winter reads

after a summer and fall of hardly making it through a few books, I've finally hit the season that makes you want to stay inside, curl up under the blankets and read.

it also helps that I spent a bunch of hours in transit to and from America/Mongolia, which given the atrocious movie selection (come on, United), also provided me with plenty of time to read.

It feels good to be back to my bookworm self. All is right in the world once more :-)

What I've been reading lately...(that which is noteworthy and not embarrassing to confess to- I certainly read some mindless fiction as well)

Foreign to Familiar: A Guide to Hot and Cold Climate Cultures, Sarah Lanier: I ordered this off Amazon because I was curious as to what characteristics she might ascribe to cold climate cultures (considering how cold Mongolia is and all). Interestingly, her explanations end up classifying Mongolia as more hot climate because it is nomadic and more agriculture based (and thus less "developed" in some senses).

The part that was most helpful to me was her chapter on high context vs. low context cultures. Basically, low context cultures make it easier for a foreigner to understand how to do things or how things work- paying at a restaurant would be self-explanatory thanks to signs or written explanations and a foreigner wouldn't need to understand the culture to know what to do. High context cultures are the opposite- they require a high knowledge of the culture (or context) in order to figure out how to do things within the culture. Reading her explanation of this dichotomy gave definition to what has been incredibly true of my acclimation to Mongolia and had me nodding my head over and over again.

Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, Jillian Lauren: Now the wife of a member of the band Weezer, Lauren wrote this memoir about how she ended up a member of the harem of one of the princes of Brunei. It was interesting to read her reflections on how she felt like she ended up there and what made her go back a second time (the lure of the money mostly), as well as how she navigated the intensely bizarre and clandestine environment of living with almost no power over her days, choices or activities. It was a fast read and helped pass a few hours somewhere over the Pacific ocean.

Serving With Eyes Wide Open: Doing Short-Term Missions with Intelligence, David Livermore: If you have done, are doing or want to do short-term missions, you NEED to read this book. Hosting short-term teams in Mongolia has changed my understanding of short-term missions forever and this book does an excellent job of beginning a discussion about some of the basic problems, weaknesses and struggles that come with short-term missions both in our home cultures and overseas. Read it, discuss it, tell me what you think!

Icy Sparks, Gwyn Hyman Rubio: This was a part of a wonderful care package that a church from the U.S. sent me last month. It follows the story of Icy Sparks as she grows up in rural Appalachia with undiagnosed Tourette's Syndrome. It's a beautiful story of her struggle with not knowing what is wrong, of being sent briefly to a children's mental hospital, and of discovering who she is in spite of how the rest of her small town sees her.

The Help, Kathryn Stockett: Somehow The Help came up during our Thanksgiving celebration this year and at least four people gasped and exclaimed over how amazing it was when it did. I'll confess that I agree- I started it this past Sunday and stayed up late last night to finish it.

The story of two African-American women working as domestic help for white women during the 1960s in Mississippi unfolds and intertwines with that of a young white woman aspiring to be an author. As they begin a secret project to record their stories and shed light on the realities of race relations, I couldn't help but get drawn into their lives, the tension of what might happen and the raw ache of that history.

Why Korean American Churches Need a Makeover, Hyphen Magazine blog, Tammy Kim: Oh the things I have learned about Korea, the Korean church, the Korean American church and Korean culture since moving to Mongolia. Mongolia has a lot of Korean influences and there are a lot of Korean missionaries here- hence all of the learning. This blog post caught my eye and was quite an interesting read.

Welcome to Minegolia, Foriegnpolicy.com, Ron Gluckman: A friend sent me this link and while this feels the fifty-hundredth article I've read recently about Mongolia and its mining potential, it does do a fairly decent job of summarizing things. I'll be honest though, the whole mining thing frustrates me.

First, no one is talking about the environmental impact such mining will cause. And in a country where the capital city is plagued by horrible, terrible, no-good, very, very bad pollution with not much (from what I can tell) being done to quell it, I don't hold high hopes that there are going to be strict pro-environment standards when it comes down to the mining and the promise of money. Second, as the article mentions, the risk of the money being thrown down the hole of political corruption is huge and likely.

Third, perhaps the mining will bring jobs. I'm not an economist and I don't know the likelihood of such a thing. I do, however, suspect that it's not going to solve the unemployment issues, it's not going to help my friends and community here who struggle to buy food and pay basic bills and it's not going to drastically improve the education or health care systems. The people who can already afford to shop at the Louis Vuitton boutique are just going to be able to buy another purse, while the rest of the city keeps on in the same patterns and problems of yesterday.

Thoughts? Other books you can recommend for the rest of winter and traveling to come? Other interesting articles or blog posts to share?