Counting

When I was was about halfway through my time in Senegal, I realized that, shockingly, my orange prescription pill bottle of malaria tablets was also halfway finished. Without ever consciously assigning it a label, I had unknowingly been using this pill bottle as my hourglass representing my time left. At around $5 per Malarone pill, there was no way I was going to purchase an excess of pills, so I had just the right amount to last me for the entire semester. Slowly, my supply diminished, and I noticed that an entirely-full bottle was shrinking down to an almost-empty bottle rattling with just a few pills left. Each pill was a concrete reminder of how many days I had left, and, on the converse, how many days I had made it through!

Of course, people have been suggesting with only the tiniest hint of irony that over this past year, I should have been keeping a "short-timer's stick," a historical relic from the Vietnam War Era. Soldiers would carve elaborate walking sticks that they could add notches to, documenting just how many days they had survived, and how many days they had left. Although I wasn't looking to appropriate an object with such specific historical significance, I do like the idea of counting- finding something to use as your personal hourglass, your timekeeper's log that represents just how far you've come.

So, behold my "list of books read while in Vietnam!"

1. Catfish and Mandala – Andrew Pham

2. The Elephant Whisperer – Lawrence Anthony

3. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot

4. Roots – Alex Haley

5. The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

6. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs – Chuck Klosterman

7. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse

8. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

9. Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe

10. The Beautiful and the Damned – F. Scott Fitzgerald

11. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott

12. The Language of Flowers – Vanessa Diffenbaugh

13. Sketches of Young Couples – Charles Dickens

14. This Beautiful Life – Helen Schulman

15. The Game – Jack London

16. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen

17. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman

18. The Year of Living Biblically – A.J. Jacobs

19. Cutting for Stone – Abraham Verghese

20. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum

21. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

22. Heidi – Johanna Spyri

23. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books – Azar Nafisi

24. Birds of Paradise: A Novel – Diana Abu-Jaber

25. Blonde Roots – Bernadine Evaristo

26. Pollyanna – Eleanor H. Porter

27. A Kind of Intimacy – Jenn Ashworth

28. The Breaking of Eggs – Jim Powell

29. The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson – Mark Twain

30. A Little Princess – Frances Hodgson Burnett

31. Expat: Women’s True Tales of Life Abroad – Christina Henry De Tessan

32. A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown – Julia Scheeres

33. Daisy Miller – Henry James

34. This Side of Paradise – F. Scott Fitzgerald

35. Peter and Wendy – J.M. Barrie

36. Gorilla, My Love – Toni Cade Bambara

37. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K. Rowling

38. Cape Cod – Henry David Thoreau

39. Matterhorn – Karl Marlantes

40. The Space Between Us – Thrity Umrigar

41. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair

42. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer

43. Life of Pi – Yann Martel

44. The Buddha in the Attic – Julie Otsuka

45. Swamplandia! – Karen Russell

46. The Bean Trees – Barbara Kingsolver

47. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly – Anthony Bourdain

48. Every Last One – Anna Quindlen

49. The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster

50. The Happiness Project – Gretchen Rubin

51. The Imperfectionists – Tom Rachman

52. Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White

53. The Bird Sisters – Rebecca Rasmussen

54. What It Is Like To Go To War – Karl Marlantes

55. The Book of Lost Things – John Connolly

56. The Council of Dads – Bruce Feiler

57. The Know-It-All: One Man’s Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World – A.J. Jacobs

58. The Glass Castle – Jeannettee Walls

59. The Snow Child – Eowyn Ivey

60. The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern

61. Running the Rift – Naomi Benaron

62. A Million Little Pieces – James Frey

63. The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives – Lola Shoneyin

64. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

65. The Giver – Lois Lowry

66. Gathering Blue – Lois Lowry

67. Messenger – Lois Lowry

68. The Leftovers – Tom Perrotta

69. Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight – Alexandra Fuller

70. He’s Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys – Greg Behrendt

71. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake – Aimee Bender

72. Commuters: A Novel – Emily Gray Tedrowe

73. About A Boy – Nick Hornby

74. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men – David Foster Wallace

75. Not Without My Sister: The True Story of Three Girls Violated and Betrayed – Kristina Jones

76. Pigs in Heaven – Barbara Kingsolver

77. The Elegance of the Hedgehog – Muriel Barbery

78. Dharma Bums – Jack Kerouac

79. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote

80. I Am Charlotte Simmons – Tom Wolfe

81. Travels With Charley – John Steinbeck

So, there you have it: 81 books. Approximately 23,369 pages. 1 Kindle, 75 e-books, and 6 paperbacks. 

And that is how I counted my 306 days in Vietnam.