Bokononism

Today I went book shopping. I love book shopping, no matter what country I'm in. A friend in my program has never read Vonnegut and I found Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse 5 at the campus bookshop so I'm doing what I can to remedy this situation. (Luckily he didn't take much persuading. Normally with book suggestions I'd wait anxiously worrying about how my suggestion might be received but as I'm convinced this individual is a member of my karass I'm not too worried. Plus I have two other classmates looking to convert as soon as he's done with them, so I may have a happy bunch of Vonnegut fans in a few weeks, إن شاء الله

One of the great things about sharing Vonnegut with some one else is that I get to re-live the first time I read Cat's Cradle, after my older sister pushed it on me. I was so skeptical at first, but I converted quickly and read all of his writing that I could get my hands on after that. I don't think I realized how common the experience was until I saw Mr. Vonnegut interviewed by Jon Stewart, who said something along the lines of "as an adolescent he made my life bearable". Truer words were never spoken.

Later on in the evening I went to a religious book store to try to get an English/Arabic copy of the Qur'an. The man working at the shop told me to sit down and wait for him and then left the shop (and me alone in it) for a good 10 minutes. Apparently he wasn't too concerned at the possibility that I might steal anything. He brought be a very used but very beautiful bilingual copy so hopefully I can spend Ramadan working my way through it now that I have a better grasp of Arabic (I can't read it in Arabic, yet, but I will at least have a better idea of what the translation is getting at.)

Anyway, homework is beckoning and I am already exhausted. Busy, busy, busy....