Oooo, I finished another book!

Okay, so I read two and a half books this weekend. I'm proud of me. I finished Middlesex, and it did finally get pretty good. Still not something that I'd pick up on my own, but it was a good read. I like Eugenides. I'm excited to read his Virgin Suicides, but since it's at the York library, it'll have to wait until Summer.

And I read Alice in Wonderland to get ahead for children's literature. Mostly so I could do some really in-depth editing and revising on my personal statement for grad school. (Yes, the first draft is totally done, and I'm super excited. I just need to mess around a little with length for the various schools I'm applying to.) But holy cow, don't ever, ever read that book by choice unless you are drunk, high, or tripping...or preferably, all three. Because it hurt my sober brain. Hell, it still kinda hurts if I think too hard about some of the chapters, and I'm not kidding.

Better: The Quiet American by Graham Greene was so much better than anything else I've read recently (well, except Ngugi, but it may be hard to get close to that one for a loooong time). It really made me think about what the role of the U.S. should be in international affairs. I, personally (and Greene may disagree with me on this), don't think that isolationism it a viable foreign policy for the U.S. right now. But I totally get Greene's message that Americans' idealism overseas oversimplifies some very complicated problems in other countries. The Quiet American is set in Vietnam right as the U.S. is getting involved and France's involvement was petering out. The main character basically personifies the stereotypical American: extraordinarily idealistic and totally unwilling to consider anything that could disrupt his simple picture of how the world works. It's a beautiful book...one of those that you totally can't really pick a "good guy" or a "bad guy," but you can totally recognize some of the crappy things that were happening all over Indochina under the guise of avoiding a trigger for the domino effect in the area. It was a required book for my Issues in World History class, and it's also on the 1,001 books list.

I'm really enjoying the 1,001 Books list. I totally recognize that it shouldn't be used as a complete list of any fiction I should read in my life, but I've come across a lot of good books that I otherwise wouldn't have gotten the chance to enjoy reading. It's also pushing my reading envelope, which is always good.