NOTICE!

For some reason I can add sidebars, but not new posts. Please check back later. I have been working on a variety of things including switching my blog soon from this one, which was set up with my now-defunct West Wisconsin Telcom account. I hope to have my new blog through Gmail up soon. I will provide a link and announcement when I've got everything straight. 7/2/11




Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Recently read: Wendy Dale’s Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals



I found this title so irresistible I had to buy the book, and as a consequence, discovered a wonderful new (to me) author. This is a delightful and insightful romp through some places around the globe that I certainly never plan to go to! Dale is an excellent writer, and skillfully uses humor to humanize countries that generally inhabit our headlines, like Columbia, Cuba, and Lebanon.

We follow her as she fearlessly tackles love, politics, making a living as a writer, and her memories of a most unusual childhood. A particularly endearing chapter is one titled, "The Road Less Traveled Is Usually the One with Guerrillas" on It. In this chapter, she makes a number of good points, including that politics is really the “educated person’s football.” Elsewhere, she deals with her views on the Spanish concept of time, offers practical (and funny) advice on how to visit your boyfriend when he is in jail in a third-world country, and how to accept your family’s quirks, such as your mother’s wanderlust and your uncle’s extreme need for control. Well worth reading, whether while stranded in an airport in some exotic country or while snuggly settled on your own screen porch.

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