I am embarassed to admit how feel novels I have read over the previous 5 years pre-Iquitos. A few important ones, but that´s it.

Something changed recently. In Iquitos, I started reading novels again. Tearing through them in fact. I seem to be ripe and ready for stories. I spent too long trying to get myself to read non fiction. In some effort to expand my brain. I recently tried reading The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho and stopped. I felt like he was trying to teach me something. No moral of the story please. No direct life application. I do not want to learn anything. Just a good story.

There is just something so campfire about it. Sitting around and in my spare time when not working, learning Spanish, or exploring Iquitos, with these books wedging axes into them. A brain at rest with the basicness of being shared with.