Several months ago, maybe even a year, I saw Bill Bryson's African Diary on the shelf at the bookstore. I had wanted to read it for some time simply because Bill Bryson wrote it. I love his work and this was one of the outstanding books of his I had yet to read. Well, when I saw it on the shelf, I passed on purchasing it - the book was too skinny at only fifty pages for the price. I wanted something more for my dollar and decided to go another route. But, when I was given a gift card for Ch...

I tend to find myself in a bookstore for a randomly justified reason. I really have no good reason to head in, as though I'm out of books to read, but I somehow make up a reason and go in there and buy something I don't really need. I did this a few months ago and picked up, among other things, Joshua Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World. And honestly, I'm not even totally sure why I bought it since I'm not exactly interested in sailing.

Like many books tend to do after I buy them, Sa...

Before I travel, as I wrote previously, I like to get a bit of a perspective on a country. Normally I prefer to pick up a copy of a history book as I try to get a good feel of what a country has been through and how it's developed. I gave it a bit of thought preceding my trip to Rwanda and decided to go in a different direction as I was able to pick up enough of a historical background from the marvel of the Internet; I instead purchased a copy of Dian Fossey's Gorillas in the Mist.

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