea how it compares.
8. Salvage the Bones - Jesamyn Ward - end of June: Another book that I think all Americans should read, this one about the experiences of one family during and after Hurricane Katrina. Despite being aware of news coverage at the time and then living in New Orleans for college, I don't think I have ever come as close to understanding what it's like to live through a hurricane and its attendant devastation as I did while reading this book. Thanks mom for sending me books to keep up with the literary world outside of the Peace Corps library :)
9. Redbreast - Jo Nesbo - first week of July: I have a soft spot for Nordic thrillers ok?
10. Sindbad the Sailor - Unknown Author - last week of July: A book found on the free table in the Peace Corps office and foraged for my school's library. Charming, short, reminded me that I should read the whole One Thousand and One Nights.
11. The Valkyries - Paulo Coelho - 9 August 2018: Another free pile salvaged book, not my style at all, but the western desert settings reminded me of happy road trips through the Eastern Sierra, and Death Valley and so on. Put it in the school library but I don't anticipate any of my students reading it any time soon. 
12. The Possessed - Fyodor Dostoevsky - sometime in August: At this point I think I have read almost all of the English language novels in the Keda library. I am usually a fast reader, but this put me to sleep every time I read a few pages, so it took months. I carried it to Tbilisi and back home, from Mestia to Ushguli on foot, and a lot more places. I assume it's better in Russian. Someday...
13. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides - sometime in October: Probably my favorite book this year, and one that I have no idea about going in, except that other people also thought it was good. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of life in Turkey in the early 1900s and the Greek diaspora, though I asked a former professor of mine who studies the Ottomans and World War I and also happens to be from Izmir (which is mentioned in the book in its Greek name, Smyrna) about the depiction and he said to keep the 19th and 20th century British mindset in mind while evaluating accuracy. A great story about the 20th century American experience, covering so many aspects of life while still staying utterly engaging. I was sorry to reach the end. 
14. Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol - early November: Brought back traumatic memories of the Performance class I was forced to take in college back when I wanted to be a lighting designer. We had a Russian visiting professor in the department that year, and spent an excessive amount of time on Gogol short stories, which was fun until we had to do performance activities in response to them. For the record, I got an A though the professor said he had never had a student who hated his class so much. Anyway, it was fine, though not as funny as some of the short stories, an interesting look at 19th century Russian life. More importantly, after reading it I started noticing regular references to "dead souls" that wouldn't have meant anything to me before - "dead souls" rumored on Georgian voter rolls, "Dead Souls" as the title to a song on my favorite Joy Division album (Les Baines Douches, obviously), and it's a book I can refer to in conversation with older Georgians (i.e. my Georgian tutor). Valuable for it's influence for sure. 
15. The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkein - early November: Somehow never read this during my high fantasy days (aka like every day from 4th through 9th grade), despite reading all of the Lord of the Rings books. A delightful one.
16. The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein - mid November: You know.
17. The Fellowship of the Ring - J. R. R. Tolkein - 18 November 2018: See above. 
18. The Return of the King - J. R. R. Tolkein -  19 November 2018: #3.
19. The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories - Oscar Wilde - 23 November 2018: Oscar Wilde is insufferable and so are most of his characters, but still a fun read. I enjoyed the filler stories more than The Picture of Dorian Gray. 
20. Dissolution: Sovereignty and the Breakup of the Soviet Union - Edward W. Walker - early December 2018: Another one that took me over a year to read because I kept opening it and promptly falling asleep. I started reading it before coming to Peace Corps because it was one of two books about Georgia (in part) that I could find at my local used bookstore before coming here (I went every week for a few months and asked if they had anything about Georgia, they thought I was insane, love you Moe's). Glad I finished it though, I feel like through school and other stuff I've learned a lot about the Soviet period, and through living in Georgia I learned a lot about the post-Soviet experience, but while reading I found that a lot of the assumptions I had made about the break-up were wrong, and filled in some very large gaps in my knowledge, especially regarding the Abkhazian and South Ossetian conflicts, even though not much space in the book was devoted to them specifically. 

*Also a wide variety of books for young children, abridged versions of classics, etc. for classroom purposes & because they're what I have in the village...

In progress...

I am currently very slowly reading:

1. A Reader of Modern Arabic Short Stories - Edited by Sabry Hafez and Catherine Cobham: (Arabic & English) Kill me.
2. Amirani and Hanzel da Greteli: Georgian children's stories, shouldn't be taking as long as they are.
3. Hari Poteri da Pilosofiuri Qva - J. K. Rowling: The Georgian translation obviously. Gonna learn some useful words!
4. Persepolisi - Marjane Satrapi: A graphic novel in Georgian! Easy, right? No.
5. Backpacking: One Step at a Time - Harvey Manning So many details about methods of waterproofing clothing! Wau!
6. Deda Ena - Iakob Gogebashvili: The classic first grade text. Also the reason I know a million animal names but nothing else in Georgian.
7. The Real Thief - William Steig: A children's book about a goose. I keep leaving it weird places so I still haven't finished it even though the student I was supposed to be asking about it returned their copy long ago.

Also, shout-out to my reference books. 

Finally, I spent a lot of time with A Field Guide to Birds of the USSR, the Lonely Planet Guide to Georgia, Armenia, & Azerbaijan, my dictionaries & Georgian textbook, and Forsman's The Raptors of Europe and the Middle East: A Handbook of Field Identification.

Wish me luck for 52 books in 2019, and as much learning as I did in 2018!

Coming up next...