Aneya & Lauren: What We're Reading.

Note: In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, is noticeable absent from our collection. We recently gave it to Stephen to read (since he was laboring through Infinite Jest, and needed a break).

Aneya: One of the first things Lauren and I bonded over, way back when, was our mutual love of books. Although our tastes vary, we both share a love of reading, and we've been trading books back and forth for years. It all started with our love affair with David Sedaris (who we eventually saw, live at UCLA, which, without a doubt, was one of the best readings I have ever been to in my life. My face literally hurt from laughing so much).

Lauren: That was an amazing reading, and as you can see a copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day is among the books we towed down here and it will definitely make the journey back to the States. Aneya and I both love reading, and we try to trade not just books, but interesting articles we find, and good newsy websites.

Aneya: When we realized we were moving to Chile, we each brought a few books with us, which we quickly went through. We went looking for English bookstore but they were few and far between. Plus, each book cost a fortune! We begged our parents to send us more, and they obliged. Pictured above is the collection we've accumulated so far.

Lauren: ... Minus a few. Books here, paperback English books, cost about $30USD! And Spanish books aren't much cheaper. They're incredibly expensive! And the selection is pitiful, usually "airplane books," some classics, and a lot of Allende (part of the above collection, which I soon discovered I was not a big fan of).

Aneya: We thought I'd be a fun idea to let you all know what we're reading at the moment. We have quite the eclectic collection (as you can tell) and it'll be interesting to go back through books we've already read and recall how we felt about them.

Lauren: Which is pretty much what we do over lunch/dinner anyway. We fill each other in on the news the other missed, and tell each other how we feel about each other's books. It's almost like a tradition now.

We've been doing so much reading since we've gotten down here. Anything in English that we can get our hands on or that our parents generously send us. If it's in English, we read it. And some Spanish. We'll be doing these weekly posts on what books, magazines, news clips we're reading and if you see something we should see, please send it our way via comments.

Aneya: All this is to say that you can look forward to weekly book reviews, every Wednesday, starting next week!

-- Aneya & Lauren