Reading like a Fiend

I got a package from Canada! Actually, it was sent over a month ago [m:208] but that's ok!
I got:
- peanut butter (with freshly crushed peanuts as the only ingredient)
- some creams for the dryness of Japan's "winter", if that's what you would call it (although it's pretty much over now)
- the free indie music magazine that i [m:46]
- Amnesty newsletters
- refried beans!
- white vinegar for environmentally friendly cleaning purposes
- and BOOKS! which is pretty much perfect timing as I'm starting to run low. . .
- Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis
- Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
- Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim (no idea about this one, my dad just picked it up i guess)
- Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions
- M.G. Vassanji's The Assasin's Song

Lately I've turned into such a book nerd. More than half of the books I asked my dad to send came from their being mentioned in other books that I recently read. The Metamorphosis is to Haruki Murakami's Kafka and the Shore as Heart of Darkness is to Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost (about the colonization of the Congo by Belgium and the horrors that ensued). Vonnegut comes from me loving Vonnegut by reading his books. . .so that also counts. I also ordered another book yesterday about China's occupation of Tibet because of a book I'm reading now that's kind of about Tibet in which the book I just ordered was mentioned. And this is after already finishing (since January):
The Rape of Nanking. . .mm controversial in this country. . .by Iris Chang
Perfect Hostage (about Amnesty's poster girl [and my hero] Aung San Suu Kyi) by Justin Wintle
The Girl in the Picture (about Kim Phuc and the Vietnam War) by Denise Chong
I've also read books 1 - 10 of ワンピース (one piece which is a manga about a hodge-podge group of pirates. One ate a magical fruit which gave him the ability to stretch like rubber, the other is a master swordsman, the girl is a theif, another guy can kick really strongly. . .that kind of thing)to offset the seriousness of the others, and to improve my knowledge of kanji.
Ya, so total book nerd. But the more I read, the more I want to read. And the more I read about world/social issues the more uninformed I feel about the world. . .which is certainly a good and humbling feeling. I think it's good to be made to feel stupid when the cause is not other people putting you down. Truly, we are all stupid. We can only hope to acquire a sliver of the infinite knowledge that is available to us through mere existence. To recognize this and try to acquire as much varied knowledge as possible in my lifetime is definitely one of my many goals.
Books may not be the best way to go about this. . .but for now, while I'm bound to living in Japan I'm trying to acquire as much knowledge about the next places I want to go before actually going.
Peanut butter and jam sandwiches are more delicious than I remembered.