The Poisonwood Bible by Barabara Kingsolver

Four girls and a mother accompany father preacher (a tyrant) into the great unsaved Belgian Congo in 1959. Told in five distinct female voices that you may love and loathe in turn. Favorite quotes:

"Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes."

"Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place. Especially here."

"Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of it's past. When the strap lets go, what flies forward will not be family planning, it will be the small, hard head of a child. Overpopulation has deforested three-quarters of Africa, yielding drought, famine, and the probable extinction of all animals most loved by children and zoos. The competition for resources intensifies, and burgeoning tribes try to kill each other. For every life saved by vaccination or food relief, one is lost to starvation or war. Poor Africa. No other nation has endured such an unspeakably bizarre combination of foreign thievery and foreign goodwill."


It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

A story about a teenage boy who is clinically depressed and checks himself into a psych ward one suicidal evening. I skimmed through much of the first half and curiosity led me onwards. There have always been people in my life with clinical depression. I have known people who have made "a stay," "a visit," who have disappeared for a little while...It was the process of healing and the exploration of friendship and finding anchors in a turbulent life that kept me reading. Immensely satisfying. Tears in your eyes satisfying.

And at the end of the story:

Ned Vizzini spend five days in adult psychiatric in the Methodist Hospital, Park Slope, Brooklyn 11/29/04- 12/3/04. Ned wrote this 12/10/04 - 1/6/05.

Awesome.