You Load 16 Books & What Did You Get?

CanadaBoy is leaving!

Moving!

Relocating!

Abandoning....no, that last one's a little bit strong. Anyway, you get the idea. He's outta here when his contract finishes next month.

Yesterday we were sitting in his office eating chicken. It was delicious. He ordered in two kinds -- the regular fried chicken and the one with the spicy sauce with sesame seeds over that, and this time, they didn't skimp on the sesame seeds. I was trying to enjoy the food and conversation, but I got to thinking that there wouldn't be many more lunches like this. Then I tried to remind myself that people come and go over here; this is the way of the expat. Then I wasn't hungry.

I hadn't quite worked up to full-scale brooding, but my conversational skills were waning, and even on the verge of sucking. CanadaBoy must have noticed, so he told me that I could have first crack at the books stored in his cabinet. Here's what I found and took back to my office:

The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint Exupery

The Little Prince --in English and Korean. [Obviously, I'm up to something here.]

Kim - Rudyard Kipling [I've never read Kipling. I like his name, though. Both of 'em.]

Driving Over Lemons - Chris Stewart [The former drummer for Genesis moves to Spain and runs a peasant farm. I loves me some 'life abroad' stories.]

Macbeth - William Shakespeare [I've never read this. My son loves it.]

The American - Henry James [My first outing with James wasn't so fun. I want to like him. I really DO!]

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo [Damn, C'est huge.]

Russia Under The Czars - Henry Moscow [Published in 1962. YA history. Ex-library book.]

My Own Two Feet - Beverly Cleary [Memoir.]

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - Lester David [It looks like trashy reading, but my grandmother, mother and aunt were crazy about the Kennedys, so I grew up reading stuff like this.]

Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain [I feel about Mark Twain the way Mr. Bybee feels about Jesse James and all those Civil War heroes.]

A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man - James Joyce [I've never read Joyce, except for the Molly Bloom chapter in Ulysses. I've got a block about him.]

Espedair Street - Iain Banks [I don't know this author, but how could I not be drawn to someone with so many vowels in his first name?]

The Interpretation Of Dreams - Sigmund Freud [Hmmm...]

Beyond The Horizon - Eugene O'Neill [1920 play. Won the Pulitzer Prize.]

The Last Gentleman - Walker Percy [I haven't read anything by this author...wasn't he buddies with Flannery O'Connor?]

This is a pretty good haul. Rifling through CanadaBoy's book cupboard was a nice distraction, but I can't really say that I feel better.