What are you reading?

[Starbuck]

At last I have finished John Irving`s "Until I find you" ...the story of an actor who searched his father and found himself. It`s a great novel.

[littlebriton]

Gulag: A History - Anne Applebaum

[HollyElise]

I did heare Wicked is very good.

[Scottish_Republican]

"Our Man in Havana"

[HollyElise]

I highly recommend Shutterbabe by Deborah Copaken Kogan. It's an autobiographical account of a young woman trying to make it in war journalism. From the first page, you probably won't be able to set the book down. She get's her first break by agreeing to go to Afghanistan to photograph the end of the war... a job so dangerous no one but the crazy will go, and on top of that, she's female and only 5'2" or something like that. The scenes she describes of Afghanistan are amazing, but what's more... the book comes with her photos.

But the book is even more than that. It's also about self discovery, particularly concerning her hangups around sexual relationships, it's feminist, and she's also downright funny! I think you'll like it.

[highlandbound]

Holly - I was never much into auto-biographicals but this one you recommend sound very interesting that I may just have to give it a try ...

Can I just say WOW!!!!! There is such diversity here regarding books that it makes me want to stretch my wings and try some of these .... so many books so little time

[HollyElise]

Here is a little exerpt from the book. A burka, by the way, is the dark veil women must wear in Afghanistan, which separates them from the world....

I yank the burka off my head and throw it on the ground. "No more!" I yell to Hashim, which causes all the men to stop and stare. I look around me. I know it's dangerous to be out of my disguise, but under the current circumstances I could care less. Wow, I think. What freedom to see the world once again! To gaze at that beautiful, jagged, gigantic, imposing, soaring ice-capped mountain range in the distance!

"Put it on," Hashim says.
"No," I say. "I won't."
"Put on," her repeats, this time more slowly.
I stand my ground. "No."
"Is dangerous," he says.
I say, "I know. So make me a man."

For a moment the situation is tense. Hashim stares at me, at a loss for words. Some of the other mujahideen whisper to each other, point at me, gesticulate. I was told by coutless mujahideen groups back in Peshawar that, as a woman, I would not be able to accompany their soldiers inside. "Women," one of them told me, "are by their very natures cursed chalatans, bent on breaking the will and sapping the strength of the soldiers of Allah." To which Pascal whispered, a little too smugly, "You see? I told you so."

But now that I'm here and Pascal's not, now that our truck has broken down and we're cold and miserable and walking through an endless minefield of snow, now that I cannot walk another inch with this idiotic rayon cloth over my head, what are they going to do? Take me back to Peshawar? Punish me for not wearing it?

And then, suddenly, an amazing thing happens. One of the soldiers walks over and hands me his pakul for my head. Another gives me one of his brown shoulder blankets to hid the Kalashnikov. Then, Hashim, looking slightly defeated, takes a thick cotton scarf and ties it around my neck and mouth, so no one will be able to tell that I don't have a beard. I have won. It's a small victory, but I have won.

I am, for a moment, a man. A tiny, happy, bleeding man.