Top 10 Books. First Year in Peace Corps

Books make up my life in the states and here in Peace Corps...

TOP 5

1) Carl Sagan's "Varieties of the Scientific Experience, My personal view on the search for God"
- note I loved this book so much that i am giving it to my parents to tenderly take it back to the states to sit on a shelf waiting for the next person I am going to lend it to. I now want my future house in the states to have NASA posters all over it. He was an amazing open person. This book was put together from his lectures at the Glifford Lectures, by a friend, many years after his death.

2) John Toole "Confederacy of Dunces". Either the best book ive read or the second best in peace corps. Funny and witty but nothing you would expect. Takes place in New Orleans, please book me a ticket when i get back to the states. The author sadly only wrote two books in his life before he commited sucide in his early 30s. His mom brought this book to a professor after his death. It won the pulizer prize.

3) Jonathan Franzen "The Corrections". wow.. read the quotes on the front of the book, they say it all and better than i could. This books hits home. It will scare you from your life in America.

4) H.Murukami "The Wind Up Bird Chronicles". Even better than "Kafta on the shore", japanese imaginary realism, that has changed the way i look at my well in my backyard. it makes me want to go down it.

5) David Eggers "A Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genus". Brings me back to the Bay Area.

Next TOP 5

6) Ayaan Hirsi Ali "Infidel" Amazing Biography on a Somalian woman, now politican in Europe.

7) Anne Faidman " The Spirit Catches you and you Fall Down". Best book ive read on cultural differences.

8) Philip Roth "Portnoy's Complaint". Funny open.....

9) Forgot Author " War of Constalenos Private Parts". Funny story in Latin America.

10) Sijie Dai "Balzac and the little Chinese Seamstress".