Holly's Book List

Peace Corps has certainly given me a lot of free time to read books. Some books that I read were amazing and are now among my favorites, while others I read out of sheer boredom and desperation. Bold books are my top ten favorites, italicized books are the ten I hated most liked least. Here are, in the order that I read them, the books I read cover to cover during Peace Corps (skimming and quitting don't count):

1. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards (432 pages)
2. The History of Love: A Novel by Nicole Krauss (272 pages)
3. Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (352 pages)
4. Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (304 pages)
5. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (352 pages)
6. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (448 pages)
7. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (371 pages)
8. Marley & Me by John Grogan (304 pages)
9. A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel by Haruki Murakami (368 pages)
10. Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami (416 pages)
11. Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson (496 pages)
12. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (336 pages)
13. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (336 pages)
14. Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins (352 pages)
15. The Dante Club: A Novel by Matthew Pearl (464 pages)
16. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami (624 pages)
17. Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu by J. Maarten Troost (256 pages)
18. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (320 pages)
19. American Taboo: A Murder in the Peace Corps by Philip Weiss (384 pages)
20. Naked by David Sedaris (224 pages)
21. Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (368 pages)
22. Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn (224 pages)
23. My Car in Managua by Forrest D. Colburn (148 pages)
24. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind (272 pages)
25. The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell (320 pages)
26. Running with Scissors: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs (352 pages)
27. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (784 pages)
28. Atonement by Ian McEwan (368 pages)
29. Good Owners, Great Dogs by Brian Kilcommons (288 pages)
30. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (560 pages)
31. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert (352 pages)
32. Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen (350 pages)
33. How to Be Good by Nick Hornby (320 pages)
34. The Dog Whisperer: A Compassionate, Nonviolent Approach to Dogtraining by Paul Owens (256 pages)
35. Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua by Stephen Kinzer (450 pages)
36. The PowerScore LSAT Logic Games Bible by David M. Killoran (402 pages)
37. The PowerScore LSAT Logical Reasoning Bible by David M. Killoran (541 pages)
38. LSAT 180 by Kaplan (368 pages)
39. The Official LSAT Superprep (405 pages)
40. Law School Confidential by Robert H. Miller (352 pages)
41. Graduate Admissions Essays: Write Your Way Into the Graduate School of Your Dreams by Donald Asher (256 pages)
42. River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler (432 pages)
43. The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions: Straight Advice on Essays, Resumes, Interviews, and More by Anna Ivey (324 pages)
44. A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me by Jon Katz (240 pages)
45. The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls (288 pages)
46. How to Get Into the Top Law Schools by Richard Montauk (560 pages)
47. Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera by Bryan Peterson (160 pages)
48. The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby (240 pages)
49. The Elements of Photography: Understanding and Creating Sophisticated Images by Angela Faris Belt (384 pages)
50. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby (448 pages)
51. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (544 pages)
52. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer (608 pages)
53. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer (640 pages)
54. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (768 pages)
55. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach (336 pages)
56. Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins (320 pages)
57. The Dogs of Babel: A Novel by Carolyn Parkhurst (288 pages)

That's a total of 22,689 pages, for an average of 30 pages a day (though 3,888 of those pages were about wizards, vampires, and werewolves). I don't think I'll ever have time to do this much reading again over a two year period of time, but I think I'm okay with that.

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Mother's Day

To have been posted May 30, 2009

May 30th is Mother’s Day in Nicaragua, one of the biggest holidays of the year. School is canceled the Friday before, and the Thursday before is a big assembly for all the moms to come and be celebrated. Here’s one of my school’s many murals dedicated to mothers:

Last weekend we finally traveled back to Carazo to visit our Nicaraguan moms and catch up with them one last time. It really didn’t feel like more than two years ago that we first arrived at their houses for training and started our service here, and we were shocked to see how much our host siblings had grown.  Here were Williamcito and Claudia in June 2007:

And here they are now with some bubbles we gave them:

Here’s Paul’s host sister Alejandra two years ago:

And here she is with Paul now:

Happy Mother’s Day to our Nica moms… we really do appreciate all the work they did for us, all the patience they had for us, and everything they taught us.  We will miss them a lot!

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