Books in the House

This seems to be the year of catching up with what I’ve been meaning to read as well as the newly published. I’ve had this book on my desk for a long time. “Sun After Dark: Flights Into the Foreign” by Pico Iyer is a book that jumped out at me, yet I kept putting off. I confess I can be lazy when it comes to reading nonfiction, especially essays, and they often turn out to be the most rewarding. One late night recently having misplaced my novel, I was again staring at “Sun After Dark,” began reading again and became entranced. My goal is to finish it this week. This collection published in 2005 seem as relevant as ever. Most of the places visited were just prior or subsequent to 911, which adds a layer to his experience. I love reading him for the poetry of his descriptions and for showing me people and places I would probably never encounter otherwise. Interwoven are visits or reminders of famous personages living and dead in far flung places. Among these are the Dalai Lama, Leonard Cohen, and W. B. Sebold. How unlikely a combination! All travelers of a sort. The dust jacket shows monks looking at Angkor Wat (Cambodia) shimmering in the distance. This underscores his fascination with the spiritual practices of the cultures he finds himself in, Buddhism, Sufi, and others.

To give you a taste, Iyer wraps each experience in a dream world, which it turns out is great reading late at night. Iyer has a “heady” experience, oxygen-deprived, visiting rock formations and touring a prison in two mile high La Paz, Bolivia, and travels six hours over dangerous mountain roads past roving bandits in order to get a flight out of Yemen. Japan, which is Iyer's current home, Tibet, Ethiopia, Easter Island, Haiti, and LA also round out the collection. I am not reading this in any particular order, but plan to finish by the end of the week. I want to find out how LA fits into this grouping. Iyer’s places are not all happy destinations and happy encounters, and that makes perfect reading.