My wife is teaching an honors sophomore - level world lit course next year. The course is heavy on existentialism - Kafka, Sartre, waiting for Godot, other darkish things. She is trying to find a book to pair with Einstein's Dreams (technically a US writer but set in a foreign country) for summer reading; something not - too - long and not too depressing (just out of kindness) but with some nature-of-god-time-.and - the - universe kind of themes. Ideally a foreign author but a foreign setting or fish out of water themes might make it qualify. Problems: no or extremely minimal undescribed sex and little to no cursing because we are in a private school inTN and it sucks sometimes. So all Marquez is out. Sadly. Also junot diaz. Ideas?

Gris, maybe The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal. It's a series of essays about forgiveness by Wiesenthal, as well as Dalai Lama etc. It is episodic in the same way the Einstein's Dreams is because it's essays, but it's very accessible, which is perfect for summer reading where there is no teacher to teach it. Sort of "heavy" writing but very thought-provoking.

I highly, highly recommend The Golem and the Jinni.

I'm reading it right now, Sunil. Just getting started.

That looks awesome.

I'm reading it right now, Sunil. Just getting started.

You're in for a treat.

That looks awesome.

IT IS! Between this and The Night Circus, damn, I'm reading some good stuff lately.

For people who use Goodreads, how do you deal with partially read books. I don't finish a lot of books, especially non fiction, I just read the parts that interest me. But I like to see how many books I read in a year. I feel like I should count them somehow- there are around 6 so far this year. But I feel like I am lying if I put them in read

The only time I put something unfinished on my read shelf was when I wanted to give it a negative review, otherwise I delete.

If you want to count them, I would mark them as read, write a review that says "Did not finish" or something to that effect, and set up a DNF shelf. That way, at the end of the year you could just count what is on the DNF shelf.

Personally, I find it very helpful when someone says they didn't finish a book, especially if they say why.

I created a did-not-finish shelf. I don't remember if it counts it as a book that I read or not, but I like keeping track of things I gave up on for whatever reason.

I typically don't rate those books because it doesn't seem right to rate something that I didn't finish.

Thanks for the ideas.