måndag 14 maj 2012
Peterborough
What a brilliant event - we totally enjoyed it and can't wait for the next show in November. The live interview with Chris Lambert and the guy who plays the Highlander in the TV series was awesome - also good to see Hammer's Scream Queens - the best films ever made as far as I'm concerned. Never seen Spooks or Ashes to Ashes I'm afraid, so didn't know who the people from those shows were.
tisdag 1 februari 2011
New (?) book about islam
(quoted from Mohammed Ayub Ali Khan)
When Saladin was declared King of Syria and Egypt at the age of thirty-eight in 1175, the whole Muslim world was living in the shadow of the humiliating defeat of the first Crusade. The reason for the Muslim defeat was internal sectarian warfare and petty squabbling. As a result of their follies, even the sacred city of Jerusalem was taken over by the invaders. When Christian forces captured the Holy City in 1099, the Crusaders “massacred every living creature that was not of their own kind.” Reston writes that ten thousand were killed at Masjid Al Aqsa alone. Some of the dead bodies were ripped opened because it was rumored that Muslims were swallowing gold in desperation. They even burned down a synagogue, with many Jews still inside. The Crusaders danced around the pyre singing the popular Christian hymn of the time, Te Deum.
Muslim hopes were, however, revived by the recapture of Edessa in Iraq and the unification of Muslim Syria and Mesopotamia and Egypt by Saladin’s predecessor Nur ad-Din. Jerusalem, however, remained elusive until Saladin emerged as Sultan, when he made it his primary goal to recapture the city from the Crusaders.
“When God gave me the land of Egypt, I was sure that he meant Palestine for me as well,” Saladin is reported to have said. Saladin wrested Jerusalem from Christian hands in 1187. In marked difference from the Crusaders, Saladin’s triumphant entry into the third holiest city of Islam was very peaceful. He explicitly forbade reprisals and insisted that the city revert to its former status - open to worshippers of all three faiths. Saladin calmed down the hot heads of his camp - who were demanding the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. “The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was not to be touched,” he declared.
After his entry into Jerusalem, the church was closed for only three days, after which the Christians were permitted to enter for a small fee. He cleansed and restored the Dome of Rock and the Masjid al-Aqsa, which had been converted into a stable for the horses of the Templar order of Christian knights. He also released thousands of Christian prisoners.
Warriors of God by James Reston Jr
When Saladin was declared King of Syria and Egypt at the age of thirty-eight in 1175, the whole Muslim world was living in the shadow of the humiliating defeat of the first Crusade. The reason for the Muslim defeat was internal sectarian warfare and petty squabbling. As a result of their follies, even the sacred city of Jerusalem was taken over by the invaders. When Christian forces captured the Holy City in 1099, the Crusaders “massacred every living creature that was not of their own kind.” Reston writes that ten thousand were killed at Masjid Al Aqsa alone. Some of the dead bodies were ripped opened because it was rumored that Muslims were swallowing gold in desperation. They even burned down a synagogue, with many Jews still inside. The Crusaders danced around the pyre singing the popular Christian hymn of the time, Te Deum.
Muslim hopes were, however, revived by the recapture of Edessa in Iraq and the unification of Muslim Syria and Mesopotamia and Egypt by Saladin’s predecessor Nur ad-Din. Jerusalem, however, remained elusive until Saladin emerged as Sultan, when he made it his primary goal to recapture the city from the Crusaders.
“When God gave me the land of Egypt, I was sure that he meant Palestine for me as well,” Saladin is reported to have said. Saladin wrested Jerusalem from Christian hands in 1187. In marked difference from the Crusaders, Saladin’s triumphant entry into the third holiest city of Islam was very peaceful. He explicitly forbade reprisals and insisted that the city revert to its former status - open to worshippers of all three faiths. Saladin calmed down the hot heads of his camp - who were demanding the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. “The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was not to be touched,” he declared.
After his entry into Jerusalem, the church was closed for only three days, after which the Christians were permitted to enter for a small fee. He cleansed and restored the Dome of Rock and the Masjid al-Aqsa, which had been converted into a stable for the horses of the Templar order of Christian knights. He also released thousands of Christian prisoners.
Warriors of God by James Reston Jr
torsdag 14 oktober 2010
Said about Llosa
As a writer, however, politics has returned as an important, even obsessive focus in his fiction. In his own literary theory, Vargas Llosa has frequently adverted to the "demons" which drive an author to write, and as Sabine Kollman (2002: 1) has noted, in the case of Mario Vargas Llosa "politics is one of the most persistent 'demons' which ... provoke his creativity". In the wake of his resilement from the Left, then, he produced a number of novels exploring and exposing the destructive idealism of revolutionary socialism, which might begin with a millennarian vision of a perfect society but which invariably ends with dictatorial oppression, enforced conformism, the denial of human rights, and social and economic devastation. It was this series of novels, The War of the End of the Worm (1981), The Real Life of Alejandro Mavta (1984), Death in the Andes (1993a), and more recently The Wav to Paradise (2003a), which incurred the wrath of left-wing critics and fellow writers, and led to Vargas Llosa being reviled as a reactionary conservative.
And yet, for anyone who has read Vargas Llosa's work over the past several decades, his political position is quite clear. He is a writer who is opposed to the anti-individual tyranny of both right-wing nationalism and left-wing collectivism, and who believes resolutely in the core values and rights of liberal democracy. Far from being a conservative or what Michael Valdez Moses has floridly if misleadingly termed "the eminence grise of Latin American neoliberalism" (2002: 1), (5) he is, by his own definition, a classical liberal who upholds "the basic precepts of liberalism--political democracy, the market economy, and the defense of individual interests over those of the state" (2005: 3). It is this fundamental belief in the principle of individual liberty and autonomy which distinguishes Vargas Llosa's thought from that of both the Right and the Left, and which gives his work its distinctive quality. Having explored the damage wrought by utopian socialism in a number of his novels, then, he turns his attention to the similarly damaging effect of authoritarian extremism in The Feast of the Goat.
And yet, for anyone who has read Vargas Llosa's work over the past several decades, his political position is quite clear. He is a writer who is opposed to the anti-individual tyranny of both right-wing nationalism and left-wing collectivism, and who believes resolutely in the core values and rights of liberal democracy. Far from being a conservative or what Michael Valdez Moses has floridly if misleadingly termed "the eminence grise of Latin American neoliberalism" (2002: 1), (5) he is, by his own definition, a classical liberal who upholds "the basic precepts of liberalism--political democracy, the market economy, and the defense of individual interests over those of the state" (2005: 3). It is this fundamental belief in the principle of individual liberty and autonomy which distinguishes Vargas Llosa's thought from that of both the Right and the Left, and which gives his work its distinctive quality. Having explored the damage wrought by utopian socialism in a number of his novels, then, he turns his attention to the similarly damaging effect of authoritarian extremism in The Feast of the Goat.
tisdag 20 juli 2010
Denis Johnson flying again
Poet, playwright and author Denis Johnson was born in Munich, West Germany in 1949 and was raised in Tokyo, Manila and Washington. He holds a masters' degree from the University of Iowa and has received many awards including a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction in (1993), a Whiting Writer's Award (1986) and the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from the Paris Review for Train Dreams. He is best known for his collection of short stories, Jesus' Son.
His first published writing was a collection of poetry, The Man Among The Seals, published in 1969 when he was 20 years old and enrolled at the University of Iowa, where he was mentored by Raymond Carver. At 21 he was first admitted to a psychiatry ward for alcohol addiction, having started a lengthy love affair with substance abuse at the age of 14 while living in the Philippines, where his father, a State Department employee, was stationed. This was followed by seven or eight years of on and off drug abuse and, often, homelessness. While struggling to get sober in 1978 Johnson says he had "a strong experience of the presence of God" in Phoenix, which he describes as "no talking" and "kind of blue". A number of passages in Jesus' Son appear to be based on this experience. The same year he started work on a novel that he had begun in college; Angels was published in 1983 and won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Between 1982 and 1986 he produced two books of poetry and three novels.
In 1988 he was in the Philippines, researching an article for Esquire. However, he came down with malaria and, on his return, felt too wrecked to finish the piece; added to which, his second wife was divorcing him so he had no place to stay. Recovering in a friend's house near Mendocino he sent his agent a batch of stark, semi-autobiographical sketches that he'd written during his days as an addict, not expecting them to be published. However, Johnson's former editor at Knopf, Robert Gottlieb, had just taken over as editor of The New Yorker and, in Johnson's words, "was ready to make some changes in the magazine, so he thought it'd be a laugh to publish some of these vulgar stories." The New Yorker bought four of the stories and The Paris Review and Esquire bought a few others. Still, Johnson didn't think much of the stories but, owing money to the IRS, he sent a collection to his editor, Jonathan Galassi, at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, who published the eleven stark stories as Jesus' Son, after a line from Heroin by Lou Reed.
His first published writing was a collection of poetry, The Man Among The Seals, published in 1969 when he was 20 years old and enrolled at the University of Iowa, where he was mentored by Raymond Carver. At 21 he was first admitted to a psychiatry ward for alcohol addiction, having started a lengthy love affair with substance abuse at the age of 14 while living in the Philippines, where his father, a State Department employee, was stationed. This was followed by seven or eight years of on and off drug abuse and, often, homelessness. While struggling to get sober in 1978 Johnson says he had "a strong experience of the presence of God" in Phoenix, which he describes as "no talking" and "kind of blue". A number of passages in Jesus' Son appear to be based on this experience. The same year he started work on a novel that he had begun in college; Angels was published in 1983 and won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Between 1982 and 1986 he produced two books of poetry and three novels.
In 1988 he was in the Philippines, researching an article for Esquire. However, he came down with malaria and, on his return, felt too wrecked to finish the piece; added to which, his second wife was divorcing him so he had no place to stay. Recovering in a friend's house near Mendocino he sent his agent a batch of stark, semi-autobiographical sketches that he'd written during his days as an addict, not expecting them to be published. However, Johnson's former editor at Knopf, Robert Gottlieb, had just taken over as editor of The New Yorker and, in Johnson's words, "was ready to make some changes in the magazine, so he thought it'd be a laugh to publish some of these vulgar stories." The New Yorker bought four of the stories and The Paris Review and Esquire bought a few others. Still, Johnson didn't think much of the stories but, owing money to the IRS, he sent a collection to his editor, Jonathan Galassi, at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, who published the eleven stark stories as Jesus' Son, after a line from Heroin by Lou Reed.
lördag 29 maj 2010
The Build Up
This very much readable novel is set in the monsoon season in Darwin, referred to locally as “The Build Up”. Hot humid days and the oppressive tropical climate weigh down on the inhabitants of the city, sapping energy and attention.
Detective Dusty Buchanan is undeniably annoyed when she is taken off a long-term murder case that she has been investigating. Her frustrations increase when she is sent to investigate a report of a body found near a local Vietnam veterans’ camp site, only to have the body go missing before the forensics team can arrive.
Dusty is demoted to uniform and sent to a desk job in disgrace, but she can’t let go of either her previous investigation or the new murder case. As she digs deeper, she finds unexpected connections and must work to not only solve the case but restore her own tarnished reputation.
Detective Dusty Buchanan is undeniably annoyed when she is taken off a long-term murder case that she has been investigating. Her frustrations increase when she is sent to investigate a report of a body found near a local Vietnam veterans’ camp site, only to have the body go missing before the forensics team can arrive.
Dusty is demoted to uniform and sent to a desk job in disgrace, but she can’t let go of either her previous investigation or the new murder case. As she digs deeper, she finds unexpected connections and must work to not only solve the case but restore her own tarnished reputation.
tisdag 18 maj 2010
Jane Austen inspires...
The Jane Austen book sleuth is happy to inform Janeites that many Austen inspired books are heading our way in April.
One of them:
Fiction (prequels, sequels, retellings, variations, or Regency inspired)
Writing Jane Austen: A Novel, by Elizabeth Aston
After five popular Pride and Prejudice sequels set in Regency times, Elizabeth Aston is branching out with a new Austenesque theme by placing her heroine in contemporary times penning a completion to one of Jane Austen’s unfinished novels. Smart move. Let’s hope she can satisfy her legion of fans with this break from tradition. Publisher’s description: Georgina Jackson’s first novel was a “searingly grim read”–critically acclaimed and award-winning, though it was hardly a bestseller. Struggling to get past the first chapter of her second book which is almost past its deadline, Georgina panics when she gets a vague but urgent-sounding email from her agent: “RING ME.” She’s certain it’s bad news. So when Livia tells her about a potentially profitable commission, Georgina is shocked. Even more surprising, however, the commission isn’t for her next book, but rather for the completion of a newly discovered unfinished manuscript of a major nineteenth century author! Skeptical at first about her ability to do the job, she is horrified to learn that the major author is in fact Jane Austen. Torn between pushing through somehow and fleeing back to America, Georgina relies on the support of her financier-turned-scientist roommate, Henry, and his quirky teenage sister, Maud, a serious Janeite who has just escaped the rigidity and enforced structure of boarding school. When she suddenly finds herself in a financial crisis, the only way for Georgina to get by is to sign the contracts and finish the book. But how can she overcome her big secret–that she has actually never read Jane Austen! Filled with the humor, misunderstandings, rich characterizations and romance of Aston’s previous novels, Writing Jane Austen is destined to rocket Aston right into the 21st century!
One of them:
Fiction (prequels, sequels, retellings, variations, or Regency inspired)
Writing Jane Austen: A Novel, by Elizabeth Aston
After five popular Pride and Prejudice sequels set in Regency times, Elizabeth Aston is branching out with a new Austenesque theme by placing her heroine in contemporary times penning a completion to one of Jane Austen’s unfinished novels. Smart move. Let’s hope she can satisfy her legion of fans with this break from tradition. Publisher’s description: Georgina Jackson’s first novel was a “searingly grim read”–critically acclaimed and award-winning, though it was hardly a bestseller. Struggling to get past the first chapter of her second book which is almost past its deadline, Georgina panics when she gets a vague but urgent-sounding email from her agent: “RING ME.” She’s certain it’s bad news. So when Livia tells her about a potentially profitable commission, Georgina is shocked. Even more surprising, however, the commission isn’t for her next book, but rather for the completion of a newly discovered unfinished manuscript of a major nineteenth century author! Skeptical at first about her ability to do the job, she is horrified to learn that the major author is in fact Jane Austen. Torn between pushing through somehow and fleeing back to America, Georgina relies on the support of her financier-turned-scientist roommate, Henry, and his quirky teenage sister, Maud, a serious Janeite who has just escaped the rigidity and enforced structure of boarding school. When she suddenly finds herself in a financial crisis, the only way for Georgina to get by is to sign the contracts and finish the book. But how can she overcome her big secret–that she has actually never read Jane Austen! Filled with the humor, misunderstandings, rich characterizations and romance of Aston’s previous novels, Writing Jane Austen is destined to rocket Aston right into the 21st century!
torsdag 25 mars 2010
Financial crisis hits the publishing industry
Received that yesterday:
The industry is searching for orientation - Frankfurt Book Fair's industry survey in co-operation with buchreport and Publishers Weekly
Frankfurt, 24/03/2010 - The book industry is taking an active approach to the digitisation of its content, but it is still in the midst of orientation. This is revealed in a recent survey of 840 international industry representatives, predominantly managers and executives from the publishing industry, which was carried out in September by the Frankfurt Book Fair and the trade magazine buchreport in co-operation with Publishers Weekly.
The majority of participants hail from continental Europe, followed by the USA, Asia, Great Britain and Latin America. ”Now is the time to seek out new strategies, to scour the market, to engage in international benchmarking”, said Juergen Boos, Director of the Frankfurt Book Fair. The one true business model is still a long way off and investments are also still being held in check - at the same time, however, the fear that content will only be distributed free of charge on the Web in the future seems to have been averted for the time being.
Search for strategies and partners
80 per cent of those polled embrace the radical change in the media industry associated with digitisation as an opportunity, rather than as a crisis. Behind the ostensible spirit of optimism, however, there continue to be many question marks. “The industry continues to search for strategies for creating business with digital products. The focus is on business models that can supplement, and eventually eliminate, the accepted model of exchanging money for printed paper”, said buchreport Editor-in-Chief Thomas Wilking in summarising the numerous individual findings of the survey.
The development of new business models, new multimedia products and suitable marketing strategies is cited as the greatest challenge of the industry (607 responses). 38 per cent of those polled also see their companies’ greatest need for catching up in the areas of knowledge and strategy. In 2008, only 26 per cent of those polled rated knowledge and strategy as a priority in their companies. The desire to connect with other creative industries like film, games and music is at the very top of the list of business priorities for 19 per cent of those polled. New forms of e-Marketing are in demand – 27 per cent cited digital reading samples as the most important new marketing activities, followed by viral marketing using social media (22 per cent) and multimedia advertising (19 per cent). However, it seems the time is not yet ripe to commit to one business model - only 12 per cent of those polled feel that there is an urgent need to make investments now.
The second biggest challenge for the media industry is the uncertainty about the changes in media use and reading habits of customers (425 responses). Landing in third place is price competition in the form of countless free digital offerings (354 responses) and the illegal dissemination of protected content through piracy (322 responses). Surprising findings: The current financial crisis (with 79 responses), as well as the strengthened position of authors through their ability to engage in direct marketing in a Web 2.0 world (142 responses) - and the consequential weakened position of publishers and book retailers - are not perceived as considerable challenges for the industry. Around 41 per cent of those polled believe that the financial crisis generally has no influence on the development of new digital business models; only around 33 per cent are of the opinion that the financial crisis is having an impeding effect.
The industry is searching for orientation - Frankfurt Book Fair's industry survey in co-operation with buchreport and Publishers Weekly
Frankfurt, 24/03/2010 - The book industry is taking an active approach to the digitisation of its content, but it is still in the midst of orientation. This is revealed in a recent survey of 840 international industry representatives, predominantly managers and executives from the publishing industry, which was carried out in September by the Frankfurt Book Fair and the trade magazine buchreport in co-operation with Publishers Weekly.
The majority of participants hail from continental Europe, followed by the USA, Asia, Great Britain and Latin America. ”Now is the time to seek out new strategies, to scour the market, to engage in international benchmarking”, said Juergen Boos, Director of the Frankfurt Book Fair. The one true business model is still a long way off and investments are also still being held in check - at the same time, however, the fear that content will only be distributed free of charge on the Web in the future seems to have been averted for the time being.
Search for strategies and partners
80 per cent of those polled embrace the radical change in the media industry associated with digitisation as an opportunity, rather than as a crisis. Behind the ostensible spirit of optimism, however, there continue to be many question marks. “The industry continues to search for strategies for creating business with digital products. The focus is on business models that can supplement, and eventually eliminate, the accepted model of exchanging money for printed paper”, said buchreport Editor-in-Chief Thomas Wilking in summarising the numerous individual findings of the survey.
The development of new business models, new multimedia products and suitable marketing strategies is cited as the greatest challenge of the industry (607 responses). 38 per cent of those polled also see their companies’ greatest need for catching up in the areas of knowledge and strategy. In 2008, only 26 per cent of those polled rated knowledge and strategy as a priority in their companies. The desire to connect with other creative industries like film, games and music is at the very top of the list of business priorities for 19 per cent of those polled. New forms of e-Marketing are in demand – 27 per cent cited digital reading samples as the most important new marketing activities, followed by viral marketing using social media (22 per cent) and multimedia advertising (19 per cent). However, it seems the time is not yet ripe to commit to one business model - only 12 per cent of those polled feel that there is an urgent need to make investments now.
The second biggest challenge for the media industry is the uncertainty about the changes in media use and reading habits of customers (425 responses). Landing in third place is price competition in the form of countless free digital offerings (354 responses) and the illegal dissemination of protected content through piracy (322 responses). Surprising findings: The current financial crisis (with 79 responses), as well as the strengthened position of authors through their ability to engage in direct marketing in a Web 2.0 world (142 responses) - and the consequential weakened position of publishers and book retailers - are not perceived as considerable challenges for the industry. Around 41 per cent of those polled believe that the financial crisis generally has no influence on the development of new digital business models; only around 33 per cent are of the opinion that the financial crisis is having an impeding effect.
Prenumerera på:
Inlägg (Atom)
