Alright, I'm reading A Town Like Alice again. After finishing the 7th Stephanie Plum novel, I finally reached my breaking point. --> I never usually read past 3-4 books in a row of one author, because no matter how great they are, you get tired of their style; but I was trying to read all the Plum books in a row just for A Lark. Doesn't work.
I'm studying Southeast Asia this semester, and Alice takes place in Malaysia during the Japanese invasion of WWII, so I'm in the right mooood.
I must say I'm quite enjoying my Asia class. While I'm a bit tired, after 4 years of McGill, of talking about civil society, and the state, and authoritarianism, and democracy and the economy, etc. etc. etc. (a bit like reading 7 Stephanie Plums in a row), the prof spends a lot of time telling us about the countries. And the readings are very case studyish, and historical. I LOVE learning about countries.
If I look at a map of Europe, the countries all look like Individual Countries--because I've known people who are Swiss, Greek, Italian, Polish etc. You grow up just naturally knowing more about these places, and studying European history, and seeing European-set movies. But I hate it when I look at another region of the map, and it's just a big Blank. When I first studied the Middle East, it was just land with lines drawn over it; and I loved how, as I studied the region, it took shape in my mind. It started to mean something.
Studying sub-Saharan Africa last year was a bit tough, because most of the readings were so broad (eg. covering 6 countries at a time), so it's hard for me to Say Something about these places now. What's Chad? What do I know about Chad?? Or Benin? Or the Central African Republic? Or Guinea-Buissau? Ah well, I'll have to get there on my own.
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