Yesterday I posted about a visit to the Temple of Literature, so in keeping with that theme I thought that today I would write about books! Travelling offers a fantastic opportunity to catch up on all that reading that you always mean to do but can never seen to find the time to do at home. In a foreign country and away from your usual routine, you often end up with many long bus or train trips on the agenda, lots of downtime (for me, often spent in coffee shops and the like) and less distractions. I generally have a book on the go at home but read WAY more on the road.

What have I been reading lately? I am normally a fiction reader, but I’ve been reading quite a bit of non-fiction lately for some reason, perhaps because those are what books have circulated among our crowd. I thought I’d compile a list of the books I’ve tackled since we’ve gotten to Saigon.

Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts

My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult

Tears of the Desert – A Memoir of Survival in Darfur – Halima Bashir

A Long Way Gone – Memoirs of a Boy Soldier – Ishmael Beah

Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer

River of Time – Jon Swain

The Rum Diary – Hunter S. Thompson

Reading at the moment (and loving it):

Anthony Bourdain – A Cook’s Tour

Next on the docket:

Graham Greene – The Quiet American

I’ve always been pretty adamant about not stealing anything, and that used to include MP3′s, bootlegged DVDs, and books. Well, it seems that the whole of Vietnam is pretty keen on photocopying and burning discs, so I succumbed to the desire to get whole books for about $2-$3 each. At home, most of these would probably cost about $15, and I proudly spent that cash to support the authors that I love. Now, I’m supporting families with cheap photocopied book purchases in the local stores of Saigon. Sorry all of my beloved authors, your words have touched me, but my being broke as all hell has gotten the better of me in Vietnam!

On the other hand, you get what you pay for. There are quite a few pages that you can’t read because of paper jams placing multiple copies on one page, other pages that have been folded over to hide that the paper was cut wrong, and even misspellings on some of the covers.

Ah the page that sticks an extra inch out of the binding....

Now that's some hot page on page action.

Book selection à la Jen Cheng and Serene Hayes