If serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan has changed nothing else, it's that I now, for the first time in my life, make a concerted effort to read books. Having just finished off four halcyon, Keystone-blurred years of college, I can settle into an afternoon in the steppe, pore through Kerouac and Steinbeck and Solzhenitsyn, and finally get through all those novels that I'd previously charmed my way out of.
