Last fall I organized the tumbling bookshelves that make up the library at Odyssey. It was raining on Poros and Annette was nearby, editing her food blog, asking for grammar advice. The Dutch like to use short sentences. Sometimes they do not make sense in English. Anyhoo, I noticed this book then and found it kind of boring, but this summer I picked it up thinking that Pano might like it (he wouldn't) and found a new appreciation for it. I'm a Stranger Here Myself could have been written by Dave Berry (who Pano detests), but it's not, so the zippy closing one liner is a little less contrived. He's a little more educated and not quite as silly, so it's a matter of taste as to which one is polio and which one is cholera. I can definitely identify with anyone trying to make heads or tales out of a return to his birth place, and I like that he uses British colloquialisms without feeling a need to explain himself. Except for his background in economics and penchant for khaki pants, I feel like we have a lot of similarities. I don't know if the stories are strong enough to have influenced my dreams yet, but there's still time. I'll get back to that.
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