Hello again...
I realize that I did not post anything for a week...
I was thinking... rethinking and... thinking again... I was lost in space... and I was also indulging in celebrations... of Christmas and pondering the future of the blog and whether I wanted, or whether I should continue the blog posts... After all, I write for self fulfillment and may be for narcissistic...selfish reasons...
I was lost in my own space... and the celebrations were a very good excuse to indulge and drink and think... What a great luxury... having the sip and thinking more... great treat...!
I liked the process... but all along I was taking notes and drafting photos and reading...
The photos below will prove what I am attempting to convey...
I am still undecided...
Today is the 28th and I have three more days till the New Year... and may be I will be able to decide whether to continue or not...
I am sure you will soon find out...
***
As I read through my mails and also the books that I am interested... I came across the following post... I checked the books and I browsed in all six of them... I will read them all in January...All of them are very fascinating...
May be you will find the time to read them too...
SIX
BOOKS OF THE YEAR FOR 2014
Huffington Post
Dec 24 2014
by Christopher Atamian, Writer, director, producer and translator
2014, not a bad year for books, all told. Below you will find a completely arbitrary list of some of 2014's most Interesting, controversial books and a few that I simply found fascinating -- as
well as a preview of two gifted new novelists. They make the perfect gift-at Christmas or any time of the year!
Non-Fiction
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, by Matt
Taibbi (Spiegel and Grau)
A must-read, Taibbi's latest journalistic grenade throw is a perfect complement to Thomas Picketty's 2013 blockbuster Capital in the 21st Century. In this stirring, fast paced book, Taibbi describes black men incarcerated for "obstructing pedestrian traffic" in an age where crime in America has dropped while our prison population -- mostly made up of minority men and woman -- has doubled. Prosecutors who believe their clients are guilty before they even listen to what they have to say and the poor jailed for minor and sometimes imaginary offensives,
while white collar criminals in our top financial institutions and corporations are routinely exonerated: the examples narrated here by Taibbi are so outrageous as to be barely believable.
The wealth gap in America described by Picketty also has its twin in the justice gap so throroughly illustrated in this book. Taibbi belongs to the best investigative reporters in recent history – sadly what he uncovers here is a rather poor reflection on a society which has criminalized poverty and institutionalized racism.
My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, by Ari Shavit
(Random House)
A fast-paced, wonderfully-written book about the founding of Israel up until contemporary days by one of that country's so-called New Historians. Shavit, whose British grandfather was one of the Jewish state's founding fathers, comes as close as anyone has of late to presenting 20th century Israeli history in an objective manner, one sensitive to both the parallel if often competing Jewish and Palestinian narratives. Through it all, he remains in awe in the achievements of this small country on the Mediterrannean, which represented a breathtaking rebirth for a people who took their fates into their own hands and built a modern, prosperous state.
Fiction
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown)
We waited something like a decade for the author of A Secret History and The Little Friend to dazzle us again and Francine Prose nonwithstanding, Tartt has delivered with her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. She is now a more mature novelist who nevertheless retains
her flair for the sometimes dark and hidden sides of her characters and society, a Southern Gothic brought to the Northern climes, if you will. This massive, sometimes rambling nearly 600-page novel could easily have been cut -- the entire middle section which takes place in Las Vegas seems dubious to me -- but one remains interested in its main character's fate throughout -- a young latter-day Oliver Twist who loses his mother at the novel's onset in a terrible museum explosion. His relationship with a old furniture restorater who takes him in and his dealings with a dangerous international art mafia make this part Catcher in the Rye, part suspense thriller difficult to put down. Technically a 2013 novel, it is worth picking up again.
The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khapour (Blomsbury)
Huffington Post
Dec 24 2014
by Christopher Atamian, Writer, director, producer and translator
2014, not a bad year for books, all told. Below you will find a completely arbitrary list of some of 2014's most Interesting, controversial books and a few that I simply found fascinating -- as
well as a preview of two gifted new novelists. They make the perfect gift-at Christmas or any time of the year!
Non-Fiction
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, by Matt
Taibbi (Spiegel and Grau)
A must-read, Taibbi's latest journalistic grenade throw is a perfect complement to Thomas Picketty's 2013 blockbuster Capital in the 21st Century. In this stirring, fast paced book, Taibbi describes black men incarcerated for "obstructing pedestrian traffic" in an age where crime in America has dropped while our prison population -- mostly made up of minority men and woman -- has doubled. Prosecutors who believe their clients are guilty before they even listen to what they have to say and the poor jailed for minor and sometimes imaginary offensives,
while white collar criminals in our top financial institutions and corporations are routinely exonerated: the examples narrated here by Taibbi are so outrageous as to be barely believable.
The wealth gap in America described by Picketty also has its twin in the justice gap so throroughly illustrated in this book. Taibbi belongs to the best investigative reporters in recent history – sadly what he uncovers here is a rather poor reflection on a society which has criminalized poverty and institutionalized racism.
My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, by Ari Shavit
(Random House)
A fast-paced, wonderfully-written book about the founding of Israel up until contemporary days by one of that country's so-called New Historians. Shavit, whose British grandfather was one of the Jewish state's founding fathers, comes as close as anyone has of late to presenting 20th century Israeli history in an objective manner, one sensitive to both the parallel if often competing Jewish and Palestinian narratives. Through it all, he remains in awe in the achievements of this small country on the Mediterrannean, which represented a breathtaking rebirth for a people who took their fates into their own hands and built a modern, prosperous state.
Fiction
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown)
We waited something like a decade for the author of A Secret History and The Little Friend to dazzle us again and Francine Prose nonwithstanding, Tartt has delivered with her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. She is now a more mature novelist who nevertheless retains
her flair for the sometimes dark and hidden sides of her characters and society, a Southern Gothic brought to the Northern climes, if you will. This massive, sometimes rambling nearly 600-page novel could easily have been cut -- the entire middle section which takes place in Las Vegas seems dubious to me -- but one remains interested in its main character's fate throughout -- a young latter-day Oliver Twist who loses his mother at the novel's onset in a terrible museum explosion. His relationship with a old furniture restorater who takes him in and his dealings with a dangerous international art mafia make this part Catcher in the Rye, part suspense thriller difficult to put down. Technically a 2013 novel, it is worth picking up again.
The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khapour (Blomsbury)
Khakpour's riveting second novel combines Iranian mythology with recent American history into an utterly original and enjoyable read.
This 9-11 novel details the life of a latter-day birdman born in Iran and repatriated to the neurotic jungle-like streets of New York City.
Khakpour based her novel on The Book of Zal from the Persian epic The Shahnahmeh. It's a fun novel as well, and one which should have garnered more attention. And as Khakpour points out in a recent interview, it may also be one of the few novels in recent times -- or
ever -- to recount detailed episodes of entomophagy (you look it up!)-
Two Debuts Novels by Young Female Novelists
Orhan's Inheritance, Algonquin Books by Aline Ohanesian
Ohanesian's book is an enjoyable and slightly different take on the legacy of the Armenian Genocide. 2015 marks the 100th commemoration of this tragic event which claimed the lives of 3 million Christians living in the Ottoman Empire. As a plethora of documentaries, articles
and other media begin to stream through on this topic, readers may want to pick up Ohanessian's tale of a young Istanbullu who returns to his native Anatolia to find out that the past is not quite what he thought it was -- and that even the house that he grew up in may in fact belong to former occupants of a different race and religion long gone. Orhan's Inheritance will be released to coincide with April 24th remembrances around the world -- the day when Armenian intellectuals and businessmen were rounded up in Istanbul and sent to concentration camps where they were summarily executed. (Advance copies are currently available for review.)
This book should be combined with a re-reading of Franz Werfel's 1933 classic The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, which recounts the Masada-like defense by a group of Hatay province Armenian civilians who flee to a mountain and hold off the Turkish army for forty days and forty nights.
Who is Martha? by Marjana Gaponenko (New Vessel Press, translated
from the German by Arabella Spencer)
Ukrianian-born Gaponenko's ably translated tale of an aging ornithologist who returns to a Viennese hotel that he frequented as a child with his classical music-loving aunts is one of the strangest debuts that I have read in a long time, which is what makes it so interesting. It's a wondrous tale about the passing of generations and worlds; the taking stock of one's life, as well as a parable of sorts for a society set on its head last century, one where everything – birds, scientists and maybe the human race itself may be on a fast track to extinction. Gaponenko's prose is clever yet fluid and uncomplicated, laced with subtle and not-so-subtle irony and humor.
Who is Martha, you ask? I won't reveal that here, but Gaponenko implies that she may well be each one of us.
***
"A half-truth is a whole lie"
says a Yiddish proverb… and what a fun thing to stumble upon it... i read and reread and read again... thought about it... and was more and more fascinated with the idea of truth and half-truth...!
When was the last time you attempted to cover your nakedness with the half-truth that you invented...
May be you got away with it... may be afterwards you regretted it... But think about it...
Christian pilgrims from across the world have celebrated midnight Mass in Bethlehem to mark Christmas Eve in the traditional birthplace of Jesus.
Action always speaks louder... The underwater eruption created new space in time...
Mother nature created theses islets near Tokyo... and it is still in the process...to grow and consolidate...
But China does not rely on the evolutionary process and Mother Nature...in order to bolster its claims... Chinese engineers create... plant islands in disputed water... to explore for oil...
Amazing...Connecting the lands...
Connecting the lands... Will it bring peoples closer too...?
When was the last time you attempted to cover your nakedness with the half-truth that you invented...
May be you got away with it... may be afterwards you regretted it... But think about it...
May be it will be a New Year's resolution...
Enjoy the festivities... have a sip or two...may be three... and resolve... that half-truths are lies and lies are perverted way of relating to people... That's the double talk of the Big brothers....
Get rid of the double talk... the half truths... and join Santa in telling the whole truth... the whole truth and nothing but the truth...
Your friends will love you more... your community will respect you more... and your parents will be proud... that is more proud of you....
Like you, I love the festivities and eating and drinking too...
Yesterday I felt that I am indulging too much and took a longer walk...
Taking a walk is healthy... but more than that... it creates thinking space for me... The longer I walk, the better I think and the longer I think, the happier I am...
I connect things together... I solve puzzles... and admire the miracle of the day...
The sunrise... the warming up of the day... the blue sky... the clouds... white and puffy... and then the sunset... and the parade of colours... and the indulgence of Mother Nature...
Fascinating... Day after day after day... the miracle of the life...
Living where it is perpetually Christmas poses unique challenges. (Santa Claus House)...
Why can't it be Christmas everyday...? When people are friendlier and think more of sharing and of peace and beautiful stuff...
When people think more like a community... and are in harmony...
Santa Claus House in North Pole, Alaska, is open year round. (Santa Claus House)
Why can't it be Christmas everyday...indeed...?
Northern
Lights are one draw to Lapland, Finland. (Arctic SnowHotel &
Glass Igloos)
The simple life always has tickled my imagination...
Why should be have ALL THE JUNK that the ads impose on us...
First they advertise... then they advertise more... and than it creates a NEED... then we want to "be like the Jones's" and then we buy the thing... and then we grow out of it... and then it stays in the junk box... and then one day we throw it ways...
Never realizing that we did not need it the first place...
The simple life always has tickled my imagination...
Why should be have ALL THE JUNK that the ads impose on us...
First they advertise... then they advertise more... and than it creates a NEED... then we want to "be like the Jones's" and then we buy the thing... and then we grow out of it... and then it stays in the junk box... and then one day we throw it ways...
Never realizing that we did not need it the first place...
Glass
igloos in Lapland, Finland, offer one way to view Northern Lights.
(Arctic SnowHotel & Glass Igloos)
This photo fascinated me... Igloos with a panoramic view...
What a GREAT way to look around and see the world...!
You should try it too...
Whatever
nature provides... they are happy with it...
Why
can't we be like them...?
Happy
and satisfied with what we have...
***
Christian pilgrims from across the world have celebrated midnight Mass in Bethlehem to mark Christmas Eve in the traditional birthplace of Jesus.
...And I will celebrate again... on January 6th with my Armenian friends and also on the 7th with my Russian and Ukrainian friends...
The more I celebrate...the happier I am...
Share the joy... and spread the PEACE...
I am sure you decorated the trees...
Now think of sharing the joy and harmony... with nature... with friends and with the community...
Walk with the PEACE of Christmas...
and spread joy to all and harmony among people...
Pope Francis: "Too many people are being
held hostage or massacred"
He said Christians in Iraq and Syria had
endured conflict for too long, and "together with those belonging to other
ethnic and religious groups, are suffering a brutal persecution".
Baby
Jesus stolen and replaced by a real pig's head...
in Haverhill,
Massachusetts...
Why will anyone still the Jesus... Why can't we share Jesus and the message of peace and harmony...?
You tell me...
***
Paintings of GREAT feasts... and I am sure ALL of us are in festive mood to usher in a New year...
Check the painting and ponder about each and share the joy... and live in harmony and peace...
Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, late 1490s
Giovanni Bellini, The Feast of the Gods, 1514
Paolo Veronese, The Wedding at Cana, 1563
Diego Velázquez, Triumph of Bacchus, 1628
Peter Paul Rubens, The Feast of Herod, 1635–38
Jan Steen, The Dissolute Household, 1663–4
John Martin, Belshazzar’s Feast, c 1821
Édouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 1862
James Ensor, The Banquet of the Starved, 1915
Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1974–79
Fascinating Miracle of Mother Nature...
A
newly created islet in Japan...
Volcanic
Nishinoshima island still smoking... and still growing...
The islet is growing and growing and ...
Mother nature in action... The eruption...
Made in China... manufactured by Chinese engineers...
Chinese islet are being built in the sea and in the disputed waters... So as China will claim the mineral rights and oil... in the region... in the sea... and push Vietnam and Philippines to the side...
and they can... and they will succeed... They have the power and money to impose their will on the region...
A Miracle of Chinese ingenuity and engineering... Dare to imagine and expand your vision...
China unveils world's longest sea bridge which is five miles LONGER than the Dover-Calais crossing
