Accidental Blogger
A general interest blog
Category: Books, Authors & Poems
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(Noor Inayat Khan: in two different incarnations) History is not my forte. But I know enough Indian history that this particular story caught me completely by surprise. I came across it in a book review published in the Bengali periodical, Desh (the source of my regular dose of Bengali reading). Spy Princess : The Life…
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(The Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet) Here at last, is the much belated last installment of the three part book review I began a few months ago. Part I was about a hurricane, Part II described the indescribable feeling of Hüzün and now we end in the Holy City. All three books are essentially about cities,…
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When the Watergate "caper," as it was then called, was unfolding, I had just entered my ‘teens. I did not then have either a probing intellect or an insightful intuition about politics. Nothing has changed over the years in this respect, so when I read yesterday evening that E. Howard Hunt had died, Norman Mailer,…
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Bora / Coturnix, Science Blogger at A Blog Around the Clock has done the phenomenal job of putting together an anthology of 50 best science blog posts for publication in book form. This may be the first time such an enterprise has been undertaken and successfully completed. It may also be an augury of things to…
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I am years behind on my reading. Currently I’m on a Dave Eggers kick–he is a very entertaining writer and can make the reader think if he wants to–and I just stumbled across this gem in "Your Mother and I" in How We Are Hungry: I guess a lot of what we did–what made so…
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Yesterday, the New York Times’ most e-mailed piece was an article about free will (or the lack of it). Jason Stanley of Leiter Reports calls such enthusiastic response of the general public to popular philosophy topics, "Philosophy in the Public Sphere." (Conversely, it can also be described as physicists and neuro-scientists crashing a philosophers’ forum.)…
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Anna’s post on the recent kerfuffle at the Seattle Airport sent me onto a tangent about about how the Church made Christ’s birthday at the time of the Germanic winter solstice celebration. It was a fertility holiday; I’m sure other groups had their equivalents. Fusing the two celebrations was intended to promote adoption of Christianity. …
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Fellow blogger Matt of Cerulean Blue, would like to bring a new book to the attention of readers. He was contacted by author Murray Suid who wanted his book Words of a Feather featured on Matt’s blog. However, Cerulean Blue has now closed shop and Matt has no public venue where he can promote it.…
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Back in June, I posted here a review of sorts of Richard Lanham’s The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information, and in the volley of ensuing commentary between Ruchira and me I mentioned works by another author, Michael H. Goldhaber, who has been writing for roughly two decades about what…
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When Sen. ‘Macaca’ Allen accuses his Democratic opponent Jim Webb of writing a book with lurid descriptions, it smacks of being just a tactic to deflect the growing voices criticizing Allen’s own shortcomings (racism, concealment/repudiation of Jewish heritage, etc., etc.). "Allen told reporters after a campaign stop in Harrisonburg that Webb’s books are demeaning to…
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Okay, it’s not really a science book. But it is about science. It is also about being a scientist – a Jewish scientist in Mussolini’s Italy. It is about suddenly becoming an outsider in one’s home. About fascists and Nazis. And cruelty, humiliation, kindness and human dignity. It also happens to be one of my…
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What makes you happy? A fulfilling job? Plenty of money? An interesting love life? Friends, family, leisure time? How about clean water piped into your home? An uninterrupted and dependable power supply? Access to education and medical care? A decent and efficient police force? Do they contribute to your sense of contentment and well being?…
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Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, whose memoirs Istanbul I reviewed a few weeks ago, has won the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature.
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This is the second of the three part book review I began a little less than a month ago. This time the H word in the alliterative title is Hüzün. Istanbul : Turkish author Orhan Pamuk's excellent book, Istanbul is a double layered memoir. In one the author composes a loving tribute to the city of…
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A couple of pertinent links to add to the discussion. Read these and form your own opinions regarding the pope’s speech. Translation of the pope’s speech It’s my considered opinion on reading the whole speech ( seemed like a form of water torture to follow the meanderings from the main idea) is that while the…
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