Category Archives: books

the orchid thief

started reading the orchid thief this morning. its the inspiration for the the movie “adaptation” a movie about adapting a book about how plants adapt and evolve into a movie. a rhyme inside a riddle

enjoying the book sofar. susan has a facinating perspective on the world

Joseph Anton: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie

I think this will be my next book to read

Overview: On February 14, 1989, Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been “sentenced to death” by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran.”

So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. He was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and combinations of their names; then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov—Joseph Anton.

How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, how and why does he stumble, how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of one of the crucial battles, in our time, for freedom of speech. He talks about the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and of the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom.

It is a book of exceptional frankness and honesty, compelling, provocative, moving, and of vital importance. Because what happened to Salman Rushdie was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding somewhere in the world every day.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“The Elegance of the Hedgehog (French: L’élégance du hérisson) is a novel by the French novelist and professor of philosophy Muriel Barbery. The book follows events in the life of a concierge, Renée Michel, whose deliberately concealed intelligence is uncovered by an unstable but intellectually precocious girl named Paloma Josse. Paloma is the daughter of an upper-class family living in the upscale Parisian apartment building where Renée works”

I love the french philosophy and hate the storyline. like reading a facinating philosophy text made into a supercar thats driven 2 miles an hour

pitcairn: paradise lost

just starting reading this book after meeting the author on last weekends full moon ride. I was really intersted in this island/these events before I met kathy.

“Pitcairn Island, remote and wild, home to descendants of the Bounty, a South Pacific Shangri-la, shrouded in myth…But also, as the world would discover, a place of sinister secrets.In 2000, police descended on the British colony to investigate disturbing reports of rape. What they discovered was a shocking trail of child abuse dating back generations. Scarcely a man was untainted by the allegations, and barely a girl had escaped, yet most residents feigned ignorance or claimed it was their ‘way of life’.The ensuing trials would tear the tiny community of just 47 people apart, pitting neighbour against neighbour and reopening long-festering wounds.One of only six journalists to gain access to the island, Kathy Marks lived on Pitcairn during the trials and then followed the legal and human saga to its conclusion in 2007. In this riveting account, she uncovers a society gone badly astray, leaving lives shattered and codes broken: a paradise truly lost”

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