Shrine of the Báb

The Election in process

The entry to the main hall

The Exhibit
Delegates in the foyer

One of the delegates from Krygystan

The photographer for the exhibit, Ryan Lash

Dinner with the Samoan NSA

 

working?

the picture (and words) LINK to the big picture.  

 i wanna try again.

 

trying again.

pig big, not small>?

 

this is shaun on the plane from seattle to toronto.  he was sleepy and squinty with the travel and sun, respectively. 

hello.  shaun thinks his magnum trumps justin’s.

i’m switzerland on the matter.

supposedly.  language practice for J&S?  i thought of them when i found it.

i can’t resist this, especially since they are SUCH Good books!

“Dark Star Safari:  Overland from Cairo to Capetown” by Paul Theroux.  this is a very interesting account of a guy’s journey overland through Africa.  he used to work in Uganda?  i think, in the 1960s, and goes back to Africa to find out whether it’s really like the media tells it.  he discovers it is and it is  not, and there’s lots of hmmm-provoking stuff in there on the subject of foreign aid.  there are definitely bits of this book that i find repulsive in the extreme, but this is to do with the way he sometimes thinks and writes.  it makes me mad, a bit, but on the whole a quite important book (i think). 

“The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov.  satan arrives in moscow.  it’s a very bizarre book; each chapter of this diabolical political satire (written in and during Stalin’s 1930s soviet russia) is alternated with a chapter on the Passion of the Christ, as that story unfolds in parallel.  somehow.  it challenges your history and sense of reality, but i like the way it was written (i read the diana burgin and katherine tiernan o’conner translation) and it is always a pull to read something that was contemporary political commentary.  of course it was banned at the time.

“The Good Women of China:  Hidden Voices”  by Xinran.  this was mostly too difficult to read, because of horror stories of various kinds, but it was SO fascinating to read the variety of lives and the compassion of this woman (a radio host) and her listeners.  i dunno whether you’ll be able to bring this one in.

“Daughter of Persia” by Sattareh Farman Farmaian.  after reading this book, i felt as though i understood 20th century Iranian history and politics—in collapsed form, and through the eyes of this Persian aristocrat’s daughter, who brought the idea of social welfare, in the form of orphanages particularly, to Iran.  it is just really, really good.

“Mating” by Norman Rush.  it is a strange book about a young woman doing her thesis in Botswana in the 1980s and then she falls in love with a social revolutionary and discovers his utopic, egalitarian village in the Botswanan desert or something.  i had to read this book with a dictionary.  it really does stretch the vocabulary, and sometimes i got very cross with his distant, vaguely superior way of writing, but i stuck with it and i am glad that i read it.  i wonder whether i’ll be tempted to read anything else of his.

“A Fine Balance” by Rohinton Mistry.  and i cringe to see that this is one of Oprah’s book club selections.  i’ve read a couple of “her’s” and found them a bit too trite and uninteresting.  i read this years ago, and it’s stuck with me.  it was very harrowing; it doesn’t have a happy story at ALL.  but i think it was the blend of the historic, the political, and the human, that made me love this book so much.  friends tell me that “Family Matters” is also good, but i haven’t read it.

“An Anthropologist on Mars” by Oliver Sacks.  neurologist talks about exceptional things that brains do. he spends time with these people and discusses humanity, ”miracles” and the inexplicable.  this book knocked my socks off, several times.  it’s real stuff, too.  i have also read some of his “The Man who Mistook His Wife for A Hat” for a philosophy course at uni.  some of the neurological diseases or conditions that people have can make us rethink our understanding of what it is to be human, and this book asks these kinds of questions.  i like the way he writes. 

other books that i think everyone should read their heads off but no one listens to me about:

“Crime and Punishment” by Fiodor Dostoevsky (sp?)

“The First Circle” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (sp?)

anything by Jane Austen (yes, really)

Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (ok, whatever)

anything by Roald Dahl (children or adult)

“Portrait of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde.

“Vanity Fair” by William Makepeace Thackery

and i think i’m spent.  off to break the Fast.

 

love to you all.

lvoe from leial

sharon thinks that i might answer this, at least in part.

some of my favourite recent reads:

“Uncle Tungsten” by Oliver Sacks.  chemistry and childhood autobiography, in that order.  i mainly read this on the plane back to israel, which was lucky, because shaun couldn’t escape me and i was able to have questions answered pronto.

“No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” by Alexander McCall Smith.  any of the books in this series.  set in Botswana; i read bits of these out loud to shaun.

“Fugitive Pieces” by Ann Michaels.  a canadian poet, this was her first novel and it’s one of my favourite books.  it’s obviously poetic; it feels like acquatic molasses to read.

“The Ground Beneath Her Feet” by Salman Rushdie.  his style is kaleidoscopic and chaotic, so only read this if you’re that way inclined.  i really like him, but i have to push myself to get through the first couple of pages.  this is one of my more favourite of his books.

Short stories by Katherine Mansfield.  a New Zealand writer, she is one of my favourites and her slices of 19th-century kiwi life are poignant with a capital G.

“White Teeth” by Zadie Smith.  apparently her latest, “On Beauty” is really excellent—i’ve heard it from several people; i haven’t read it yet—but i think i will always remember this epic, interracial, diasporic, multi-family, end-of-the-20th century adventure because it is just astounding.  and funny.

“Life of Pi” by Yann Martel.  another perfect favourite.  it’s funny and interesting and weird and original and spooky.

“Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell.  i haven’t read it myself, but people whose opinions on books i trust say that it is delicious.

“Hideous Kinky” by Esther Freud.   this is a book i would call delicious.  FaVOURITe!

“Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi.  it didn’t read out like it sets you up for in the first chapter, but i thought it was fascinating because it interwove these personal subjects:  literature, women, iran, education, art.

 let me know whether i can include Baha’i books here.  i’m getting too excited and it’s nearly time to break the Fast.

 will write again next time, with more titles; i’m sure more than you’ll even care about.

love from shaun and leila