Yesterday I started reading James Orbinski’s An Imperfect Offering and I think I might be inspired to get some of my diss research out and write. The only problem is, I have scant time for writing atm. And the reason I’m inspired? He makes the personal political and the political personal… at least in the first two chapters — and although it is an autobiography of sorts, the whole thing reads like one long oral history (and you know how I love oral histories!).
Feb 14 2010
pppp pages.
I know I don’t live in TO anymore when… I discover that back in September Pages Books closed. I only discovered this three months after the fact in Dec. while visiting the ‘rents in TO and while on Queen West to check out the ‘vogs, walked down a block to check out Pages… only to be shocked that it was papered up.
And, yes, I know I don’t live in TO anymore when it takes me over a month to blog about it!
Dec 26 2009
The Geography of Bliss
I am slowly working my way through Eric Wiener’s book, The Geography of Bliss, which was a 40th bday pressie. My review so far is mixed. It is sometimes pithy, sometimes funny, but on the whole filtered heavily through the lens of the American eye. take the chapter on Qatar, which I’ve just finished reading, where the author finally gets to interviewing some true Qatari men and proves only that he doesn’t know the first thing about how to talk to Arabs. He basically wound up with no useful insights. Then again, he had been warned of this — if indirectly — by his contact. Still, it ended up being a slightly silly waste of 2 pages and a wasted opportunity because Wiener got straight to the point and didn’t do much to put them at ease. Moreover, given that he spent only a few weeks in each country, it reads more like a series of travel articles rather than a truly interesting foray into happiness.
Parts of the book *do* include some useful insights into how “the other” thinks… but ultimately Weiner let’s us know that his research, and even his desire to do that research, is limited to simplistic journalistic fluff:
I sense a gnawing distance between myself and Qatar. I’m here, but am I really here? I need to think like a Qatari, to get inside the dishdasha, figuratively speaking, if only for a few minutes. But how? I am not about to convert to Islam or take up smoking or drive like a maniac. Walking past the hotel gift shop, it dawns on me. I will buy a pen. Yes, a Ridiculously Expensive Pen.
– Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss, p. 130.
And if that is the case, then how can I be sure that Eric is really getting at the substance of the World Happiness Index???
Oct 04 2008
Arayuma
Last week I was at The Herb and Spice to pick up some samosas and as I walked in there was a [cute] guy with a demo table set up to try & promote The Arayuma product line.
He was offering me a deal, buy two boxes of tea and get a box of chai for free. So I did.
I’m not a big fan of tea in a bag, but this bag is biodegradable… and so far the tea has been really good. Fairly traded & organic from Sri Lanka. Imported to Canada by a family buisness.
I didn’t think of it at the time, but I wonder whether it is from the farm of Rory Spowers who wrote the book A year in Green Tea and Tuk-Tuks?
Try it, you might like it.
Jun 14 2008
Top 106 Books Meme
As seen in Life and Times of a History PhD Student
What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded [or were bookclub choices that you never read that month]. Bold the ones you’ve read, strikethrough the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: A memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud
Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: A true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
Thoughts:
There are probably a few more in that list.. but high school was awhile ago! I would be interested to know who saw the movies of some of these books, too. There is also a long long list of other classics that aren’t on this list. It’s strange.
May 13 2008
The Blood of Flowers
On the way home I bought a book to read in Jo’burg airport (there is a pretty decent bookstore in the inat’l departure area in case you’re ever in need like me). I read half a chapter and was hooked. By the time my next flight left Zurich, I had finished it. Wow. What a great read.
Read it.
Apr 27 2008
Pregnancy Tips
… for the rest of us.
http://www.officialdatingresource.com/pregnancy-tips/
Nov 24 2007
100 Notable Books of 2007
NYT has published it’s list of 100 Notable Books of 2007. Well, not many of them cover my fav. subjects.. but Ishmael Beah made the list. 
Well deserved that one. Maybe I’ll find some holiday reading on the list?
Jun 28 2007
“Home”
When we seek life partners, we’re actually looking for someone headed in the same direction; a travelling companion. Problems arise when the loneliness of the road becomes unbearable, and we detour in search of what we do not have. — Rehman Rashid
I was reading Marina Mahatir’s blog (many of you no doubt don’t know who she is, but I do) and this reminded me of my life in KL, my vague identity as a Malaysian, and Rehman Rashid’s lifechanging blook A Malaysian Journey… So I googled him and came across this comment. I needed some kind of boost about that as lately I’ve been feeling the unbearability of loneliness. New city. New apartment. New life. It always makes me want to run “home” to KL or to Quetta … to my real home, TO. I fear that my level of lonliness is there now. I miss Asia and the Middle East. I want to go “home”, but instead I’m going home, even if it’s just for a weekend.
xo CG.
Oct 14 2006
Brother Worship
Do you need a place to say in San Francisco? Gregory has an article in Tomorrow’s NYT on Great hotels in San Francisco. And while I obviously think the best place to stay in SF is Gregory’s house, the rest of you might not agree, so he has done a thorough search of the city.
And for everyone else,
Window Seat Europe is now for sale
Just in time for Christmas/End of Year Pressies for the Window Seat lover in your life. (Click here for the Amazon dot Ca Page)