Monday, January 26, 2009

Hot-Blooded Books

Trading with the Enemy I've been reading Tom Miller's Trading with the Enemy: a Yankee Travels through Castro's Cuba. It's a good read right now for various political and economic reasons. As an added unexpected bonus, when the night turns cold, reading about this verdant Caribbean nation helps keep me warm. Whether you're forgoing your Caribbean vacation this year due to finances or the havoc of last fall's hurricanes, or, let's face it, you've never been on a Caribbean vacation, we have some good reads to help transport you.

Trading with the EnemyIf scraping your windows on a winter morning renews your dream of being your own boss on a tropical beach, check out Herman Wouk's Don't Stop the Carnival. If Jamaica sounds just right to you, there's Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea to explain what happened to Bertha when she met Rochester. Back in Cuba, you can revisit Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. In non-fiction, there's Wade Davis's exploration of Vodoun in Haiti in The Serpent and The Rainbow. For political analysis, Randall Robinson compares living in St. Kitts to the United States in Quitting America. But if a light-hearted romp through the length and breadth of the balmy region is in order, who better than Jimmy Buffett with A Salty Piece of Land?

Cheaper than a Caribbean resort, without the pesky no-see-ums. Pick up a hot-blooded book to get you through till spring.

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