Yes that book was so sumptuous! It's been a long time since I was laughing and crying at the same time. And I loved the references to places I've been. I used to give carriage rides right past the Newberry Library.

The person who originally loaned me a copy of the book (which I didn't read in the year that I had it, so I returned it and then found it at a used book sale a few weeks later for only $2) had gotten it from her best friend. Well, that best friend's boyfriend is a librarian at the Newberry who had gotten his MLS from Dominican, formerly known as Rosary, which is where Henry got his!!

TTW is one of the better Chicago Books, in that the author uses the city in wonderfully detailed ways that only a native (or long-time resident) can.

My copy arrived as a complete surprise from my best friend! I got a package from Amazon and I was confused because I hadn't ordered anything. Even more confused when I opened the package and thought, "well I wanted to read this but I must have been drunk when I ordered it!" until I saw her name on the sales slip.

Anybody read Vellum ? I think I'm almost halfway in, and there does not appear to be a plot. Or a story. Barely any characters. And it's too clever by half.

Hi Raq! - I've read it. It's pretty multithreaded. And very closely tied with some of Neal Stephenson's (not the angels, but.) It does get a little clearer towards the middle.... For me, taking allergy medicine helped.

Where are you in it?

All right, so. I just finished The Warrior's Apprentice.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who cried got a little teary-eyed when Miles buried Bothari.

So I'm only halfway in to The Sewing Circles of Herat.

It's part war-journalism, part history, part women's history, part diary, part travelogue of Afghanistan. The author is a journalist who was there during the end of the Soviet era, and who returned shortly after 9/11. She was hustled around the country by those who'd later become the Taliban, which is just surreal. I'm having a very hard time NOT reading the last chapters first to find out the fate of the Afghan woman who wrote letters to the author (who she did not know-letters are peppered through out) and had them smuggled out.

It's has an almost dreamlike quality, even as it is brutal.

I really recommend it.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who cried when Miles buried Bothari.

When Miles said the line about being able to see everything because he was on Bothari's shoulders, I just sobbed.

When Miles said the line about being able to see everything because he was on Bothari's shoulders, I just sobbed.

Oh man. Just reading it here gets me choked up.

Oh lord yes.

Oh, Bothari.

Certainly the most moving portrayal of a sociopath that I've ever read. (Or is he a psychopath? I'm really not sure...)