The Best Books I Read While in Peace Corps
Submitted by Vicky on Tue, 02/20/2001 - 09:56
Tags:
- The Age of Grief by Jane Smiley
- Ordinary Love and Goodwill by Jane Smiley
- All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
- Anna Karenina by L. V. Tolstoy
- War and Peace by L.V. Tolstoy
- A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving
- A Room With a View by E. M. Forster
- Howard's End by E.M. Forester
- Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
- At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Mathiessen
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Caroline Chute
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
- Sula by Toni Morrison
- The Bone People by Keri Hulme
- Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
- Daughters by Paule Marshall
- Disturbances in the Field by Lynn Sharon Swartz
- Emerson's Essays
- Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
- Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado
- Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth
- Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
- Herzog by Saul Bellow
- How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
- The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
- he Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan
- The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
- My Antonia by Willa Cather
- The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
- The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Possession by A.S. Byatt
- Still Life by A. S. Byatt
- The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
- Rule Brittania by Daphne du Maurier
- The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis
- Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene
- Yellow Raft on Blue Water by Michael Dorris
I spent 2 years in West Africa, and I read a lot of books, most of which had been left in country by former Peace Corps Volunteers (to whom I am forever grateful).
I don't know why some of these books appealed to me then, and I'm not sure I would love them if I read them now. Nevertheless, at the time, I thought these books were terrific; some of them are well written, some are insightful and some are just fun. I also loved The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter, but when I read it I was under the impression it was a memoir. Now that I know it is a novel, I might not be so impressed (and there are too many books out there to read for me to re-read that one to see). This is a comparative list as far as it goes; that is, One Hundred Years of Solitude is on the list but Love in the Time of Cholera is not . . . well, I preferred One Hundred Years of Solitude. However, those are the only two books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez I've read. A Prayer for Owen Meaney is on the list but no other John Irving--I admit that the only other Irving I've read is The World According to Garp, which I didn't care for. Perhaps I should try others. Some day.
Sooo, I'm not sure how you might use this list--perhaps if you are planning on being stranded on a deserted island for a couple of years (which is what my PC experience was kinda like) you might want to take these books along. Don't forget the sunscreen.