One of the purposes of novel reading is to put oneself in a time and a place and in shoes your not likely to wear in your "real" life. That's why Austin and Dickens are always a great read. And that's also why Orhan Pamuk has become a favorite of mine.

His novel Snow has all the qualities of another time and place, definitely in the shoes of "the other." His memoir, Istanbul: Memories and the City, is in many ways equally exotic, except that city lovers of specific cities will catch the emotional resonance of places beloved because one has walked the streets, or hung over banisters... or gone to school on that street. Even if you've never been to Istanbul, you will catch Pamuk's delight and melancholy in the place.

The Nobel Prize is well deserved. Even if the Nobel Committee has a political angle--Pahmuk is well worth a read. Thursday evening on the Newshour, he said relative to the still exotic nature of "Turkishness," "we are all other." Yes, we are.