I never have a problem finding something to do in my “alone time.” I just finished a novel by a Cornellian, Junot Diaz, titled “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 and The National Book Critics Circle Award. It is a gritty, witty imersion into the stories of the people of Santo Domingo during the time of the not-so-benevolent (read genocidal) dictator Trujillo (who ruled from 1930 to 1961) and the impact on the lives of “dominicanos” in the U.S. then and today. It is told through the eyes of three generations of a dysfunctional family, including the grossly overweight nerd-writer and sci-fi game addict, Oscar, who pines, not-so-discreetly and heartbreakingly for just about every woman he meets, to (almost) no avail.

The text is littered with Spanish words that I was dying to look up but couldn’t put the book down long enough to do so. But somehow it didn’t matter. The voice is strong enough and the context telling so while it wasn’t easy to guess, after a while I got the hang of it. Plus, I was wondering if some of the words would even be in a dictionary – they are probably x-rated, given the story. In any case, I plan to have a Spanish-English dictionary at hand for a second reading (yes, it’s that good).

Chris