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Jubilee 929009-92824 5 Light Green Leaf Flower Chandelier Kids Ceiling Light, Pink
Product Description
This Jubilee product is offered with pink shade(s). It is available in a pink/green finish. Illuminated by five 40-watt frosted incandescent candelabra bulbs.
How does your garden grow? Our best-selling pink and green 5-arm chandelier is sprinkled with flowers including the flowers that are dancing up the chain. Our pink bead, scalloped chandelier shades add a touch of sparkle to the chandelier.
- Three foot chain included.
Shade: 2.75" top x 5" bottom x 4.75" height
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Chandeliers come in a wide variety of shapes and styles. More common types include Candle-Style, Crystal, Williamsburg, and Wrought Iron among others.
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By Show and Tell
Mid-century architecture in Wheat Ridge
By Bree Davies
By Bree Davies
Aliens: James Cameron's sci-fi film
By Cory Casciato
Cirque du Soleil's new show Amaluna
By Emilie Johnson
By Robin Edwards
Interview with actress Mink Stole
By Bree Davis
Denver comedian in round two of America's Got Talent
By Josiah M. Hesse
Many artists of this time felt that getting into the countryside was important in discovering the essence of art, and in 1888, van Gogh followed his muse to Arles, where he remained until 1889. He also had another motive: improving his health, which had deteriorated. As is well known, he successfully enticed Paul Gauguin, an artist with whom van Gogh was obsessed, to join him in the south of France. It was here that van Gogh really started cooking, creating some of the greatest paintings of all time. There are many gorgeous landscapes from this period in the show, including "Pollard Willows at Sunset," from 1888.
The most famous paintings in the show — and among the most valuable — are the two portraits of the Roulin family from 1888. "Postman Joseph Roulin" and "Portrait of Madame Augustine Roulin and Baby Marcelle" are aboslutely stunning and worth the admission price to the show all by themselves.
In 1889 and 1890, van Gogh underwent psychiatric treatment overseen by Dr. Paul Gachet. The paintings in the DAM show from this time are stunning. Do not miss "Landscape From Saint-Rémy" and the breathtaking "The Poplars at Saint-Rémy," both from 1889, and "Undergrowth With Two Figures," from 1890. In July of that year, van Gogh died from a gunshot wound that was long thought to be self-inflicted, though recently it's been suggested that he was murdered.
100 W. 14th Ave. Parkway
Denver, CO 80204
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Region: Central Denver
And although the artist's career was relatively short, Standring walks us through it in detail, showing us his sources, even including works by his aesthetic mentors Millet, Signac and Hiroshige. And Standring illustrates with props and artifacts the way in which van Gogh taught himself to draw and paint through a home-study course and a brief stint of formal training. The exhibit must have been a monumental effort, with the seventy included objects coming from sixty different lenders. The correspondence alone must have been staggering.
Becoming van Gogh is a blockbuster that will only be presented in Denver, and for so many reasons, it deserves to sell out. The trouble is, it is selling out. That means that if you want to see it — especially with the holidays coming — you'd be wise to get your tickets as soon as possible.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Customized Commuter 2.1 Laptop Bag
Overall rating based on 602 reviews
Matthias Schleweis – Verified Buyer
This bag is very easy to use, very comfortable and offers a lot of space. You could carry easily up to two 15" laptop in this bag and still have space left for accessories. The only con with my bag is that the quality and durability of some inside pocket seams are not as durable as they maybe should be and they are open up quite easily...
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Great bag. I love it. Only thing is the color (cordura cave) looked much different on the website than when I received the bag. Luckily I still liked the color.
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Thank you Rickshaw for putting up with my incessant pestering for the last 1.5 months as I've been impatiently waiting to receive my pre-ordered Graphite Tweed Commuter (something that really shows their devotion to customer service).
The bag is everything I wanted: very spacious and comfortable and lightweight considering its storage space. The build quality is extraordinary and lives up to the hype I've heard about Rickshaw products. The only con is that the bag is a little bulkier than I expected, but this is something that's to be expected considering its solid structure (something I bought the bag for). Overall great product! The fabric is very attractive and was worth the wait.
Joseph McD – Verified Buyer
I have been using this bag everyday for the past month and I love it.
It is the fourth bag I have owned in three years (different makes) and none of them have lasted or been as well thought out and designed as this bag. The moleskine pockets are a great addition as well.
I spent months deciding on what bag to get and am 100% convinced that I made the right decision, the laptop sleeve is a great addition and will shortly be buying an iPad sleeve from Rickshaw to add to my Rickshaw collection.
Great product and whomever designed it has my upmost respect and an amazing eye for detail.
To give you an idea about what I carry around in the bad:
- Macbook Pro 13 inch
- An A4 leather portfolio
- A4 notebook
- Personal Filofax
- Paperback Book
and it all fits perfectly.....I cannot recommend this product enough.
Finally purchased the bag in X-Pac Red. I just received it today and all I can say is WOW! Everyone should have one of these. It's perfect for someone on the go. I am petite 5'4" but the bag still looks good. Talk about QUALITY! Something that will last for MANY years! If you're looking for quality, you'll get it with Rickshaw Bagworks. I also purchased the pad folio in X-Pac Red and have been very happy with it. I did wait for the bag to go on sale but to be honest, I would have paid full price for it because now I see that it's worth the price. Like they say, "You get what you pay for" Thank You for such a great product -- Made in the USA!! YEAH!!! I will definitely be showing it off tomorrow at work!


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Combining Apache and Perl
Now that we have gone through a basic introduction to mod_perl and writing CGI-style programs with Apache::Registry, let's look at an example of CGI programs under mod_perl—a simple guest book program that takes form parameters and appends their contents to a file on the system. The form is shown in Listing 1. Note that the form looks just like the forms we have seen in the past. The sole difference is our form's action, which sits in perl-bin rather than the usual cgi-bin.
The program is shown in Listing 2. If we were to add a "hash-bang" first line to this program, it would operate equally well under CGI or mod_perl environments. We use CGI.pm to retrieve information about the submitted form. While this works just fine for recent versions of CGI.pm, earlier versions are not completely compatible with Apache::Registry.
The main difference between the program in Listing 2 and its CGI counterpart is speed. While I cannot give exact numbers, my subjective tests showed the response from mod_perl to be almost instantaneous, with the CGI version taking noticeably longer—perhaps up to one second. This might not seem like much, but the combination of a cached CGI program with an already-running version of Perl is impressive, even with a short program that compiles quickly. As you can see, it does not require many changes to your original program.
So far, I have mentioned mod_perl only as a replacement for CGI. However, mod_perl is much more than that; it gives you a Perl interface to the guts of Apache. If you have configured your server correctly, you can modify every aspect of Apache using a Perl program. Better yet, some enterprising souls have already spent time writing modules which do just that. For example, the Apache::Status module allows you to take a look at the current state of mod_perl running on your server. Apache::Status comes with mod_perl and is a good example of what can be done with this package.
As was the case with Apache::Registry, we are going to have to set the handlers for a particular directory. In this case, the directory does not have to physically exist on the disk, since the URL is interpreted before a file is ever opened. You must add these lines to your srm.conf file in order to get the Perl status:
<Location /perl-status> SetHandler perl-script PerlHandler Apache::Status </Location>
As was the case with Apache::Registry, we set the Apache handler to be perl-script. Since we want Apache::Status to be handling the perl-status directory, we point to it as our PerlHandler.
If you put the above lines in your server's srm.conf file and restart the server, anyone requesting /perl-status from your server is going to have access to information about your server. If you would prefer to keep such information private, you must use access controls, as shown in the following example:
<Location /perl-status> SetHandler perl-script PerlHandler Apache::Status order deny,allow deny from all allow from 127. </Location>
This allows you to retrieve status information from the server computer itself; attempts to retrieve /perl-status from another computer will be greeted with an "unauthorized access" message.
I have been surprised and impressed by mod_perl's speed and flexibility, and I expect to use it more and more as time goes on. The fact that it can run most existing CGI programs without modification is a great boon to those of us who already have a stockpile of such programs.
mod_perl is not a panacea, of course. Its speed comes at a price; namely, greater demands for system memory. The inclusion of Perl (a known memory hog) inside of Apache means that the httpd processes on your server will start off larger than otherwise. Over time, each server process will grow, as compiled Perl programs are cached in memory. Before you use mod_perl on your system, you should make some calculations regarding the amount of memory that Apache is using; this may affect the number of server processes you want to run on your system.
Nevertheless, mod_perl is a tremendous advance for both Apache and Perl and promises to get much better with time. Next month, we will look at some of the ways in which mod_perl can speed up our database connections, making Apache an even better server for dynamic sites dependent on relational databases.
Re: Getting external links to open in new windows
nice topic!
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Thank you to our 2014 Editorial Advisors!
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text:
Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji
Description: "Dil Toh Baccha Hai" is a slice of life film of three men... Naren Ahuja, Nikhil and Abhay Suri and their encounters with love! Naren, who works in a multinational bank as a manager, meets an impulsive, vivacious girl called June, to whom he's attracted and changes his look entirely! Nikhil works in a matrimonial website and is searching for true love. He meets his dream girl in the form of Gungun, a radio jockey wanting to be a famous actress! Abby is a Casanova whose life revolves around women! Not being qualified enough, he works as a trainer in a gym to make ends meet! Thus Dil Toh Baccha hai, with its real characters and relatable situations, takes a funny look at love and the extent people will go to avoid it or achieve it!
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Book of the month: David Grossman
November 25, 2014
Since I started asking for recommendations of books to read back in late 2011, I've been inundated with suggestions of tempting-sounding titles from around the globe. To this day, I receive messages and comments from booklovers across the world sharing some of their favourite reads with me. I still add all valid recommendations to the list and hope to continue doing so for a long time to come.
Among the welter of titles I have heard about over the last three years, however, there have been several that have stood out as being particularly admired. November's book of the month is a prime example.
Its writer, David Grossman, has been mentioned to me by a large number of readers – so much so that I very nearly picked one of his novels as my Israeli choice for A Year of Reading the World. It was only my curiosity about the premise of Aharon Appelfeld's Blooms of Darkness that made me plump for that instead.
So it's great to be able to report back to you on one of Grossman's books now: To the End of the Land, which was translated into English in 2010, two years after the original appeared in Hebrew.
The novel tells the story of three Jewish characters, Ora, Avram and Ilan, whose lives are intertwined from the moment they meet as teenage patients in a plague hospital in 1967. As they grow up, they are shaped and twisted by their loyalties and the cruel events of Israel's modern history, which simultaneously bind and divide them through a web of secrets and regrets. But when her younger son Ofer volunteers for further service with the Israel Defence Forces, Ora is unable to stand the pressure anymore. Terrified that every moment will bring a knock at the door to notify her of his death, she sets out with Avram on a trek across the country to Galilee, covering old ground in search of peace.
Few books contain so many deft depictions of the fluctuating dynamics of human relationships. From the seismic shifts that break, warp and split lives, to the momentary lapses and dissemblances that colour conversations, this book has it all, with joyous bursts of humour to boot. For example, we see the moment-by-moment collapse of a longstanding relationship during the disastrous taxi ride taking Ofer to the front for which Ora unthinkingly books her trusted Arab driver, Sami, and through it the way that 'the fears and hatred [they] both drank with [their] mother's milk' make certain things impossible – for all that Ora and Sami may laugh and rail together against 'the long-winded indignant, greedy pretenses of both Jews and Arabs' in times of relative tranquillity.
The descriptions of the wild places Ora and Avram pass through, dotted with memorial plaques to fallen soldiers and ruined Arab villages, are powerful, but it is the mental and emotional landscape that takes centre stage. Among the many extraordinary passages are a series of narrations from Ora about her memories of raising her sons, which transfigure the mundane incidents of domestic life into searing revelations of the myriad ambiguities and moral compromises that go into making up a human being. The scene in which the young Ofer discovers the truth about where meat comes from will stay with me for a long time – as will Grossman's afterword, in which he discusses briefly the death of his son in military service in 2006 (the experience, he says, changed 'the echo of the reality in which the final draft was written').
Congratulations have to go to translator Jessica Cohen for her work with what must have been a challenging text – just one of the many conundrums being a passage where Ofer's brother Adam talks exclusively in rhyme. My only quibble was with the choice of the word 'pub' for many of the various bars featured in the text, but this may not bother American readers – at whom this version was primarily aimed.
The expansiveness of the story's emotional excavations means that this is an unapologetically long book and it took me a while to read. Like its characters, it moves at walking pace. The investment of time is well worth it, though. As Ora herself reflects: 'It's a good thing the path is so long… This way, there's time to get accustomed to all the changes.'
To the End of the Land by David Grossman, translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen (Vintage Digital, 2010)
*New* Book of the month: Elena Ferrante
May 27, 2014
When I wrote the final post of my Year of Reading the World, back on 31 December 2012, I thought this blog was finished. As the first months of 2013 went by, however, I discovered the world had other ideas.
Not only was I immersed in research about global literature for my forthcoming book, Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer, but I found myself constantly coming into contact with interesting projects and initiatives that I wanted to let you know about.
The book recommendations from readers all over the planet kept coming in too (they still do to this day), so I decided to update the list every now and then to make sure that none of the excellent suggestions go to waste.
But it didn't stop there: various publishers also jumped on the band wagon, frequently emailing to ask whether they could send me books in the hope that I might blog about them. Even when I explained that I wasn't reviewing books on this site anymore, some people still posted me their titles.
Such was the case with Daniela Petracco, director of Europa Editions UK. Although I told her that I wouldn't write about Italian novelist Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, she insisted on sending me a copy along with a glowing description of the work, so convinced was she of its power.
All credit to her, because the novel might have sat on my to-read mountain for a long time had it not been for Petracco's belief in it. Something about the way she described the story and her enthusiasm for it made it stand out in my memory so that when I came to choose my next read last week, my hand reached for it, bypassing many titles that have been waiting for weeks, months and even years.
What followed was an enthralling reading experience, reminiscent of those childhood immersions in a story that turn the volume of the real world down to a whisper. It impressed and delighted me – and it was powerful enough to make me revoke my decision not to do any more book reviewing on this blog because I simply had to let you know about it (despite her success in Italy, the reclusive Ferrante is very little known in the Anglophone world – last year, the Economist declared that she 'may be the best contemporary novelist you have never heard of').
Indeed, reading Ferrante's novel has inspired me to introduce a regular review slot. From now on, I will choose one 'Book of the month' that has stood out from among the titles I've read (perhaps recommended by you, stumbled upon by me or sent by a passionate advocate) and publish a post on the last Tuesday of the month about it.
So, without further ado, here's a little insight into what makes My Brilliant Friend: Childhood, Adolescence such a tour de force.
Charting a close friendship between two girls , Elena and Lila, growing up in an impoverished neighbourhood in 1950s Naples, this, the first volume in a trilogy, depicts the rabble of circumstances, character traits and incidents that conspire to make us dream of a better life while condemning us to be who we are. From the jealousy that steers the central characters between cruelty and fierce loyalty, at once sabotaging and supporting each other, to the bitter realities that blight the hopes of figures such as Lila's brother, Rino – tormented by visions of a family shoemaking empire but without the focus and application to see it through – and the wretched Melina, driven mad by her love for a philandering poet, Ferrante shows us the levers working the vice that warps and crushes the human soul.
Menace is everywhere. Whether in the childhood imaginings that shape the ogre-like figure of Don Achille or the all-too-real characters of the Solara brothers, terrorising the area with their Camorra connections, violence is only ever a mistimed comment away. Straitjacketed by honour codes that at once protect and hobble them, Elena and Lila must make desperate choices to have a hope of exercising some sort of control over their lives.
Now and then, the narrative doesn't hold together as tightly as it could. Ferrante gives us a few too many TV-style recaps of events and there are occasional statements that contradict what has gone before – at a wedding towards the end of the book, for example, we read that 'it was clear no one who had received an invitation wanted to miss it' shortly after we have just witnessed the local school teacher spurn an attempt to get her to attend.
Some readers may also be frustrated by the mismatch between the prologue, set in the present day presumably some way towards the conclusion of the yet-to-be-published (in English) third book in the trilogy, and the main narrative, which only goes up until the mid-1960s. Unlike works that make up many other literary trilogies, this novel cannot really be said to stand alone.
Nevertheless, if the trade-off is that we have to read on to find all the ends tied up, it's a sacrifice few are likely to mind making. Hmmn, I wonder if I can persuade Daniela Petracco to send me the next book…
My Brilliant Friend (L'amica geniale) by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Europa Editions, 2012; 2013)
United Kingdom: coming home
December 31, 2012
Well, here we are. The 196th book (197th really, counting the Rest of the World choice) and the final post of the project that took over my life in 2012.
It's been the most extraordinary year. We've seen a story specially written for the blog from South Sudan, a book translated by a team of volunteers to enable me to read something from Sao Tome and Principe, and been given a sneak preview of an illustrated, trilingual collection of microstories from Luxembourg, as well as many other wonderful discoveries.
I've been overwhelmed by the interest and support the blog has drawn around the world. From the huge number of people who have given up their time to help me track down those elusive titles and the many visitors who have liked, shared and commented on posts – keeping me going through all those late nights and early mornings – to the media interest that saw the blog featured on CNN International, in the national press and on UNESCO's list of initiatives for World Book Day, the response has been humbling. Thank you.
I'm also delighted that the project will see another book added to the world – Reading the World: postcards from my bookshelf, which I'm writing for UK publisher Harvill Secker and comes out in 2014.
But back to the matter in hand. As far as I could see, the only way to finish this odyssey was with a return to the place where it all started and where I first discovered my love of reading: the UK.
At first glance, it seemed obvious that I would choose one of the bastions of British literature as my final book – something by Dickens or Eliot, perhaps, or a more modern work by Woolf, Orwell, Wodehouse or Waugh.
However, as the year went on and I became less and less convinced by the idea of one book summing up a country's literature, other thoughts started to creep in. In particular, I began to think more about translation.
After all, I started this project because I realised I hardly ever read world literature and never read books in translation. And yet here I was living in a country that was home to several native languages other than English, the literatures of which I had never explored.
With this in mind, I wandered up to the Welsh Books Council stand at the London Book Fair earlier this year and asked for some suggestions. (I might as easily have chosen to read Gaelic literature or something translated from the now-dead Cornish language, but Welsh has a particular significance for me, it being my grandfather's mother tongue.)
The woman I spoke to was very helpful and had many recommendations. However, one in particular stood out: Martha, Jack and Shanco by Caryl Lewis. It won the Wales Book of the Year award in 2005 and the English translation came out two years later. Intrigued, I noted it down and set off to find a copy.
Set on the bleak farm of Graig-ddu in west Wales, the novel recounts a year in the lives of three ageing siblings who were born and grew up there. Caught up in the demanding day-to-day running of the farm, Martha, Jack and their mentally disabled brother Shanco have little time to dwell on what else the world might have to offer them. But every so often outside forces break into their isolation, testing the forces that bind them to the memory of their parents and the place that shaped, warped and made them who they are.
Lewis's evocation of this harsh and remote world is powerful. From the first scene, in which we follow the siblings as they head out in the dead of night to discover the reason for the wounds on one of their cows' udders, we are caught up in the grim realities of life on Graig-ddu. This is a place where kittens tumble to their deaths from roofbeams, crows beat their beaks bloody at the window panes, and rams' horns must be reshaped to stop them from growing into the creatures' heads.
In the face of such daily occurrences and the gruelling physical schedule (not helped by Jack's adherence to his father's antiquated farming equipment), there is no room for sentimentality. Instead, emotions must be expressed in private and through little things – Mami's bedroom kept as it was when she died, the wreath laid annually on the parents' grave, the upturned washing-up bowl shielding the footprint Gwynfor left the day Martha told him she could not leave the farm and marry him.
Lewis's writing reflects this too, condensing poignancy and meaning into a series of fleeting, yet breathtakingly precise images. There is the description of Martha and Shanco lying awake at night 'each skull a bird cage full of thoughts flapping in the hope of freedom', the way Jack tries to make sense of his sister's words 'laying them out one by one like clothes put out to dry on the line', and the portrayal of Martha's 'home's landscape […] coated with a drift' of interloper Judy's things.
For all the bleakness of the setting however, there is humour and beauty too. Jack's partnership with his sheepdog Roy is mesmerising, as is the depiction of the myriad stars in late summer 'as though someone had cast them like quicksilver into the sky'. In addition, cameo characters like neighbouring farmer Will, who turns his cap round and continues on at the same speed when he wants his tractor to go faster, and Martha's high jinks with the windpipes of the turkeys she butchers for Christmas add an endearing warmth to the narrative.
They also give it a sense of tradition and archaism that makes you forget that you are reading about contemporary Wales. Time and again, I found myself pulled up short by mentions of EU directives and 4×4s that reminded me that the story was set not in some long-distant decade and land, but a handful of years ago and only a few hundred miles from my London flat.
Now and then, Lewis labours her points. The repeated statements of the particulars of Mami's will, which saw Graig-ddu entailed jointly on the siblings, for example, feel a little unnecessary. In addition, the careful fleshing out of most of the characters shows Judy up as rather two-dimensional in contrast. I also felt the steps leading to the climax of the novel could have been more subtly seeded into the narrative.
As a whole, though, this is a haunting and engrossing book. Lyrical, harsh and deeply moving, the novel reveals what it means to be born into a way life that leaves you no real room for imagining anything else. It is a reminder that you don't have to look beyond the boundaries of your own nation to find people living in quite different worlds from your own.
Thanks again to everyone who has made this project possible and a special thank you to my fiancé Steve, who lived through it with me, took the picture at the top and came up with many of the best ideas along the way.
If you'd like to stay up to date with post-world developments, you can follow me on Twitter (@annmorgan30) or like the A Year of Reading the World Facebook page (by popular request I'll be posting a shortlist of favourite commercially available world reads there in a few days' time).
And if you've enjoyed this journey, I'd love it if you would join me on my next adventure, which will be taking shape over the next few months.
For now, though, I'm off to celebrate. Happy New Year everyone. Have fun!
Martha, Jack and Shanco (Martha Jac a Sianco) by Caryl Lewis, translated from the Welsh by Gwen Davies (Parthian, 2007)
Mauritania: language barriers
December 12, 2012
If there were a hall of fame for hardest countries in the world to find literature from in English, Mauritania would be up there with the best of them. The short answer is that there are no commercially published translations of books penned by writers from the country in either Arabic, French, Hassaniya Arabic, Pulaar, Soninke or Wolof – the six most commonly spoken languages in the nation.
As Manuel Bengoéchéa of the Institut français de Mauritanie explained to me, this is partly because Mauritanian novels and other similar works don't exist in great numbers in the first place. With so many linguistic communities in one place and a strong oral tradition, it is hard to justify putting resources into publishing works that will only be accessible to a fraction of the population. As a result, stories are more often spoken than written in the country.
Nevertheless, there are some published and celebrated Mauritanian novels out there – and several people went to great lengths to try to help me find one that I could read in English. Of these, International Prize for Arabic Fiction administrator Fleur Montanaro deserves a particular mention. Having lived in the country for seven years, she put a huge amount of energy into searching for a title – even scouring a book fair in the UAE for possible leads for getting a novella, L'amour impossible by leading writer Moussa Ould Ebnou, translated specially for the project.
And then, in one of those flukes of googling, where a brief portal seems to open up to the one page on the world's more than 620 million websites that you need, I chanced upon an article about Mohamed Bouya Ould Bamba. While studying his PhD at Kent State University in the US, the Mauritanian Fulbright scholar has vowed to write, self-publish and make available for free download one novel each summer. His first book, Angels of Mauritania and the Curse of the Language, came out in 2011. A quick search on the title took me to a download site. I clicked on the text and, just like that, Mauritania was solved.
Taking place over four days, Bamba's novel unfolds a crisis in a nameless family in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott. Having not been paid by his employer for many weeks, the father finds himself struggling to feed his pregnant wife and two daughters. His wife wants to solve the problem by appealing to her rich cousin, but the father has more extreme ideas and, as protests against political corruption flare in the streets, it looks as though the family unit may not survive this latest in a long line of setbacks.
As the title and bombastic prologue – written in the voice of the land of Mauritania – suggest, this is a book with big ambitions. With his anonymous, Everyman characters and lengthy dedication, Bamba seems to feel the need to speak for his entire nation – an understandable aim when you consider that this is in all likelihood the first book by a Mauritanian writer that English-language readers can access.
Coming after such grand beginnings, the domestic setting feels a little cramped at first. Bamba tries to show the link between national and personal events in the narrative, but there is still something of a disconnect, particularly when it comes to the title issue of 'the curse of the language' (the numerous people who have lost their native languages in the region), which features heavily in the prologue but barely gets a look in in the main text.
However, as the pages turn, the dramas in the lives of the characters grow to fill the space, providing many fascinating insights into daily life in the Mauritanian capital. While some elements, such as the delight of the male neighbours at the election of Obama over Bush, are disarmingly familiar, others are startlingly strange. For example, the custom of men being able to divorce their wives with a single word is extraordinary, while the wife's belief that 'freedoms were an American thing' provides a fascinating insight into the differences in outlook that fill the novel. In addition, small details, such as the Turkish soap opera that threads through the narrative and the cousin's daughter's secret tryst with her boyfriend, bring Bamba's spare prose to life.
The text contains the typos and slips common in self-published works. On top of this, while Bamba's English is largely excellent, there are one or two linguistic tics and slight misuses of words that cloud the meaning. Pacing is also an issue: scenes move step by step, lacking the agility and dexterity found in the prose of more experienced writers.
Through it all, however, Bamba's passion for his country and for telling the world about it shines through. The narrative may be threadbare at points, but its author's ambition for change and a better life for many of the people in Nouakchott – where wealth and poverty have created a divide more impassable than any country boundary – is admirable. A rare insight into this most mysterious and overlooked of West African nations.
Angels of Mauritania and the Curse of the Language by Mohamed Bouya Bamba (2011)
Ethiopia: home rule
December 4, 2012
There are several strong contenders out there for Ethiopia, but Maaza Mengiste's Beneath the Lion's Gaze was one of the first to catch my eye. I wasn't the only one to like the sound of the critically acclaimed debut novel – the day after I finished it, Bradley stopped by the blog to say he was reading and really enjoying it. Clearly the book was a popular choice.
Drawing on the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, which forced Mengiste's family to flee Ethiopia, Beneath the Lion's Gaze traces the fall out of national events in individual lives. The narrative focuses on the family of an eminent Addis Ababa doctor, Hailu, who is struggling to keep his terminally ill wife alive against her wishes and who fears that his youngest son Dawit may be the next wounded revolutionary brought into the hospital for him to treat. At the start of the novel, Hailu has cast-iron confidence in his sense of right and wrong, born of years of making life-and-death decisions; yet, as society unravels around him, the lines begin to blur and when a horrifically tortured girl is brought to him to be patched up, Hailu finds his old certainties crumbling.
Like A Long Way Gone (my Sierra Leonean choice) the novel contains some of the most extreme descriptions of physical violence going. From brief glimpses, such as the pregnant woman 'pleading at the foot of a man with stones for eyes and a plunging bayoneted rifle in his hand', to extended scenes, including the interrogation of the small boy Berhane, the book bristles with outraged testimonies to the cruelty of its era – many of which will stay with readers long after they turn the final page.
Mengiste's writing is excellent throughout. Perhaps the best proof of this for a child of the 1980s like me is the way that she manages to bring home the famines that ravaged rural Ethiopia throughout much of the final decades of the 20th century – and flooded Western TV screens, almost normalising images of extreme hunger for an entire generation. Through the eye-witness accounts of Dawit's friend, Mickey, Mengiste cuts through the complacency that time and familiarity breed to shame readers with the horror of what happened once again:
'This is how a man tills his land: behind cattle that are tied to one end of a plow that he uses to dig and lift and turn the ground. He holds a stick in one hand and the end of the plow in the other. At the end of that stick is a rope that he uses to whip the animals when they tire from the hot sun and the lack of water and simple hunger. A man works like this every day, every month, year after year, behind his cattle, his hand attached to a plow that has dug its own imprints into his calloused palms. He speaks to no one but himself, he hears nothing but his own slavish grunts as he pushes his plow into dirt, willing a crop to grow from unforgiving ground, praying daily for more rain. But it didn't rain in 1972 in the north, my friend, and the farmer had no crops. The rains did not come as they should, and when the rains failed, the crops failed, and when the crops failed, the farmer grew hungry, and when he grew hungry, his cattle also grew hungry, because a farmer will feed his cattle before himself. When the cattle began to die, the farmer gathered his family and tried to walk to the nearest village, the nearest aid shelter, the nearest anywhere where he could hold out his proud hand and beg for food. But everyplace he went was the same as what he had left. They are starving here in Wello, Dawit. They are starving in Tigre and Shoa. We have lived in the city and we have forgotten about these people.'
Mengiste stretches these observations over a finely crafted plot, like canvases on a frame. Drawing in each character, the story moves from conflict to conflict, ratcheting up the tension with every chapter. I found myself gripping the Kindle in fear on several occasions – particularly in the scene where the soldiers come to search Hailu's house for Dawit.
This solid structure means that the book can take the weight of the many larger questions its author heaps upon it. We find ourselves engaged in religious debates about where the line between accepting God's will and working to ameliorate your situation should be and political reflections on the conditions needed to effect a revolution. In addition, we witness the events that can turn friendship into hatred, and discover a range of unsettling facts about life in post-revolution Ethiopia – such as the bullet fee families had to pay to receive the body of anyone shot by the authorities.
This is the sort of book that has the power to seem to stop time while the hours fly past. Gripping and thought-provoking, it sweeps you along to the final pages with just the right mix of emotional engagement and historical context. I'll be adding Mengiste to the post-world watch list – I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.
Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste (Vintage Digital, 2010)
China: one in 1.3 billion
November 29, 2012
My knowledge of Chinese literature is pretty non-existent, so I was very grateful when translator Nicky Harman offered to talk me through some of the options last month. We met in a coffee shop in Covent Garden, where, sandwiched between groups of students and tourists planning expeditions to Oxford Street, Harman shared some of her insights into books from the world's most populous country, which is home to a fifth of the planet's people.
She said that, while a wide range of literature was published in China, a very narrow spectrum of works were available in English. These tended to be rather depressing, violent and, as she put it, 'masculine' books, which often made for heavy-going reading. She hoped that Mo Yan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature this year would start to change this by increasing the appetite for publishing a greater variety of Chinese books around the world.
In the meantime, however, Harman did have some tips for me. If I didn't mind hard-hitting books, Mian Mian's Candy was a good bet, while Mo Yan's short story collection Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh rung the changes, being both comic and tragic. In addition, Yan Ge (not to be confused with Yan Geling), a young, witty, female writer who Harman said was like a modern Jane Austen, was one to watch. Her work was not translated yet, but would hopefully be available in English soon. The same was true of Xu Zechen, whose short story 'Throwing Out the Baby' had been published on Words Without Borders. In terms of non-fiction, the work of Xue Xinran was well worth looking out for.
In amongst Harman's recommendations, however, one title stood out: Han Dong's Banished!. Perhaps this wasn't surprising, given that Harman had translated the novel herself; nevertheless I couldn't help being intrigued by her description of the book, which, by the sound of it, provided an unusual – even quirky – perspective on the events of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. My interest was also piqued by the translator's comment that the structure of the book, which reads like a memoir, with each chapter devoted to a different character in the village, reflected a popular tradition in Chinese fiction. I decided it would be the book for me.
Drawing on Han's personal history, the novel portrays the banishment of the Tao family from the city of Nanjing to the village of Sanyu during the late 1960s. Required to 'learn from the poorer and lower middle peasants' as part of Mao Zedong's attempt to erase capitalism and culture from the country, Grandma and Grandpa Tao, writer Tao and his wife Su Qun, and their son, young Tao, must make new lives for themselves. But, while they try to do the best they can with the meagre resources available to them, they must also take care not to do too well and arouse the jealousy of their impoverished and poorly educated neighbours: as objects of suspicion because of Tao's intellectual past, their best hope lies in striking root and blending in with their drab, new surroundings.
Sinister undercurrents flow through the novel, bubbling to the surface now and then to flood the characters' lives. From the bleak prospects Tao foresees for his young son and his fear that his wages might be stopped by the Party, to the investigation that makes Su Qun contemplate suicide and young Tao's memory of the ransacked buildings he saw in Nanjing, there is an underlying sense of the threat hidden in the smallest and most apparently innocuous of decisions.
Most striking of all, however, is not the precariousness of the Tao's situation, but its strangeness. Little details, such as the 'good-news troupe' marshalled to cheer the banished families on their way and the era's unfamiliar jargon, reveal the profound oddness of the time, as does six-year-old Tao's misplaced excitement at the initial hurly-burly of the Revolution and his proud boast that 'our family's got a bad egg too, and he's been struggled against'. Indeed, as the anonymous narrator reminds us, the period is in many ways every bit as strange to contemporary Chinese readers as it is to Westerners:
'I can only sincerely apologize to my young readers or those from another world. The world I describe here was, after all, a peculiar and transitory one, constructed of language that enshrouded and permeated it with what Buddhists call anitya, a mysterious impermanence.'
In the face of such ephemerality, the Taos ground themselves in the rituals of their new lives, devising strategies for survival. These often involve negotiating their way round the alien traditions of their neighbours – from finding a way to decline a proposal to involve young Tao in a childhood betrothal, to trying to outwit the hungry villagers who want to kidnap and eat their pet dogs. However, there are also moments of joy as we share in young Tao's adventures in his rural surroundings and the family members' satisfaction at being able to improve their living conditions through their ingenuity. Indeed, the little domestic triumphs of excluding draughts, drawing water and making adequate sanitary arrangements are so engrossing that we are a long way into the narrative before we realise quite what 'Mr Tao Peiyi, the professional writer', now 'forbidden to write his own books', has lost in the move to this remote region.
The result is a moving consideration of storytelling and the power of human beings to take charge of their identities in even the bleakest of circumstances. Through watching the Taos carve out a life that allows them to retain something of their sense of dignity and purpose in the face of an attempt to erase individuality, distinctiveness and creativity, we see the marvellous resilience of the human mind. Surprising, and rather wonderful.
Banished! by Han Dong, translated from the Mandarin by Nicky Harman (University of Hawaii Press, 2009)
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Macedonia: web of associations
November 23, 2012
There were several possibilities in the frame for Macedonia. Will Firth, translator of my Croatian pick, Our Man in Iraq, had suggested two options: Luan Starova's My Father's Books and Pirey by Petre M Andreevski, both of which sounded tempting.
But it was when I heard about writer Goce Smilevski that my ears really pricked up. His novel Sigmund Freud's Sister won the European Union Prize for Literature in 2010 and is being published in more than 30 languages. Reaching further back, Smilevski was awarded the Central European Initiative Fellowship for young European authors in 2006 and his book Conversation with Spinoza: a cobweb novel won the 2003 Macedonian Novel of the Year Award. I decided it would be the book for me.
As the subtitle suggests, this is no ordinary novel. In fact, any hopes you might have of following a conventional yarn are quickly dispatched by the 'Note to the Reader' on the very first page:
'The threads of this novel are spun out of conversations between you and Spinoza. So wherever there is an empty space in the words of Spinoza, just say your name and write it in the blank space.'
And that sums up the basic structure: ricocheting back and forth across the space of almost 400 years, the novel is based on a dialogue between the modern reader and the 17th century Dutch philosopher Spinoza – or, rather, two versions of him. The first is the confident young man wedded to his quest for complete freedom by focusing his mind only on eternal things and mastering his emotions. The interlocutor of the second part is the lonely, elderly hermit, looking back with regret on a life lived at arm's length from the world. Both Spinozas tell the story of their existences, prompted by questions and observations from the reader. In so doing, they set up two markers, between which, as Smilevski spins his narrative, a web of contradictions and connections shimmers.
The author's attention to detail is extraordinary – so much so that in this 'cobweb novel' it sometimes feels as though we are seeing a spider's-eye view of life. From the trace of a tear on the face of Spinoza's corpse at the start of the novel, to a drop of blood painted by the 26-year-old Rembrandt – who makes a cameo appearance early on – we find ourselves in a universe where minutiae make all the difference. Smilevski turns this to great effect in the latter sections of the novel, where a speck on a handkerchief comes to symbolise the young Spinoza's love for his mother and where the philosopher fights his feelings for Clara Maria, the daughter of his mentor, by listing and denying a series of finely observed details about her.
Some unexpected gusts of humour blow through the narrative too. I particularly enjoyed the description of Spinoza's forebears enlisting people to carry messages to their relatives by way of a series of odd gestures and signs as they fled the Spanish Inquisition: 'in all of the towns they passed through, Isaac and Mor Alvares left people jumping on one leg in the square, crouching and standing up near the harbor, or clapping their hands in front of the cathedral'. In addition, when we first meet Clara Maria she is lamenting the death of Jesus, only for her father to respond: 'You can't do anything about it dear, such is life. […] Think about it, he was very old and all his teeth had fallen out; he couldn't even eat properly' – whereupon we learn that Jesus is a dog.
Smilevski's handling of the question-and-answer structure is impressive. Rarely did I feel resentment at having words put in my mouth in the text because, for the most part, the author anticipates precisely the responses and questions his reader will have. This becomes a powerful tool in the latter stages where a very intimate dialogue evolves with the disappointed Spinoza, centring around his sadness at 'how forcefully [he has] driven everybody away'.
The treatment of Spinoza's philosophy in the text, on the other hand, is mixed. While Smilevski provides glimpses of what it's like to stretch the limits of language and understanding in an effort to advance ideas, the conversations between his protagonist and some of the other characters occasionally become impenetrable. At these points, the meaning disappears behind a swarm of abstract terms, which, not fixed firmly enough with the pin of definition, flit about the text leaving the reader flailing in their wake. Smilevski's introduction of anachronistic theories about evolution into the story as a way of explaining Spinoza's rejection by the Jewish community is also problematic. The author seems to feel this too, for he makes the concepts the brainchild of a mysterious Macedonian who appears and disappears quickly and, we later hear, is executed for his dangerous ideas.
All in all, though, this a powerful and moving book. It is, in essence, a portrait of a mind trapping itself in a cage of its own making in the effort to be free. Smilevski's portrayal of Spinoza's philosophy may be opaque at times, but there's surely something we can all take from it.
Conversation with Spinoza (Razgovor so Spinoza) by Goce Smilevski, translated from the Macedonian by Filip Korzenski (Northwestern University Press, 2006)
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Turkmenistan: a ghost's revenge
November 20, 2012
I first caught wind of my Turkmen book back in July, when the Scottish Poetry Library tweeted that exiled poet Ak Welsapar was popping up to Scotland from Poetry Parnassus in London to do a reading. Ever the opportunist, I fired off a tweet asking Library staff to see whether Welsapar could recommend a Turkmen prose work that I could read in English. A correspondence ensued with Sarah Stewart, manager of the SPL's excellent Written World project. As far as she knew, Welsapar had a novel in English due out soon. Perhaps I would be able to read that?
I dropped Welsapar a line. Luckily, it turned out his English was much better than my Turkmen, Russian and Swedish (the three languages the author writes in). He told me that he had not one but too novels in translation in the pipeline: Cobra was due to be published by Silk Road Media in London towards the end of the year if everything went to plan, while The Tale of Aypi was being translated in the US with the manuscript scheduled to be ready in the autumn. He kindly agreed to send me a copy of this, the first ever novel to be translated directly into English from Turkmen, when it was done. And so it was that a couple of weeks ago, a rather special attachment arrived in my inbox. I clicked the file open and began to read.
The Tale of Aypi is set in an isolated community of Turkmen fishermen on the coast of the Caspian Sea. With the threat of relocation to the city in order to make way for a lucrative asthma sanatorium looming, the inhabitants face sacrificing their traditions and customs at the dubious altar of progress. But not everyone is prepared to go quietly: loner Araz refuses to leave and flouts the new fishing ban to continue his trade, while, beneath the waters, the ghost of wronged woman Aypi, whose story has haunted the village for centuries, begins to stir and seek revenge.
Welsapar is skilled at making us empathise with a diverse range of viewpoints. At first, in light of Araz's passionate speeches to his long-suffering wife about what it means to belong to a place and a way of life – 'If a man can't follow his father's trade, what'll become of him? A man should be able to do what he loves! Is that possible or not?' – it is hard not to see the rest of the villagers' acquiescence in the relocation scheme as spineless. Yet, as the novel progresses and we discover the campaign of neglect the authorities have waged in the region, cutting off the most basic services to make life there impossible, and the concerns of the elderly inhabitants about their separation from the urban lives of their children and grandchildren, a more rounded and wistful picture emerges.
The marriage of Mammed Badaly's son to an influential city worker's daughter demonstrates this most powerfully. Afraid that his daughter-in-law and her esteemed guests might spurn his home altogether, Badaly waits anxiously for the wedding procession that should by tradition come to his house:
'Mammed Badaly, though, feared it wasn't just a matter of setting customs aside, but a grave concern for the present and the future. If the old man's son and his bride refused to cross the threshold of their own parents' home on their wedding day, how would it be later on, with their grandchildren? Wouldn't they repudiate their grandparents entirely?
'Yes, the village was old; the houses were dilapidated wrecks without polished embellishments and brilliant furnishings of artisan timber like city places had, but the fishermen's open hearts were here.'
The perils of not finding a way to reconcile outside influences and change with traditions are ever present in the narrative through the spectre of Aypi, the 'eternally drowned woman' condemned to death by the community for accepting a ruby necklace from mysterious visitors who arrived on the shore some 300 years before. Fizzing with generations of injustice and repressed anger, the troubled ghost rampages through the streets, whispering feminist manifestos in the ears of men, challenging adulterers and working out a bitter and increasingly indiscriminate revenge.
At times, events take a decided turn for the weird, shuddering the framework of Welsapar's carefully created world. In addition, the unusual structure of the book – which depends heavily on long dialogues in which points are rehearsed repeatedly – can take some getting used to. It is as though, bustling into the text from the arena of tax returns, tube delays and Twitter feeds, we must adapt to the pace of village life in order to appreciate the narrative to the full.
All in all, though, the quality of the writing and the poet's exquisite metaphors, which shimmer through the text like jewels glimpsed through water, keep the pages turning. The novel is a striking parable for the incursion of modern life into the world's remotest places and the havoc that powerlessness wreaks on people's sense of themselves. Many of its images will stay with me for a good long while to come. Haunting.
The Tale of Aypi by Ak Welsapar, translated from the Turkmen by WM Coulson (currently seeking an English-language publisher)
Philippines: the real story
November 6, 2012
There's nothing like getting an enthusiastic recommendation from somebody who loves a particular book. So when Rach stopped by the blog to tell me that I had to read Illustrado by Miguel Syjuco, describing it as 'a wonderful (funny) exploration of the country, its history, politics and people', I made a point of looking it up.
Rach wasn't alone in her appreciation of the novel. It won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2008 and was one of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2010. Clearly a lot of people around the world rated it.
The novel follows Miguel Syjuco (yes, you read that right) as he attempts to get to the bottom of the death of his mentor, famous New York-based Filipino writer Crispin Salvador. Told through extracts from Salvador's work and his protegé's biography of him, interviews with the writer, meetings with his relatives, blog posts and comments in web chat rooms, a series of jokes about Filipinos in the West, and a first- and third-person narrative that charts Syjuco's return to the Philippines in search of clues, the book traces and tangles the threads of Salvador and Syjuco's histories. And, as the search for answers and identity becomes ever more fraught, it finds an echo in the public life of the nation, where a sleaze scandal, a rebellion and an impending typhoon look set to the shake the country to its core.
This is a novel about the search for authenticity – and one that plays this search out on every level. While Syjuco begins the novel 'unconvinced' by the accounts he has read and sets himself the task of sifting through the stories to get to the truth of Salvador's life and death, readers must contend with the multitude of conflicting voices and sources in the book, as well as the protagonist's self-confessed tendency to embroider the truth by, for example, fabricating a conversation with his neighbour on the plane home. In addition, the trustworthiness of love comes under scrutiny through the prism of Syjuco's failed relationship with girlfriend Madison – a pairing based on embracing a series of ill-researched, international good causes and a vague Western guilt quite alien to their Filipino roots.
The result is an impressive and complex array of investigations into truth that can often spill over into the world outside the book. In fact, Salvador, whose work comes complete with footnotes in the novel, is such a convincing creation that for a while some readers even believed he existed in real life.
However, it is when it comes to writing that the questions about authenticity become most intense. Throughout the novel, a debate rages about what it means to be a Filipino author: there is the indignant Manila-based writer who maintains that writing in English is 'heinous' (more than a slight irony in this book which won the Grand Prize for the Novel in English at the 2008 Palanca Awards), while Salvador himself is on record advocating for dispensing with country boundaries altogether and aiming to be 'an international writer' because 'your real home country will be that common ground your work plows between you and your reader'.
Yet nationality and cultural authenticity aren't the only hot potatoes when it comes to writing in the novel. As the title of Salvador's lost exposé, The Bridges Ablaze, suggests, the simple act of putting words on the page can itself be a violent, destructive thing. Throughout the book, storytelling causes rifts and feuds as people feel betrayed by the truths they are forced to confront. This touches on everything from the ridiculous insistence of Grapes and Granma that all their relatives' work – no matter how remote from their lives – is about them, through to revelations that divide the nation. To write, then, requires fearlessness and even ruthlessness, as Syjuco finds himself reading, and perhaps also writing, in a dream:
'Whatever they may say, your story is truly your own. You have a responsibility to it, the way a father has to a child. Damn your detractors, your hurt-faced family. They can't take it away from you.'
The greatest irony is, of course, that the book's interrogation of storytelling takes place through the medium of some truly outstanding writing. Funny, dexterous and seemingly effortless, Syjuco's prose (the author… or are protagonist and author one and the same?) is a joy. Reading it is like skimming over deep waters in a speed boat with an expert pilot at the helm. If there are one or two too many daredevil manoeuvres here and there, the thrill of the overall experience more than makes up for it. Top notch.
Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco (Picador, 2010)
Cambodia: the end of an era
October 12, 2012
Newspapers are not what they used to be. If you've had anything to do with the media in the last ten years, you'll have heard a lot about dumbing down, loss of quality, the death of print and so on. In fact, depending on who you speak to, you might be forgiven for thinking that the whole industry is choking and dying right before our very eyes as we all stand round snapping photos and tweeting about its last moments.
But it's not all doom and gloom. In fact the search for my Cambodian book reminded me of one of the most exciting things to happen to journalism in recent years.
I was whiling away a quiet moment or two on the Guardian Books site when an article about the Cambodian genocide by Madeleine Thien caught my eye. Thien is a Canadian novelist, so I couldn't include her book, Dogs at the Perimeter, on my Cambodian list, however, given her expertise on the country, I decided to leave a comment asking if she could recommend something I could read.
Less than two hours later, Thien replied with a full list of suggestions. I was delighted and more than a little surprised. Despite having written for various publications myself, I realised I'd been used to thinking of journalists as somehow operating in a different, parallel universe, a world that readers could not reach.
And yet here was one of these mysterious beings replying to me out of the blue. All of a sudden the article flickering on the screen in front of me seemed to switch from being a closed, finished thing, to an ongoing, evolving process. It was as though, instead of publishing something that was fixed and definitive, Thien had given a seminar in cyberspace and thrown the floor open to questions from the world.
Thien seemed particularly passionate about In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner, a book that was due to come out that very week. 'I hope this book will find its way to readers everywhere. It is an astonishing novel, brilliant, heartbreaking, and deeply courageous. A truly unforgettable piece of literature,' she wrote. That was good enough for me.
Inspired by Ratner's own childhood, the novel tells the story of seven-year-old Raami, a Cambodian princess who is evicted from her luxurious home in Pnomh Penh along with the rest of her family when the Khmer Rouge seize power in 1975. Caught up in the mass exodus from the cities as the regime seeks to eliminate all traces of education, culture, privilege and power, Raami endures four years of hard labour, starvation, abuse and terror in the party's brutal new rural order – a world where her imagination is her only escape.
Few writers use imagery more richly than Ratner. Whether she is describing the sun yawning and stretching 'like an infant deity poking its long multiple arms through the leaves and branches', the gardener covered in butterflies 'as if he were a tree stalk and his straw hat a giant yellow blossom', or the way a marsh shimmers 'as if at any moment it would spit out the sun', the writer excels at finding arresting ways of bringing experience to her readers. This stands her in particularly good stead when it comes to the darker elements of the story, where the fear and sadness she builds are almost tangible. It also makes the more whimsical passages, particularly the exchanges between Raami and her haunted poet father, marvellous and engrossing where they might be twee and obvious in another author's work.
Ratner's consciousness of the value and weight of words is coupled with a profound sense of the importance of storytelling, which runs through the book. Various characters speak about the power of tales to connect people across time and space. Indeed, Raami's faith in them is such that, in the final moments before he is taken away, she runs after her father begging for one more story, as though the mere act of narrating might be enough to keep him with her and save his life.
Like the novel itself, this belief in the power of telling is rooted in Ratner's experience. She writes movingly about her motivations for rehearsing her family's traumatic history through fiction in her 'Author's Note' at the back of the book. The story is, she tells us, 'in essence, [her] own […], born of [her] desire to give voice to [her father's] memory, and the memories of all those silenced'.
As such – and given the unrelenting suffering and misery that makes up much of the book – it is perhaps inevitable that the narrative occasionally gets bogged down in emotion. While no doubt true to the experience of many children in such extreme circumstances, Raami's repeated assertions that she is responsible for all the bad things that happen become a little wearing. There is also a slight problem with the narratological need to keep raising the stakes and ratcheting up the tension when the family has lost nearly everything from day one.
But these are trifling things by comparison to Ratner's achievement. Looked at as a whole this is a powerful and beautiful debut from a writer committed to finding new ways of telling stories and taking the reader to heart of the matter. The world can always do with more of those.
In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner (Simon & Schuster, 2012)


text:
Kinsler's two homers can't save Rangers
CHICAGO -- One night after using a trio of home runs to defeat the White Sox, the Rangers again relied on the long ball for their offensive output on Saturday.
Unfortunately, it wasn't enough this time as the Rangers couldn't muster any offense besides a pair of Ian Kinsler home runs, as they lost for just the second time in their last nine games in a 3-2 defeat at the hands of the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field.
Kinsler wasted no time staking starter Alexi Ogando to an early lead by taking John Danks deep on just the second pitch of the game and later tied the contest at 2 with another solo shot in the third. From that point on, though, Danks and Ogando turned the contest into a pitchers' duel, with neither hurler conceding another run before handing the game off to the bullpens in the eighth.
While the White Sox Jesse Crain worked his way into and out of a jam in the top half of the inning, Rangers reliever Koji Uehara wasn't as fortunate in the bottom half. Uehera left a one-out, full-count fastball out over the middle of the plate, and Alex Rios lined it into left field for a double, allowing pinch-runner Brent Lillibridge to score the go-ahead run from first.
"It's a situation where obviously you don't want to throw a ball," Uehera said through translator Uchikubo Bang. "I would have liked to throw a splitter, that was a deciding factor. But you can't take it back."
"That's what I'm supposed to do," said Rios, who entered the game in the top of the first inning when right fielder Carlos Quentin injured his left shoulder making a diving catch. "I'm supposed to help the team win games. Fortunately, it happened and we are glad we won the game."
Ogando conceded both his runs and five of his six hits over the first two innings before settling down and keeping the White Sox offense in check for his final five innings of work. The right-hander was forced to settle for the no-decision, however, as the Rangers were unable to execute in several situations where they could have snapped the 2-2 tie, including the top of the eighth inning.
"He was good," manager Ron Washington said of Ogando, who came into the game with a 10.00 ERA over his previous two starts. "In the first two innings, they put some hits together and scored their runs, but Kinsler came back and got us in the game. From that point on, they just threw up zeros, both [Ogando] and Danks."
With Danks out of the game in the eighth, though, the Rangers quickly put together a rally against Crain. Texas put two on with two outs, but Crain escaped the jam by getting Nelson Cruz to line out to right field, setting up the White Sox rally in the bottom of the inning. With the scoreless eighth inning, Crain picked up the victory and preserved his perfect lifetime ERA against the Rangers over 25 1/3 innings of work.
The Rangers put another runner in scoring position in the ninth inning against closer Sergio Santos after pinch-runner Endy Chavez stole second with two outs, but pinch-hitter Yorvit Torrealba struck out looking to end the ballgame.
"We put ourselves in a position with two outs to get a base hit to make a difference," Washington said. "We didn't get it and they did get it."
Cruz was involved in another potentially game-changing play back in the fourth inning when he was thrown out attempting to steal third base for the second out of the inning. Aside from Kinsler's two home runs, the Rangers never had a runner reach third base and have scored eight of their nine runs in the series on home runs.
"Nothing was wrong with that," Washington said of Cruz's steal attempt. "An opportunity presented itself, and he just didn't get it done. That's the way we play though. I have no problem with it. They got their runs the way they got them and we get ours the way we get them. From that point, they just pitched."
Despite the loss Saturday night, the Rangers still have a chance to wrap up their 10-game road trip on Sunday with their fifth straight series victory. Texas is 7-2 on the trip so far, with the two losses both coming in one-run games with the decisive run being scored in the eighth or ninth inning.
"It was just one of those games where the two pitchers that were out there to start the game weren't giving up much," Washington said. "They both went their seven innings and then it was up to the bullpens. We certainly didn't give them the ballgame, they won it."
Paul Casella is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.


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The REAL coders program only in hex editor ...Sponsored Links
I used to use JOE XD. Never liked Vi/VimSponsored Links
But seriously, I'm in love with code::blocks and notepad++. Definitely in my top 20 favorite applications.
I have been looking for it all day with no luck what so ever =(
So it's not the the "usual" places
thanx for the link prankster!
this is nice but where is the rest of it? lol, would like to see a full 3.41 leaked.
Last edited by IndyColtsFan84; 10-09-2010 at 06:33 PM Reason: Automerged Doublepost


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The University of Waterloo (Canada)
| StudentsReview ::
The University of Waterloo - Comments and Student Experiences
The University gets tons and tons of money from its students and uses it all on advertising to new students. If it weren't for the co-op program Waterloo would be done, the education itself is garbage so the only way they're students succeed is because they got work experience through the co-op program and they were the best coming from high school so they are able to learn as they go once they are in the industry.
My main issues with the education are that everything is done in groups, the classes are huge (80-110 people per class) and most of all: THERE IS NO PRACTICAL EDUCATION.
This is an overview of the most practical lab I ever had, and it was for my manufacturing class:
You take apart a snow-blower engine once, in groups of 4, there is paint on the screws you should not remove and different coloured paint on the screws you should remove. The inner workings are not explained and the purpose is to pick 4 parts that were manufactured differently and write about them later. It's done in an hour and you learn nothing. That's the MOST PRACTICAL LAB.
Other labs included:
A group of five observing refrigerant move through a refrigeration cycle. You push a button, you record the temperature push the next button repeat, draw a graph. NOTHING LEARNED.
I don't know how to fix a car, I don't know how a plane works, I don't know what tolerance should be used where, I don't know the GD&T symbols, I don't know what type of fit should be used where, I don't know what metal should be used when, I don't know what different types of screws are used where, I don't know how to program, I don't know electrical, I don't know anything...and it's NEVER GOING TO BE TAUGHT. I'm aware of these things because I know people who had quality practical educations in other countries and because of talking to coworkers/supervisors during co-op jobs.
It's incredibly demoralizing to learn that you are going to work hard for five years to pass courses that give you no benefit in the future. Waterloo is basically teaching you how to be the worst boss in the world, you are taught steps to designing and tons of theories and how things should be but no real practical basics. To improve something you need to understand it, you are never taught that, you will be relying on technicians for everything because they are going to be a helluva lot smarter than you are and they will be irritated that you are above them and yet can't do anything and frustrated that you just don't understand the inner workings(and you really don't).
I am currently taking a design course where we were given a case study and it included the details of how a cabinet was made and you were asked to think about how to improve it. What I find ridiculous about these is that it includes details such as what tools were used for what and that dowel pins were used here and these screws here and we are expected to understand that and yet we were never formally taught what the different tools are, what a dowel pin is, where it should be used etc. and suddenly were making changes with a half-baked understanding of why anything is there in the first place.
So what do you do at Waterloo? Calculus, calculus, calculus. Calculus is very very useful in research and...pure math and basically useless in the rest of the world. You can calculate things all day every day but it will never be equal to a real life test and what engineers make needs to be useful in the real world, not just in a computer program. Your fluids courses are all calculus, you're controls program is all calculus, your mechanics courses are all calculus and you will forget all of the theories and formulas after graduating and since you were never taught the understanding/practical sides of these subjects you now KNOW NOTHING.
Professors are not very helpful either, there a few gems who are incredible but for the most part they are not willing to spend more than a few minutes trying to help you and if you can't answer their questions you will be sent away and told that you need to work on it more before coming for help because you're wasting their time. If you're understanding was good enough to answer their questions, you wouldn't be asking for help. A lot of them have heavy accents and poor English as well.
The students in this program don't work together very well either, there is a tendency for cliques to form (asian kids, white kids, brown kids, small groups of friends) and when a prof gave us assigned groups once there was so much blow back that he caved and allowed us to make our own groups when the original reason for doing this was because of people constantly switching in the past and being unsatisfied with their timeslot because so and so had practice etc. Students fail constantly and every year there are at least 5 new faces from the previous class joining you and people aren't very concerned to see their peers left behind as long as they are doing well.
I've mentioned the co-op program several times as a positive and it is a great pool of jobs that you have access to but it is still up to you to go to interviews and compete for positions and many students do end up not finding jobs. Another issue with this is that the co-op organizers are not concerned for the student well fare and are completely willing to sacrifice you to keep an employer happy. You are matched to a job through a ranking system where you rank an employer from 1-9 and they rank you 1-9 and give no rank if they don't like you, YOU MUST RANK (lowest rank assigned if none given), employers get a choice. I've seen more than one student get stuck in a job they didn't want because either the employer didn't understand the system or it just didn't end up being the job they thought it was and yet were stuck anyways (a friend failed a co-op term for refusing to take a job where the employer didn't want them but didn't understand the system).Summary: Waterloo doesn't care about you and just wants your money. It is a fantastic business doing very well for itself.
Most University furniture are broken, the labs does not have adequate equipment. In one course, our professor changed our group from 4 members to 8 members because of scarce and faulty lab equipment. The labs are small and always overcrowded. The professors admit that the Labs are underfunded.
The UWaterloo library is small compared to other major universities, you will rarely find a study space in the Library.
The gym and athletic facilities are an ignominy, even many colleges have better gym and athletic facilities than University of Waterloo.
Every University club is underfunded.
Most classes have 500-600 students, sometimes it is even difficult to hear the professors speak.
All the other major universities in Canada have a separate graduation hall, but UWaterloo graduation ceremony is held in the GYM-PAC. It seems the University, which charges one of the highest tuition in Canada, can't even afford to have a separate hall for special events.
The co-op fee is $600, higher than any other University, but you will receive no assistance from them in your co-op search.
UWaterloo admits good students with scholarship, than withdraws it just after the first year and then increases the tuition.
Most courses I have taken were poorly structured, classes and labs were overcrowded,TA's often misplace and lose assignments, even examination centers are overcrowded.
Although Waterloo is supposed to be an English speaking University, you will rarely hear English there, the majority of Teacher's Assistants do not speak English there, and most professors have incomprehensible accents. If you only know English and French,and not the languages the TA's speak, then you will not fit in UWaterloo.
UWaterloo is only 50 years old, and it is trying to be the best in Canada, their advertisements will say that it is the best University in Canada for Engineering,CS and Math, but once you go there you will realize that the University is grossly underfunded.
I deeply regret coming to this University, I wish I could go back in time and change my decision.
Westminster College (PA) 1:positive
Pensacola Christian College (FL) 1:neutral
Salve Regina University (RI) 1:positive
Temple University (PA) 1:negative
There are 88 more!
Disclaimer: StudentsReview makes no claims, promises, or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the contents of this site, and expressly disclaims liability for errors and omissions in the contents of this site. Furthermore, StudentsReview is not affiliated with any University or Institution.


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Please log in or register to manage your account
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Oven Fried Pork Chops
Find a Conversation
|Sun, 04-28-2013 - 5:21pm
Oven Fried Pork Chops
4 – 6 pork chops, about ½-inch thick
Lawry's garlic salt
Black pepper
Ground red pepper
Flour – plain or self rising
½ stick butter, melted
Cooking spray
Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line a shallow baking pan with foil.
Rinse pork chops and shake to dry. You want to leave just a little dampness on the chops. Sprinkle the pork chops on both sides with garlic salt, black pepper, and red pepper. Rub the seasonings into the meat. Shake the seasoned chops in flour. Set the chops on a plate to rest.
Pour the melted butter in the baking pan and tilt the pan to make sure the entire cooking surface is coated with melted butter.
Shake the pork chops in the flour again. Arrange the chops in the baking pan and bake for 20 minutes. Remove pan from oven and spray the upturned side of the chops with baking spray. Turn chops over and continue to bake pork chops for about 20 more minutes, or until meat is no longer pink.


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Campus Safety & Security is here 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to promote the safety and well being of JWU students, faculty, staff and property. We also handle vehicle registration, and offer many services and programs for students.
Cedar Hall South, Suite 113980-598-1900Fax: 980-598-1802Email email@example.com
Current Crime Alerts
There are no current alerts.
Fire Log & Safety Report
Campus Safety & Security maintains a daily crime and fire log listing the nature, date, time and general location of each reported crime and fire and the disposition of complaints, if known.
2014 Annual Security Report and Annual Fire Safety Report (1M PDF)
Missing Resident StudentsIf you live in a JWU residence hall, you can register a confidential contact for a missing student report. Campus Safety & Security will notify this person, along with your emergency contacts, if you are missing. JWU personnel will not tell anyone, including your parents, friends or family, who your confidential contact is.


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Urology is a surgical subspecialty covering the various problems and treatments related to the male and female urinary tract. Urology also treats the male reproductive system in adults. This would include treatment of prostate conditions, kidney stones, urinary tract infections, urinary leakage problems and treatment of urinary tract cancers (i.e., prostate, bladder, kidney and testis).
The Doctors of Ocala Urology Specialists have the skill and experience to bring you the highest quality urologic care since 1989. We strive to provide state-of-the-art diagnosis and treatment. Our experience has taught us to treat each patient as an individual and a partner in his or her medical care, while emphasizing sensitivity and discretion with your urological concerns. We have advanced surgical facilities and use the latest urological technology and innovations, allowing us to perform many procedures in the comfort and convenience of our office.
Services Overview
- Infertility
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Fanged Teeth~Fanged Teeth~-:Chapter Two:-."Mom, are you feeling alright?" a young girl asks her mother. Layla smiles weakly at her daughter."I'm fine Lucy, don't worry." laying her hand over her precious girl the woman fumbled with something inside the bedside table's drawer. "My little Lucy, you have to listen carefully to me."Lucy looks at her mother with a confused expression."To what, mother?""Before you were born, I met people, bad people Lucy." Layla paused, coughing."Mother, don't talk.""No, you need to know this." the mother to the girl cut her off. "I want you to take this necklace and go to Chestwood Forest, tonight.""B-But
how about you?" Layla shook her head."I'll not be able to come with you." the older woman whispered. "Those people who I swore to give
what?" Lucy asks, her eyes filled with tears. "Mother, please tell me!""I'm sorry, dear
but I can't tell you more than you're his.""His? What am I?""
""Mother?" Layla opened her eyes,


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Two Seconds Can Save an Animal's Life
I just finished reading a touching story about two people who rescued a skunk whose head had become hopelessly lodged inside a jar, and their account truly made me think.
Raccoon: © iStockphoto.com/Eric Isselée
Not just about how skunks, like everyone, need a helping hand from time to time (or how this grateful animal never tried to spray the women who were saving his life). It also made me think about something I do every week that could be hurting animals: pitching my cans and jars into the recycle bin with nary a thought about the journey they will take—or whom they might hurt along the way.
Even when we recycle cans and jars, animals can still get into them, attracted by the smell of our yummy salsas and jams. Fortunately, the solution is as simple as crushing cans and sealing jars before disposing of them.
Two seconds to help animals? Yes, I can do that.
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I know this is serious, I couldn't help being reminded of the time one of my cats had gotten a potato chip bag stuck on his head after going for the chips at the bottom.ofcoyrse, we took the bag off after we saw what wass happening, but it was funnny and cute.
"…the solution is as simple as crushing cans and sealing jars before disposing of them." I think so and not only to save animal hurts but you will have more room in the bin.
Along with recycling, we should not be throwing any trash on the floor!!


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Clearwire Pulls IPO After Intel Investment
Updated from July 5
Clearwire netted a $600 million investment from Intel's (INTC) Intel Capital and says it has agreed to sell a wireless broadband unit to Motorola (MOT).
The company also withdrew a planned $400 million initial public offering it originally registered in May.
In addition to selling its NextNet Wireless business to Motorola, the agreement makes Motorola a key supplier of network infrastructure to Clearwire.The closely-held Craig McCaw start-up has plans to use a not fully standardized technology known as Worldwide Interoperability of Microwave Access, or WiMax, to provide high-speed wireless service. "Wi-Fi has become an essential part of people's lives. WiMAX is next. It is rapidly moving from a technology initiative to real deployments," Intel Mobility chief Sean Maloney says in a press release Wednesday. The Kirkland, Wash.-based tech shop has WiMax service in 27 markets, largely in the Northwest and Mid-Atlantic. The company has about 18,000 subscribers in the U.S. and 11,500 in Belgium and Ireland. Clearwire holds licensed radio spectrum in the 2.4 gigahertz to 2.6 gigahertz range and delivers fast mobile connections over a much broader territory than technologies like WiFi, with their hot-spot limitations.
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Enhance Healthcare Changes Name To 'Enhance Perioperative And Anesthesia Consulting'
AVENTURA, Fla., April 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Enhance Healthcare today announced the company has changed its name to Enhance Perioperative and Anesthesia Consulting (EPAC) and reorganized its service offerings into three areas: Anesthesia Improvement, OR Improvement and Perioperative Intelligence.
Both of these changes better reflect the company's mission, which is to help hospitals, health systems and academic medical centers nationwide increase their OR efficiency and improve their anesthesia service to meet today's industry challenges.
"We are excited to introduce our new brand," says Dr. Howard Greenfield, Principal and Co-Founder of EPAC. "Healthcare organizations across the U.S. are under pressure to increase efficiency and quality. By realigning our service offerings, we can further help our clients address these immediate challenges and develop strategies for sustainable improvement."
In addition, EPAC launched a new website which features an "Anesthesia Value Index" tool that allows healthcare organizations to compare their own anesthesia subsidy against industry benchmarking data."Our new tagline, Physician Led. Data Driven. Unbiased Solutions, truly reflects the value that EPAC brings to healthcare organizations," says Dr. Robert Stiefel, Principal and Co-Founder of EPAC. "Because we are physicians, we understand the needs of all stakeholders. Plus, we base our recommendations on data and best practices we've developed by working with leading hospitals and health systems." Drs. Greenfield and Stiefel are both board-certified anesthesiologists with over 20 years of experience as clinicians, healthcare executives and consultants. About Enhance Perioperative and Anesthesia Consulting Enhance Perioperative and Anesthesia Consulting (EPAC) helps hospitals, health systems and academic medical centers nationwide improve Operating Room efficiency, clinical quality and profitability. EPAC delivers solutions that address the OR as a whole and are organized into three areas: Anesthesia Improvement, OR Improvement and Perioperative Intelligence. EPAC teams are led by board-certified anesthesiologists who specialize in anesthesia group restructuring and transformation, subsidy reduction, performance benchmarking and contract negotiation. The company does not own or partner with a particular anesthesia management company, so clients get truly unbiased advice. EPAC helps healthcare organizations turn their OR and surgical service line into a competitive advantage. For more information, visit www.enhancehc.com. Contact: Nikki Cary615.500.2924 firstname.lastname@example.com SOURCE Enhance Perioperative and Anesthesia Consulting (EPAC)
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