Thanksgiving Book Report

Last night I finished reading Dave Eggers's What is the What, a wise, beautiful, heartbreaking, and funny book, a novel that is really the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the lost boys of the Sudan who eventually made it to the United States. I was awed not just by the story but the telling of it. Somehow the two men, Deng and Eggers, collaborated to create something that is true but also truly a novel, with an elegant structure and shape.

So my advice to you today is not just to read it, but to buy the book if you can, since all the proceeds go to help the Sudanese people.

At the end of the preface to the book, Deng wishes his readers "a blessed day." I will let those words convey my wish as well, for all of us.