On a recent trip to a third world country, we rented a house. Wi-fi service and electricity were not a constant. In searching the house for books to read, I found that most of the ones there were written before the 60's. Okay, there were authors that I had wanted to read so was not destitute. I read "A Moveable Feast" by Ernest Hemmingway. The book was about when he lived in Paris. Only he was writing it 20 to 30 years later. It makes you wonder how accurate his memories were. His descriptions of some of the famous people he knew then-could the intervening years have changed his opinion of them? Hard to draw the line at what you think of someone 25 years ago. I enjoyed the book. His deceptively simple method of writing hit on some things that made me think. That is a good thing.
Another book I have always been curious about was "Out of Africa" by Isak Dinesen. The tone of the book struck me as a very rose-colored view of Africa and its people. She did have a marvelous way of creating pictures with words. Shame on me, but I did not finish that book. It was not something I could read a lot of at once and ran out of time.
There were 4 other books I read but only one of them really stayed in my memory. That was "Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal" by Conor Grennan. The desperate straits of children during war is heart-rending. He did an admirable job of describing his frivolous reasons for volunteering at an orphanage in Nepal and the painful journey to the point where he had lost his heart to the orphans and was compelled to help them. Hmmm-this was about a third world country. I wonder how often our current circumstances effect what we are drawn to read.
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