The Kite Runner; Khaled Hosseini; Bloomsbury 2003

The Kite Runner- I bought it off Amazon because it came recommended along with A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian. As per the latter, both extremities of this book were covered in snippets of glowing reviews the book had received.

I must admit it, I’m often too lazy to check out new material for myself, rather, I let other people do it for me, and will keep on doing so until the day I run out of good, pre-reviewed, ideally multi-awarded books, films, albums and guitars. Then I’ll be rummaging around bookstores and actually reading bits of the text to see if I like them or not.

Or possibly I might try to pool in myself, if inspiration strikes.

Anyway, back to the Kite Runner. This is a bloody good book, and when I say bloody I mean it. It is a tale of friendship, honour, sacrifice, and ultimately, love – not the Valentine’s Day variety, sultry, sugary and sexy; rather it’s the kind of love that is so unnatural to our selfish nature, sacrificial and undemanding.

Excellently written, it is basically the journey of Amir, the narrator, in trying to make up for his betrayal of Hassan, his dear friend and servant who had loved him selflessly, trying to exorcise demons which had tormented him since he was 12 years old.

The result is a book which almost left me in tears (but didn’t, as usual), and which I made a point to finish within 2 days, rather like A Child Called It, by Dave Pelzer, which is similarly poignant. Indeed the emotions evoked are very similar, hearkening back to the strong bond children usually have with their parents and siblings. But I can’t stress enough how good this book is without boring myself to a premature death, so I’ll stop here.

Please do read it though.

Nausea; Jean Paul Sartre, Robert Baldick; Penguin 2000

My Christmas present. Nausea- a diary of a certain Monsieur Roquentin, who seems to realise that he exists, finds no point in it and tries to deal with it. My summary is overly simplistic, however, that’s the general spirit of the book. Ironically quite a good book, especially seeing it’s philosophy, which can lose the reader at quite an early stage.

I might read it again, in the distant future, unless I find it doesn’t appease the reason for our mutual existence, in that case it will languish on my bookshelf, which just has been augmented by a lovely 9 book box set which was bought at the princely sum of Lm 6 (€ 13.98).

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian; Marina Lewycka; Penguin 2006

Can’t be bothered to write a summary of this one. There are plenty of those online. All I can say is, it’s a good read, one of those you can’t let down. The narration is very personal, and I suspect there is a lot of the authoress in both of the sisters’ characters, Nadia and Vera. These two have to prevent their father, a widower, from marrying a Ukrainian tart around 35 years his junior, who is evidently in it for British citizenship, and in return she lets her new found love fondle her breasts.

Can’t be bothered to erase that first sentence.

Scenes from the life of a Best-Selling Author; Michael Krüger, Vintage 2003
A book ridden with short, bizarre stories of writers moving to a gym to tend for a beast, poets drinking copious amounts of liquor, uncles ransacking libraries etc. A good BB (Bathroom Book) if you’d ask me, and for Lm 1 I really can’t complain.

Book 1- Freakonomics; (Levitt, Dubner); Penguin 2005

The book first on my hundred strong list is called Freakonomics, and the basic gist of it is that a young, rogue (I always mistake this word as rouge) economist Steven D. Levitt, laden with a PhD, goes about using his techniques to investigate other matters such as why do people cheat, what do Sumo wrestlers and Schoolteachers have in common, the truth about your real estate agent and why crime and abortion legislation are correlated.

The authors are Steven D. Levitt (the Freakonomist) and Stephen J. Dubner (the journalist).
After the book’s success, they also set up a blog on freakonomics.com.

All in all, a good read, much along the lines of works such as Dude, Where’s my Country? and the like.

This year, my real New Year’s Resolution is to finish reading 100 books. I already have a small list, and I would like you, dear readers, to contribute your ideas as to what I should be reading. This is the List so far:

1. Freakonomics (Livett, Dubner)- done
2. nineteen-eighty-four (Orwell)
3. Nausea (Sartre)
4. The Confessions (St. Augustine)
5. The Fellowship of the Ring
6. The Two Towers
7. The Return of The King (J.R.R. Tolkien) – and no, I haven’t watched the films, either!
8. The Book of Nothing
9. A Short History Of Tractors in Ukranian
10. The Kite Runner
11. (La Divina Commedia) – not sure about this
12. The Full Cupboard of Life
13. Basic Statistics

And that’s where my list ends, and yours begins. Any suggestions would be considered, especially if recommended by a good review of yours… On my behalf I will try to write a short resume of the book just completed.

Dear Readers,

I know you weren’t eagerly anticipating the day when I would be writing recipes, but I’m afraid the time has come.

So, for all of you foodies out there, here’s my Super Duper Cosmic Spaghetti™ Recipe!

You need:

Spaghetti (Al Dente)
1 Egg per 150g Spaghetti (The Chicken Variety)
Chicken Meat (1 Breast per Person)
A Lot Of Blue Cheese (To Taste)
Raisins/Sultanas
White Wine
Cinnamon
Extra Virgin Olive Oil

For The Cosmic Mixture™:

So, you cook the chicken (get someone else to do it, as I do), chop it up, add the raisins, marinate them in a saucepan in the white wine, add some olive oil if you like it, some cinnamon and finally add the blue cheese and let it melt. What’s important is that the whole thing is hot.

Meanwhile, you should have the spaghetti boiling. Sieve the water out and add the egg, whisk it until it’s not really liquid anymore and then add the Cosmic Mixture™.

Make sure that the Cosmic Mixture and the Spaghetti Carbonara have mingled well together, and toss the whole contents of the Spaghetti Pan into The Plate.

Then, pour out a glass of white wine, get out your favourite fork, and enjoy, like I just did.

Disclaimer: I do not take any responsibility for people contracting Salmonella, Food Poisoning or Ebola after ingesting The Super Duper Cosmic Spaghetti™.

For the benefit of my readers who are not currently enrolled at the UOM, next week is exam week.

And I, like the diligent philosophy student I am, am busy updating my pseudoblog instead of attending to matters pertaining accidents, ontological statements, forms and illumination, bathroom fittings and kitchen appliances.

(Yes, my friends, everything under the Sun (and including the latter) can prove to be the subject of your next philosophical discussion.

It was fair enough discussing the Metaphysics in Ancient Greece, but I scarcely can see the point of that since the widespread availability of the Bible, which clearly states that the world was created in seven days flat, period.

There’s also no point in discussing the existence of God; otherwise, how could many people think they are someone who does not exist?

So all the discussion on God et al. being shifted to the realm of Theology, this leaves Philosophy with several lovely topics, such as what do actions consist of, what do we actually see, do we think independently or are we programmed in some obsolete form of Java? The list goes on, until every subject on earth has its own particular philosophy; we have a philosophy of science, a philosophy of religion, a philosophy of faith (look, an oxymoron!, squealed the atheist), a philosophy of rhetoric, a political philosophy, and finally, a philosophy of dishwashers.

I am not yet aware of any institutions offering the course, but I think it would prove to be an interesting enough topic for postgraduate research.)

But I digress.

This post was meant to be a treatise of the way in which study is so difficult. According to Myers and Myers, in a book which I have to consult for an extremely welcome paper I have to hand in (in APA format, please), the human mind can process over 800 words a minute, while the average speaking rate for an American is, according to my fallible memory (being called into duty by my chronic laziness), around 30 wpm.

That, my friends, is why listening effectively is so difficult.

Your brain has to cope with so much more, so please keep it in mind, perhaps it will occupy that part of your brain which is not listening, and thus providing the speaker facing you with fertile ground where to plant their word.

This statistic, coupled with various phoenomena which have plagued my life of recent (and which I shan’t be publishing via this online pseudo-diary, thank you very much) is the reason why studying, as my comrade Jake Mamo would have it, is so excruciatingly difficult.

At First, I start reading. And Reading. Then I start sc_n_ing. Then i
(oops!) skip

and continue reading, up until the point where my mind keeps seeing words,
smiles at them and dismisses them unceremoniously and keeps seeing words keeps seeing words keeps seeing words keeps seeing words keeps seeing words keeps seeing words
keeps seeing words
keeps seeing words
keeps seeing text
keeps seeing words
keeps seeing words
keeps seeing words
keeps seeing text
keeps seeing words
keeps seeing words
keeps seeing words
keeps seeing text
keeps seeing words
keeps seeing words
keeps seeing text
keeps seeing words
keeps seeing words
keeps seeing text
keeps seeing words
keeps seeing words , seeing words, seeing words (!), seeing seeing words words wordswords words words Apple took out the computer now, are they gonna start selling fruit? words words words wordswordswords O love!

insert random text here <> wordskeeps seeingtextkeeps seeingkeeps seeingkeeps seeingnothing?

sibling(X,Y) :- parent(Z,X), parent(Z,Y).parent(X,Y) :- father(X,Y).parent(X,Y) :- mother(X,Y).nd dismisses them unceremoniously and keeps seeing words keeps seeingwords keeps seeing words keeps seeing words keeps seeing words keepskeeps seeing words keeps seeingwords keeps seeing words keeps seeing words keeps seeing words keepskeeps seeing words keeps seeing

seeing words...

...until the exercise we refer to as reading is nothing but an organic, intramental, pathetic excuse for a screensaver.

And that, dear readers, for a student, spells out one, meaningful word.

Disatser.

Dearest Reader,

I, dejvid, solemnly promise that I will update my blog at least once weekly, except in cases of:

Paralysis;

Muscular Dystrophy;

computerlessness;

boredom;

despair;

indiscipline;

writer’s block;

not being bothered to do anything, let alone finish sentenc

I won’t tell you what happened to Saddam Hussein; we all know.

We all know the reasons for his being hung,
and one would be led to thinking that he deserved it.

The problem is, as a certain Jesus once put it, “let him who is without sin cast the first stone”; and had we to use the measure used for Saddam’s execution, soon we’ll be having a human salumeria, with cuts of various nationalities and rankings, starting with people who wage wars on terror while terrorizing whole nations.

The other problem is, that, as it was before, Mr. Hussein was in great debt with humanity.

Humanity, being the bright race it is, decided to imitate.

Happy New Year.