Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love is a massive family saga, a story that draws its readers into two moments in the complex, troubled history of modern Egypt. The story begins in 1977 in New York. There Isabel Parkman discovers an old trunk full of documents–some in English, some in Arabic–in her dying mother’s apartment. Incapable of deciphering this stash by herself, she turns to Omar al-Ghamrawi, a man with whom she is falling in love. And Omar directs her in turn to his sister Amal in Cairo.

Together the two women begin to uncover the stories embedded in the journal of Lady Anna Winterbourne, who traveled to Egypt in 1900 and fell in love with Sharif Pasha al-Barudi, an Egyptian nationalist. To their surprise, they stumble across some unsuspected connections between their own families. Less surprising, perhaps, is the persistence of the very same issues that dogged their ancestors: colonialism, Egyptian nationalism, and the clash of cultures throughout the Middle East. The past, however, does offer some semblance of omniscience:

That is the beauty of the past; there it lies on the table: journals, pictures, a candle-glass, a few books of history. You leave it and come back to it and it waits for you–unchanged. You can turn back the pages, look again at the beginning. You can leaf forward and know the end. And you tell the story that they, the people who lived it, could only tell in part.

With its multiple narratives and ever-shifting perspectives, The Map of Love would seem to cast some doubt on even the most confident historian’s version of events. Yet this subtle and reflective tale of love does suggest that the relations between individuals can (sometimes) make a difference. “I am in an English autumn in 1897,” Amal confesses at one point, “and Anna’s troubled heart lies open before me.” Here, perhaps, is a hint about how we should read Soueif’s staggering novel, using words as a means to travel through time, space, and identity. –Vicky Lebeau

I haven’t gotten past the first 100 pages yet but so far, so good.

From the manga Aisaretaino

Bold = read completely.
Italic = read partially.
Underline = future read.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19.

The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch – GeorgeEliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – A.A.Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – L.M.Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – DonnaTartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – A.S. Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – KazuoIshiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

My chart:
27 completely read
20 partially read
0 future reads

2) What is the fourth sentence on page 133 of that book?
Before bedtime, I was in Jem’s room trying to borrow a book, when Atticus knocked and entered.

3) What is one book that changed your life?
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Made me a think twice before saying/doing something.

4) What is one book that you read again and again?
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.

5) What three books would you want on a desert island?
a) To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
b) The complete Harry Potter Series, by J. K Rowling
c) Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

6) What is the funniest book you’ve ever read?
Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel by Scott Adams; Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

7) What book made you cry the most?
Hmmmm, A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks

What book do you wish had been written?
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt.

9) What would be the title of your autobiography?
Try Being Me

10) What book do you keep meaning to read?
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

11) What five books should everyone be required to read?
1) To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
2) Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
3) How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
4) The Street Lawyer, John Grisham
5) The Alchemist, Paolo Coelho

12) What book was the biggest waste of your time?
I can’t remember the book title and author. It’s about this agent who saved the Prince Charles and Princess D’s lives. Arrrghhh.. Can’t even remember the entire plot.

(I think it was authored by either Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum)

13) What was your favorite book as a child?
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl. I loved it so much, in fact, that I pocketed my cousin’s copy, and I still have it.

14) What book have you read the most?
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

15) Is there any book’s ending that you would like to rewrite? What would you change about the original ending?
Harry Potter should not have married Ginny Weasley. For me, she’s just and always be a swooning Harry Potter fan.