We Got Books!

Two weekends ago, Sister Iris and I finally found a Saturday morning to go into the center of Lima and buy books for the school with the money donated by you, my friends and family. We had a total of $255 to spend, or over 750 soles, which goes pretty far when most books are between 15 and 35 soles! There's a street near the Plaza de Armas that has all these little bookstands one after the other, and at one point a whole market-like plaza of bookstands under a tent, selling an eclectic selection of everything from classic English literature (translated into Spanish of course) to modern Latin American writers to cookbooks to cheap romance paperbacks. Iris and I had a great time, two literature junkies browsing from one stand to another saying, This is great! Have you read that one? They have to have this! We got one copy of each of the following titles, except for the abridged Moby Dick and The Little Prince, which we got about ten of. All will now be available for the students to check out of the library.

My picks:

Pride and Prejudice

Moby Dick

The Lord of the Rings

The Canterbury Tales

Iris's picks:

The complete works of Isabel Allende (13 novels)

The complete works of Paulo Coehlo (10 novels)

Travesuras de la Niña Mala, Mario Vargas Llosa

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Emilio, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Libro de Buen Amor, Arcipreste de Hita

Novelas Ejemplares, Cervantes

De Profundis, Oscar Wilde

Cuentos de Amor, de Locura, y de Muerte, Horacio Quiroga

Elogio de la Locura, Erasmus de Rotterdam

Las Flores del Mal, Baudelaire

Rimas, Gustavo A. Bécquer


And with all this, plus our bus fares and a snack for the hardworking book-buyers, there is still about 70 soles left. Iris couldn't find any poetry by Gabriela Mistral, but we'll have to see if we can locate that or other Latin American poetry to spend the rest of our allowance on. Meanwhile the books are staying with us until they can be checked into the library, so I intend to enjoy The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende in my spare time... Thanks again to everyone and please know that although you will probably never meet the kids in Fe y Alegría, you can be certain that somewhere in Peru there will be more than one young person who falls in love with a certain book and has her life changed by it because of your help. If you've ever had that experience yourself you know what a blessing it is, so I will just say, thank you for helping to give that to the kids here, and may the Lord repay your kindness with tons of blessings!