GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- If circulation at the detention center library is an indicator, captives are keeping busy in their cellblocks with comics, Westerns, self-help books and video games.
Titles just back from the camps during a recent visit included: Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" and "The Cardinal Principles of Islam," along with books of Arab poetry and proverbs.
Detainees also checked out "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" in English, and its sequel, "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" -- in Russian.
"True Grit" just got back from the camps, too, and inmates have "begun asking about Western movies," said the librarian, a civilian Defense Department contractor who will only give her first name, Rosario.
Westerns for the 171 captive Muslims who've been scooped up in the war on terror?
"John Wayne kind of stuff," she said.
Harry Potter seems to have run its course. Now "How to Train Your Dragon" is emerging as a popular pick. The nine-book series aimed at elementary schoolchildren tells the story of a scrawny Viking boy and his extraordinarily small dragon.
Rosario reported surging interest among the 171 captives in hand-held video games that test their skills. "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" is a quiz game, and several hand-held gardening games let players plant crops against a clock.
The library boasts 24,000 titles -- 17,000 of them books and the rest DVDs, magazines and newspapers.
The emphasis has long been Arabic, in part because that's the predominant language in the camps, but International Committee of the Red Cross delegates arranged for delivery of two Pashtu newspapers, so Rosario has the guard staff circulating those, too.
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