books!
my article was due half an hour ago and i am still struggling over the lede, and here i am blogging instead!
but i wanted to thank y'all for the book suggestions - last week i checked out two morgan llywelyn books - grania and finn maccool, white teeth by zadie smith and the forest by edward rutherfurd. i started with grania and then the forest, both of which i enjoyed immensely. both historical fiction dealing with the british isles in some way, and both included the defeat of the spanish armada from different perspectives, neither of them really spanish or english. grania tells the story of grace o'malley, a fifteenth-century irishwoman who grew up with her father's love of the sea and became a sea trader and pirate in her own right and once even went to england to face elizabeth herself. and the forest like any good rutherfurd book is a tale of a thousand years, of the new forest in southern england from 1000-something until 2000, tracing the lines and stories of some fictional and some partly fictionalized families as they weave in and out of british history. it's funny, taking such a wide perspective on these individual stories seems to give each of them less weight... the story of one woman's life and trial is captivating on its own but leaves only a family memory of blood feud. and little physical things last - the ancient wooden cross that was brought from the holy land at the start of the last millennium, puckle's old, fantastically carved bed, the seagull family's chinless profile. and people forget things that seem important to their ancestors. ...it's not riveting reading, but it's very good and satisfying on a storytelling level and all.
just finished white teeth today (which, btw, baraka, i picked up instead of on beauty just because it was paperback which is easier to read lying in bed with a sleeping baby and sleeping husband)... honestly it took me the first third or so of the book to get into it, and then it began striking me as brilliant - she was so young, younger than i am now, when she wrote it, and yet she had such vision, to see between classes, between generations, between boys and girls. okay, so it's just one view, and it's what blurbs like to call "irreverent" - she mocks gently, sometimes fiercely, all of her characters and their respective religious or otherwise ideologies (like a whole section where she quotes from islamic leaflets on the nine acts that invalidate fasting, for example, which is the sort of thing i've taken very seriously in my time, i mean, one does like to know what the scholars say could break their fast, haina?), their cultures, their personal yearnings, and yet somehow makes their humanity (well, for some of them) beautiful, maybe even respectable. a very postmodern sort of novel. it struck me, reading, that it wouldn't be possible to write such an interesting story about the muslim community in america, or at least the one that i know. it's such a different ballgame, different stadium altogether, in britain. i have had a story i've tried to write about, well, being a young practicing muslim woman in america between two cultures, and reading white teeth just made the whole story sort of slither away in shame... smith writes between like twenty cultures, and touches on things i would never touch on, adeptly, with humor. humoUr, sorry. again i wonder if it's even possible for me to write from my own experience in any way and produce something the masses might find enjoyable reading. i'm afraid it's all rather boring... but i have to try, because if i can't write, i can't do anything, i'm nobody, just hubby's wife, musa's mother, ammi and abbu's daughter, and it's not nothing to be something to somebody else but isn't it what all us womenfolk of a particular ilk are fighting for, the ability to be somebody in and of ourselves...
wow, random. so, next and last of this batch is finn maccool which i am sure i'll enjoy greatly. want to read more of the irish historical fiction. but i will also pick up on beauty and maybe some other more "literary" or "contemporary" shtuff. a suitable boy, that's one i've wanted to read for a while. i still welcome any more suggestions any of y'all might have...
now i have to get upstairs, because i have some roasting vegetables (taters, onions and carrots in garlic and butter and rosemary oil) in the oven, and hubby is making some sort of jerk chicken, and i am hungry! oh, and i finished my article somewhere in the paragraph where i was writing about the forest. yay. mo money mo money.
but i wanted to thank y'all for the book suggestions - last week i checked out two morgan llywelyn books - grania and finn maccool, white teeth by zadie smith and the forest by edward rutherfurd. i started with grania and then the forest, both of which i enjoyed immensely. both historical fiction dealing with the british isles in some way, and both included the defeat of the spanish armada from different perspectives, neither of them really spanish or english. grania tells the story of grace o'malley, a fifteenth-century irishwoman who grew up with her father's love of the sea and became a sea trader and pirate in her own right and once even went to england to face elizabeth herself. and the forest like any good rutherfurd book is a tale of a thousand years, of the new forest in southern england from 1000-something until 2000, tracing the lines and stories of some fictional and some partly fictionalized families as they weave in and out of british history. it's funny, taking such a wide perspective on these individual stories seems to give each of them less weight... the story of one woman's life and trial is captivating on its own but leaves only a family memory of blood feud. and little physical things last - the ancient wooden cross that was brought from the holy land at the start of the last millennium, puckle's old, fantastically carved bed, the seagull family's chinless profile. and people forget things that seem important to their ancestors. ...it's not riveting reading, but it's very good and satisfying on a storytelling level and all.
just finished white teeth today (which, btw, baraka, i picked up instead of on beauty just because it was paperback which is easier to read lying in bed with a sleeping baby and sleeping husband)... honestly it took me the first third or so of the book to get into it, and then it began striking me as brilliant - she was so young, younger than i am now, when she wrote it, and yet she had such vision, to see between classes, between generations, between boys and girls. okay, so it's just one view, and it's what blurbs like to call "irreverent" - she mocks gently, sometimes fiercely, all of her characters and their respective religious or otherwise ideologies (like a whole section where she quotes from islamic leaflets on the nine acts that invalidate fasting, for example, which is the sort of thing i've taken very seriously in my time, i mean, one does like to know what the scholars say could break their fast, haina?), their cultures, their personal yearnings, and yet somehow makes their humanity (well, for some of them) beautiful, maybe even respectable. a very postmodern sort of novel. it struck me, reading, that it wouldn't be possible to write such an interesting story about the muslim community in america, or at least the one that i know. it's such a different ballgame, different stadium altogether, in britain. i have had a story i've tried to write about, well, being a young practicing muslim woman in america between two cultures, and reading white teeth just made the whole story sort of slither away in shame... smith writes between like twenty cultures, and touches on things i would never touch on, adeptly, with humor. humoUr, sorry. again i wonder if it's even possible for me to write from my own experience in any way and produce something the masses might find enjoyable reading. i'm afraid it's all rather boring... but i have to try, because if i can't write, i can't do anything, i'm nobody, just hubby's wife, musa's mother, ammi and abbu's daughter, and it's not nothing to be something to somebody else but isn't it what all us womenfolk of a particular ilk are fighting for, the ability to be somebody in and of ourselves...
wow, random. so, next and last of this batch is finn maccool which i am sure i'll enjoy greatly. want to read more of the irish historical fiction. but i will also pick up on beauty and maybe some other more "literary" or "contemporary" shtuff. a suitable boy, that's one i've wanted to read for a while. i still welcome any more suggestions any of y'all might have...
now i have to get upstairs, because i have some roasting vegetables (taters, onions and carrots in garlic and butter and rosemary oil) in the oven, and hubby is making some sort of jerk chicken, and i am hungry! oh, and i finished my article somewhere in the paragraph where i was writing about the forest. yay. mo money mo money.
posted by Ayesha | 12:29 PM
3 Comments:
pllleeease remind me i have to read a suitable boy and any number of wonderful books. when, when, i say?
Suggestion for BOOKS
I was'nt going to write anything about the books until yesterday Khawar Saheb asked me, "Do your children read your books?"
And I told him no and also that children read different matterial than ours, an age difference. But then I rmembered THERE IS ONLY ONE BOOK I SUGGESTED TO AYESHA TO READ. I go to Maryland and ask her Ayesha did you read "Road to Makkah"? and frequently the answer was in the negative.
Asad, rahemahullah, has written it in such an unusual way that only a writer/journalist can write and that is my second reason for recommending.
Well, Ayesha Gurriya?
lol, okay okay i will read that book next inshallah! i promise! is it at home in NC? i think you might have taken it back with you. either way i will have it next week so iwill read it inshallah! and i will write about it too.
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