The Next Best Thing

I love to read. I have loved reading since I was little and had to go to my mom's bookstore after school and wait for her to finish working. There was a big, old ceramic heater that spanned the entire front window of this bookstore and I used to sit there and read my little heart out until Mom was ready to close up shop for the night. I have not been the same since. Boyfriends over the years have elected to get me books or gift certificates to buy them instead of some ole' stand-by flowers.  Then there was the time I dropped my library book in the toilet after....well, you know what preceded it, and had to sheepishly explain to the scary librarian why her formerly pristine book was in shambles. Anyway, I digress.

I was thinking this morning how powerful the written word can be. They are able to facilitate an easy and cheap journey to another hemisphere. Hence, the next best thing!  I was reading a post by a fellow travel blog exchange member and was immediately transported to Bahrain of all places. Mind you,  I am sitting in West Virginia, where to mention the name "Bahrain" a few of my fellow citizens may think I am referring to my brain. (I said a few, so any West Virginians reading this, I do not mean you!) Yet, there I was, in a Bahraini shopping mall, watching the man sleep on the plush couch, and trying to skirt the frowning gaze of the security guard. Cool huh? (Check the post out here if you are interested in reading-thanks to Sophie at http://blogs.bootsnall.com/Anne-Sophie/scenes-from-a-bahraini-mall-empty-elegance.html.   So that got me thinking--what are my favorite books to read that can catapult me across the world with a turn of the page? There are too many to list. However,  I will give you two of them here and I hope that you will add your own. Maybe I have read them already, or maybe I need to get to my local library with a quickness.

First on my short list:
Around the Bloc by Stephanie Elizondo Griest. This is an oft amusing, yet realistic snapshot of the author's life as a foreign correspondent in Communist Moscow, Beijing, and Havana. Her life in all three of these cities was peppered with adventure of the kind you can only experience in countries run by scary dictators. Basically, I want to BE Ms. Griest.

Second and last on the short list:
My Path Leads to Tibet by Sabriye Tenberken. If this book does not make you dig just a little bit to find your altruistic, compassionate, selfless side, then I don't know if there is hope for you! Sabriye became blind at the age of 12 and chose then to never allow this condition to prevent her from doing anything. And by anything, I mean she traveled to Tibet and opened the first school in that country for blind children. Oh, and she developed a Tibetan Braille alphabet. When she found out that blindness guaranteed living as an outcast in Tibet, she made her choice to change that. Change it she did. Her descriptions of the country, the Tibetans that became her family, and her journey made me think I was right there, working tirelessly to organize the school. Awesome book, easy read, and you will want to change something about your world after finishing it!

Your turn!