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Laura ([personal profile] eve_prime) wrote2005-06-06 02:51 pm
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"Sun books" 2005

It's nearly that time of year again! Time for sitting outdoors among the roses and indulging in the reading of books that gloriously evoke a richer, more sensuous, more pungent world than I know in everyday life. Specifically, these books should be set in the Mediterranean, Central Asia, and India, with occasional tastes of Africa or the American Southwest for variety. I wait all winter and spring for this time of year. Here's what I've been saving up for summer:

  • Simeti's On Persephone's Island, about Sicily

  • Pagan Holiday, which I got nearly halfway through last year; it's about a man and his pregnant girlfriend who recently followed the ancient Roman tourist routes

  • The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times by Adrienne Mayor

  • The God Who Comes: Dionysian Mysteries Revisited by Rosemarie Taylor-Perry (EPL 292.36)

  • The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales from the Bible

  • Gardens of Light by Amin Maalouf, a novel about the prophet Mani (PQ3979.2.M28J3713 1996)

  • The Shah Nameh by Firdawsi, which is the Persian national epic (PK6456)

  • David Macauley's Mosque

  • Wise Lord of the Sky: Persian Myth

  • Kim by Rudyard Kipling

  • Gulbadan: Portrait of a Rose Princess at the Mughal Court by Rumer Godden, which B. found for me for Christmas (I'd read it about 10 years ago)

  • The Travels of Marco Polo

  • The Tortilla Curtain by T.C Boyle, which SR lent me

  • Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams, a book combining nature writing (Utah) with her mother's cancer experience

  • Two just for fun: Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence - I can hardly wait!

  • Maybe nonfiction or fiction about ancient Greek explorers; maybe I could reread Forgotten Queens of Islam too, which is pretty exotic!


    • Meanwhile, I'm determined to soon finish The Earth Path by Starhawk and to read Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis by Arran Gare. I had also better hurry up and finish other UO library books if I want to be checking new ones out.