books of which we hear much yet never open and obscure books that catch our eye in a musty booksellers that swiftly become those items with which to cudgel our own friends. There are books that you forget minutes after reading and books that haunt your steps for year ...more There are books at which we arrive to too soon, books that are forced down our throats by well meaning instructors and friends, books that are passed on with loving grace and books that are clung to relentlessly for years. There are books of which we hear much yet never open and obscure books that catch our eye in a musty booksellers that swiftly become those items with which to cudgel our own friends. There are books that you forget minutes after reading and books that haunt your steps for years like a ghost of memory. Those are the books which I am always in search of, the always rare tomes that live on inside of you long after the final page is turned and inform your worldview for years, either consciously or not. Without realizing the import at the time, picking this lengthy read from atop my ever-growing to-read pile was the defining moment of my entire year. Mario Vargas Llosa is an author of whom I had heard much, yet, for one ill-conceived reason or another, had never picked up any of his works and read them. All throughout my hodgepodge affair with Latin American authors there he