I´ve been complaining about the lack of electronics, (or rather working electronics-my mp3/video player and laptop broke down in addition to the brief breakdown of my DSLR),
but fortunately I´ve been lucky to have books(thanks to Bolivia´s abundant book exchange places) to keep me entertained during the long awful bus rides(too bad they turn off lights around 8 pm) and lonely nights in my rooms.
I´ve always been an avid reader,
in fact my sight got ruined because I kept on reading in dark with dim lights after my parents had turned off the lights in my room to put me to sleep.
While I was living in New York, I had to read a lot mainly due to my Literature in Translation minor but I enjoyed every bit and also read 1-2 books on my own.
The truth is,
even nowadays, I´d rather be reading alone in my room than have empty conversations with the fellow travelers(there´s only so much of ¨where are you from?/Where have you been to?¨ chat one can take)
During the last month and a half, I´ve been especially productive in terms of reading(6 books of 300-650 page-length) and most have been excellent.
The one book that had me quite enraged (a rare occassion) was ¨Not Without My Daughter¨ by Betty Mahmoody which is a non-fiction about an American woman and her daughter being kept captive against their will in Iran by her Iranian husband and his family. Her husband physically abuses her and her daughter and takes away their freedom. She finally succeeds in escaping to Turkey and to the U.S.A. ultimately.
The reason I picked up the book from an exchange place was because I remembered seeing the movie based on the book a long time ago when I was a kid. Although I didn´t remember the entire movie, I remembered thinking that Iran was an awful place to live and that I was glad to be a Christian. That was a very long time ago.
While I do sympathize the author and her daughter-what they had to go through was truly awful-she had a very close-minded attitude against Iranian culture from the beginning. The way she describes it is ignorant, condescending and just offensive. The Persian culture belongs to one of the ancient civilizations of the world yet she writes about it only in negative light, making people seem barbaric, uneducated and unjust. The book has such an unbalanced view of Iran, it´s down right repulsive.
Apparently there´s a Finnish documentary made in 2002 called ¨Without My Daughter¨ getting the husband, Dr. Mahmoody´s side of the story. I´ll try to watch it once I get back to the states or if I ever get to fix my computer before then. It would be interesting to know both sides of the story.
Right now I´m currently reading Isabel Allende´s De Amor y De Sombra (Of Love and Shadow) which is about two young people in the midst of oppressive military dictatorship(if I´m not mistaking, I´m quite sure it´s set in Buenos Aires/Argentina during the Dirty War but it also might be set in Chile during the dictatorship of Pinochet mainly due to the author´s connection to Salvador Allende). I´m only have less than 50 pages to go and it´s pretty good so far. ::edit:: the description fits with the Chilean dictatorship.
Any books to recommend me? I´m on goodreads in case you want to know my preference.
