a blog about a lot of things

A Strangeness in My Mind A Strangeness in my Mind, the latest novel from Orhan Pamuk, is another of the author’s many odes to Istanbul. The novel touches on familiar ground for the writer, not the least of which being the city he grew up in. It also addresses the conflict between secular and religious groups in Turkey, as in his earlier novel Snow. It references heavily on the gap between the rich and the poor as in the novel The Museum of Innocence. Like all of Pamuk’s novels the structure is very postmodern, and the characters regularly address the reader directly. This may be the most overtly religious novel since Snow and while Snow had religion as a central them, the main character was not religious. The main character, Mevlut, who is a boza seller primarily but has a succession of unskilled jobs throughout the novel, is a religious man who worries about problems of a religious nature regularly. Women’s honor is less of a central theme than in The Museum of Inno...

Food is usually linked to memory. This isn’t an original idea and to many people the food that I’ve chosen is barely memorable, just as most people won’t really be able to speak of great cheese sandwiches or fried eggs and not mean a specific meal instead of the entire selection of eggs or sandwiches. Dosa is a simple meal which can be ready in a matter of minutes. I usually explain it as a savoury crepe made of rice and lentil flour. It is served with sambar (a lentil and tamarind stew) and coconut chutney. The best dosa I’ve ever had is at Dosa Mahal in Toronto. It was the first time I’d had dosa in almost two years and that was probably why it remained in my mind as a representation of the best. It’s impossible to untangle the experience of food from the taste only. The taste is linked to history. It’s a common enough trope that even children’s movies like Ratatouille can use the idea that a simple dish which evokes memories of childhood will have deeper and almost spiritua...

Travel Writings – Zurich Cuisine Rösti is considered to be the national dish of Switzerland. It’s a dish which has a lot of similarities with hash browns; as it consists of grated potato fried in a frying pan. It is thought to be highly representative of Swiss German culture in particular (which isn’t really surprising as it consists of potatoes). From my experience with German cuisine thus far, I hadn’t had high hopes for this dish. Traditional German cuisine seems to regard vegetables as an accompaniment to the meat and an accompaniment which needs little attention other than being boiled. I’ve been informed the quality of the meat more than makes up for it, but as I’m vegetarian that’s not really much use to me. It’s rare that I find a national dish that isn’t comprised of meat or fish, so even with little expectation of it being good, it was still a great opportunity. Luckily I was entirely wrong about the link of Swiss German and German cuisine being a liking for tast...

Purity The newest novel by Jonathan Franzen is the kind of novel which an author can only write when previous success has occurred. Without that track record of reliability or quality, the editors would have given the book much greater scrutiny. Purity suffers badly from a lack of editing. The main character is nominally the recent college graduate Purity, nicknamed Pip, though the Julian Assange-like figure of Andreas Wolf steals the spotlight as soon as he appears. The best of the entire novel is set in East Berlin and if more of the focus of the novel was spent on Wolf, it’s possible the novel would have been far more entertaining. The parts with Wolf are not without flaws, however, especially as the character’s repeated stating of his devotion to his mother and love for his past partner, are his motivations begins to seem less plausible as the book goes on. The other main character, Tom Aberrant, an editor at Denver Independent, gives us the most emotional parts ...

Picked from directors who are Latin American or Caribbean by birth or upbringing or film in those countries regularly (at least 3 films in the region). Exceptions will be made for quality film-makers of Latin American or Caribbean descent who film stories in the United States of America or Canada about Latin Americans or Caribbeans. Or perhaps for directors not of Latin American or Caribbean descent or residence but who film about the diaspora. Stories about the children of immigrants in North America counted in a separate section.  To qualify I'm making it that the director has to release an excellent film (in my opinion) during the 21st century and I need to be able to find at least 3 excellent reference films. Same criteria as the previous lists.  13. Jose Padilha -   Brazil Directing Timespan : 2002- Present Reference Films: Bus 174(2002); Tropa de Elite (2007); Secrets of the Tribe (2010) 12. Pablo Trapero -   Argentina Dir...

Midnight’s children Midnight’s Children immediately reminds the reader of two other novels upon reading, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. These are two of the major novels of twentieth century literature and foundation works of the genre of magical realism. Midnight’s Children falls comfortably into the same category of importance as these novels. As well as magical realism Midnight’s Children also encompasses several other literary modes such historical fiction and is considered an allegorical novel and a postcolonial novel. Despite the complexity of categorizing, the book itself is not difficult to read. The language and style which Rusdie employs provide an energy which powers the entire story. The allegory is that of the events in India leading up to independence and what follows after. The narrator of the book is Saleem Sinai who was born at the moment India gained independence on August 15 th 1947. He and ot...

Kitchen Confidential is the book that catapulted Anthony Bourdain into the world of popular acclaim. It is the book that enabled him to become a television show host which ironically meant that he is no longer a chef. Considering the book is all about life as a chef, it’s a bit strange Bourdain is no longer one. The book showcases the author’s love for food and the first part of the book revolves around the realization that ‘food is important’. The first time he ate an oyster is described as a seminal event in his life and in the author’s opinion, is when he took his first steps towards becoming a man. That love for the best ingredients also shows up in the book as a series of warnings. He famously warns against eating fish on Monday since the fish has been around all weekend. He also tells of some of the cooking practices in the restaurants he has worked in, such as steak being cooked hours before and only re-warmed with sauce before actually going to a customer. A ...