3/7/2007

Reading The Year's Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois. When he reads, he usually doesn't have enough time to get into a novel, so he prefers short stories, novellas, and anthologies. Though, that said, he recently read Brothers Karamazov and Don Quixote.

He has two favorite books. The first, in keeping with the genre, Enders Game, by Orson Scott Card and the second, All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, for its simplistic style, accuracy, and ability to cut out the romanticism from war. In line with this is one of his favorite poems, Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori, which translates to "It is Sweet and Proper to Die for One's Country." The title is ironic to the rest of the poem.

Books that have changed his life--One Day in the Life, by Manlio Arguetta, about the El Salvadorean Civil War, which his family, when he was six, fled to come to the United States. Reading this book helped him understand his parents better. Likewise the book, Radio Venceremos, which is about a forbidden El Salvadorean radio station which exists in order to accurately tell the truth, also helped him understand his family and the country he was born in.

The search for truth and honesty is a common trend in why he reads what he reads, especially war stories--he says that anytime there is a war, there will be patriotism, that is, a combination of propaganda and romanticism. We need to concentrate on the hidden sacrifices of war, not only for the soldiers, but for society as a whole.