Links to love on this online webbed world

My buddy S and I stand still for a moment during our hanging-out session with Anjum, early this year. Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

I keep bookmarking websites and then not doing anything with them, so perhaps I should share them with you all. Here are some stops I've made on the internet lately [apologies for not giving credit where it's due; I always forget how I initially came across such links]:

- Hamza's photographs on flickr [He messaged me to say he enjoyed my Zaytuna photos, which is how I found his photos in turn.]
- Archived photos on the Muslim Cultures weblog
- The Olive Ream's photos at Over a Mile

- Google Reader, you make my weblog-surfing so much more efficient!
- The Bravia paint ad: So many colors! ROCKING.
- Beautiful poetry by Murtaza Danish [Check Coffee in Times of War]

- Seeing the downside of 'cause celebs'
- For my fellow bookworms: Librarian Avengers [Their weblog description on ReviewMe.com says: Librarians need a blog to avenge their low pay and appalling working conditions. This is that blog. With jokes.]
- flickr photoset: The Vicissitudes of Moi, Moi, Moi

- Reading up on Tin-Tin ("billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles!")
- Juan Mann and his "free hugs" campaign
- "We are here": Mission schoolkids urge grownups to set a good example

- Where the hell is Matt?
- I'm Hip, I'm With it! - How To Talk Like Sumana Harihareswara

- Rock, Paper, Scissors: Reffing the RPS state championship is no job for the nervous
- Four Steps to a More Meaningful, Less Commercialized Holiday — with Kids [No, I don't have kids of my own, in case any of you were confused about that]

- One of the most talented people I don't know, though I've seen videos of her performances, years ago while in college: Anna Deavere Smith (1, 2, 3)
[Check out Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 the play in book format, as well as the film.]

* Some weblog posts I've especially loved reading lately:
- Brimful - most of all, when snowflakes fall and inarticulate speech of the heart
- One Female Canuck - Rules for Life
- HijabMan - Bio Data Construction For Dummies (Men's edition)
- BrooklynBrown - What You Should Do When There Is A Death In Your Friend's Family
- And my favorite: Chai's post entitled Magical Nights, Magical Connections. In all the weeks (months) I attended the Wednesday evening meditations, I was never able to articulate the beauty of it through writing as Chai managed to do so well after the single evening she attended with me last week.

HijabMan.com is back!

Our favorite, funny balloon-maker and t-shirt seller is back, and better than ever. Check out the newly-relaunched HijabMan.com for all sorts of good stuff, including his gorgeous photos, of which he explains:

I’m not a photographer nor am I a journalist trained to seek out interesting subjects and present them neatly labeled and interpreted. My only explanations are that 1. I’ve been living my life in freeze frames since the age of 12, and 2. I love beautiful things. I am just a Muslim who travels, studies, and sells funky t-shirts along the way. When the opportunities presented themselves, I captured the faces that touched me. I love to witness the reflection of the Divine in all that I experience; I love to make you a witness by posting these photos.

I know HijabMan personally, so when he says he's aiming to spread "a message of consciousness, of justice, of living a life free of people and institutions that exploit others," you can be sure he is indeed working on those goals. Also, you should buy his t-shirts.

Meanwhile, I'm highly amused that, over at HijabMan.com, this little ol' weblog of mine is linked right smack in between Khaled Abou El Fadl and Tariq Ramadan's respective websites. Wow, now I really gotta get all smart and intellectual.

The Soul Behind the Music: Enlightened, but still Outlandish

The Danish group Outlandish is one of my favorite music bands, so I was delighted to recently find in my inbox a Divanee Magazine interview with Waqas Qadri. Qadri is ethnically Pakistani; the other two band members are ethnically Moroccan and Cuban/Honduran.

From the Outlandish website:

We live in times when political positions are becoming polarized and cultures are considered fenced-in entities that cannot be united. The world is often viewed through a faulty prism that divides "us" from "them." That’s why it is such a tension-breaker when someone takes the time and uses their talent to remind us that we are all human beings. That the blood running through your veins is not significantly different from the blood that flows through your neighbor’s body, even though you may not share the same social status, political views, religious conviction or hail from the same latitude or longitude. This is where Outlandish enters the picture.

The story of Outlandish is an uplifting tale about three friends’ common adventure, which starts in the youth clubs and soccer fields of the western Copenhagen suburbs... At the same time, Outlandish is the story of a band that insists on the vantage point called "the world we live in," and through subjective, grass-root musical narratives, tries make a difference.

In my favorite part of the Divanee interview, Qadri says:

The other artists would take a break beat and sample from Marvin Gaye or old jazz . The samples often came from records their parents used to listen to. So I went home and went through my parents’ record collection and I couldn’t find Marvin Gaye and other artists like that. All I could find was Mehdi Hassan or Lata Mangeshkar. I talked to Isam and Lenny, and Isam found some Arabic and Lenny had de Mercedes Sosa. So we said, ‘What the heck, let’s try this’ and decided to put it all together. We picked up a record and took it to the studio. The producer was like, ‘What the hell are you doing? You can’t mix hip hop with Asian music. Or Latin music. That won’t work; bring me some Stevie Wonder or something like that.’

I honor the place in you, of love, of light, of truth

Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

A recent edition of the San Francisco Chronicle contained an article I read with interest. FINDING MY RELIGION: Nipun and Guri Mehta talk about their $1-a-day pilgrimage through India is an interview with two people I am blessed to know, although it's been months since I've seen them in person.

I've mentioned Nipun and Guri (and Viral and Mark and Dipti) in passing before, describing them as people who are so beautifully inspiring on a daily basis that my words will never do them justice. I first met them all in November 2004, when - through an introduction from my friend SS - the crazy crackstabber, Mark, invited me to a Wednesday evening meditation at the home of Nipun and Viral's parents in the South Bay. Nearly every Wednesday evening over the next five, six months, I regularly drove two hours from the Sacramento area to the South Bay, where I sat on the floor of a Silicon Valley living room with dozens of other people from all walks of life, cross-legged, eyes closed, in silence for an hour. After that, I would participate in an hour-long roundtable sharing of thoughts with the others, gratefully accept a homecooked vegetarian meal from Nipun's mother, and then hit the road for the hour-long drive home to the East Bay.

Those few hours spent in the company of such conscious individuals are amongst the most peaceful I can remember. Time and again, I have started writing about them, only to discard my writing, leaving it half-finished. It's true, I'll never be able to suitably articulate their spirit of service, their compassion, the beauty of these people I've met through the Wednesday evenings. I'll try again soon, though, because everyone should be lucky to know people even half as beautiful as these.

From the SF Chronicle article:

There's a question posted on your personal Web site: "Do you have a spiritual teacher?" Your answer to that was, "Yes, you." Is it sometimes a struggle to see everyone as your teacher?

Nipun: I try to see life with reverence -- all life. When we were walking, we learned a lot of things. We learned to see the goodness in everybody, to try to learn from everybody and everything, even if it's just a tree. I mean, when you're walking and it's really hot, and you see a tree and you say, "Wow!" -- it's just there giving shade to you selflessly!

So I try to approach everything with humility. You never know what can teach you spiritual lessons you need to learn.

Nipun's brother, Viral, once gave a talk that, to me, sums up the spirit of CharityFocus and the people who are, in various ways, affiliated with it:

Namaste -- in India when we meet and greet, we say Namaste, and Ram Dass gives a beautiful definition: Namaste means I honor the place in you, where the entire universe resides. I honor the place in you, of love, of light, of truth. I honor that place in you, where if you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.

The Road to Guantanamo

[Riz Ahmed, Farhad Harun and Arfan Usman star as the "Tipton Three" in Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross’ THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO. Photos courtesy of Roadside Attractions.]

Everyone needs to go see The Road to Guantanamo, about the Tipton Three at Guantanamo Bay.

Special thanks to 2Scoops, who first brought the film to my attention weeks (months?) ago, and to my sister's friend S, who told us about the free screening at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive, where we saw The Road to Guantanamo early last week.

To get you through the day: Stories from Guantanamo

I originally shared the following Washington Post article (via Sepia Mutiny) with selective friends/family through email last week, and just realized that others might be interested in reading this as well. As I mentioned in my email, I first read this because I'm Pukhtun myself. But this is a moving and beautifully written account, and a thought-provoking one, so check it when you get a chance - the Guantanamo diary of a Pukhtun law student, by Mahvish Khan.

Ali Shah Mousovi is standing at attention at the far end of the room, his leg chained to the floor. His expression is wary, but when he sees me in my traditional embroidered shawl from Peshawar, he breaks into a smile. Later, he'll tell me that I resemble his younger sister, and that for a split second he mistook me for her.
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I don't know exactly what I had expected coming to Guantanamo Bay, but it wasn't this weary, sorrowful man. The government says he is a terrorist and a monster, but when I look at him, I see simply what he says he is -- a physician who wanted to build a clinic in his native land.
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As an American, I felt the pain of Sept. 11, and I understood the need to invade Afghanistan and destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But I also felt the suffering of the Afghans as their country was bombed. And when hundreds of men were rounded up and thrust into a black hole of detention, many with seemingly no proof that they had any terrorist connections, I felt that my own country had taken a wrong turn.

While writing this post, I came across another heartbreaking article, one I'll have to share with my father the Gardener Extraordinaire: Wilting Dreams At Gitmo - A Detainee Is Denied A Garden, and Hope is the story of an innocent Saudi Arabian prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who digs a garden using spoons.

...He said, "We planted a garden. We have some small plants -- watermelon, peppers, garlic, cantaloupe. No fruit yet. There's a lemon tree about two inches tall, though it's not doing well."

"The guards gave you tools?"

He shook his head.

"Then -- how do you dig?" I was struggling to grasp this.

"Spoons," he said. "And a mop handle."

The soil in Camp Iguana is dry and brittle as flint. And I've seen the spoons they give our clients.

"But the spoons are plastic -- aren't they?"

Saddiq nodded. "At night we poured water on the ground. In the morning, we pounded it with the mop handle and scratched it with the spoons. You can loosen about this much." He held his thumb and forefinger about a half-inch apart. "The next day, we did it again. And so on until we had a bed for planting." He shrugged. "We have lots of time, here."
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For all that, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things." Maybe the History of Guantanamo will have a few uplifting footnotes. America denied them seeds and trowels and they created life anyway. We tried to withhold beauty, but from the grim earth of Guantanamo they scratched a few square meters of garden -- with spoons. Guantanamo is ugly, but man's instinct for beauty lives deep down things.

Do you guys even check out the links I recommend? (Just checkin')

I recommend you all take a minute (or ten, if you're slow) to read Sri's post, March at Harbor. I read it yesterday morning, and it made me want to cry at the depth of human misery - and laugh at the strength of the human spirit.

Make some time to read through Sri's archives. And the archives over at his older journal. All of them. Hey, that's what I did one afternoon over a year ago, while I was chillin' at my hella boring job in downtown Sacramento. So you can, too. What, you think you're too good? Don't make me stab you. Get to it.

Photo gallery

Just got an email from a listerve I’m on, about how a recent discovery in The Birmingham News archives led to the publication of unseen photographs tracing the progress of the civil rights movement through Birmingham.

The woman who sent the email explained:

The Birmingham News recently discovered a trove of unpublished photos from the early days of the Civil Rights era, and has put up a special section of it on their website to let us all have a look. There is a lot to go through, I’ve only gotten a partial look thus far, but some of these are absolutely amazing. They bring to life both the painful reality of what that generation faced and the incredible bravery of the civil rights workers and their supporters.

Go see.

Random links for your mid-weekend amusement

[All links via Kottke.]

one. Jonathan Rauch's March2003 article, Caring for Your Introvert:

Introverts are not necessarily shy. Shy people are anxious or frightened or self-excoriating in social settings; introverts generally are not. Introverts are also not misanthropic, though some of us do go along with Sartre as far as to say "Hell is other people at breakfast." Rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring.

two. Jonathan Rauch's February2006 interview with The Atlantic Monthly, which had originally published the previous piece. On the topic of conversation flow and social chit-chat, he says:

I have no gift for that. I have to think about what to say next, and sometimes I can't think fast enough and end up saying something stupid. Or sometimes I just come up dry and the conversation kind of ends for while until I can think of another topic. This is why it's work for me. It takes positive cognition on my part.

three. And this is totally my favorite: A weblog entitled Under Odysseus, ostensibly penned by Eurylochus, a Greek dude who seems to be Odysseus' administrative assistant or something during the Trojan War.

Check this:

Achilles always acts like that when things get serious. He invariably gets more serious. Achilles is the kind of guy that, if you throw him a ball, will dive into the dust to catch it, even if a dive isn't necessary. He's got the kind of attitude that would just make him look like an idiot if he weren't so goddamned skilled. Yet, Achilles is overflowing with skills, and the girls are really into him and his badass attitude. All of us guys simultaneously resent him and wish we were him.

Anyway, after a last hardy slap from Agamemnon, Odysseus, wearing the biggest shit-eating grin I have ever seen on his face, struts over to me.

"Eurylochus, we've got a lot of work to do, my boy." He beams in an annoyingly General-like fashion.

Trying to ignore the "my boy", I innocently and somewhat militarily asked, "What's that regarding, General?"

At this, Odysseus paused. By the look on his face, I thought that he was going to drop the authoritarian tone, but then he sort of shakes that off, and in an even more commanding voice, he belts: "Eurylochus, we are going to build a wooden horse, a great wooden horse that is going to enable us to get within the walls of Troy."

Fucking Zeus, I almost want to laugh, but I say something like: "Oh, like the thing that we discussed last..."

and this:

This morning, I ran into Elpenor on the way to Odysseus' tent. Actually, he sort of ran into me. He must have known where I was headed. That sorry guy is such a kiss-ass.

I was just delivering some supply papers, and as I didn't feel like hiking across the encampment, I gave them to him. I told him that they were very sensitive, and that he shouldn't stop or talk to anyone on the way. This made Elpenor perk up like a homely girl asked to dance. After accepting the papers in an exaggerated military form, he strutted off like he was the head of some goddamned parade. Although I was just being lazy, it kind of made me feel like I had done a good deed.

Freakin' hilarious, mon.

Reason #47382472 why I freakin' LOVE San Francisco

Via Hypnagogica (and also Superhero Journal, within just a couple minutes of each other), here are some photos to make you smile:

Members of the Pillow Fight Club were out in full force in San Francisco at 6pm on Valentine's Day.

Background here and here.

Freakin' awesome, man.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

Sorry, my wannabe English/Comparative Literature-major tendencies wouldn't let me bypass all this drama without making use of such an obvious pun. Apparently, I'm not the only one.

Truthfully though, I'm damn tired of the drama - of the emails, the articles, the conversations with friends regarding this mass chaos and fury all over the world. Also truthfully, I'm pissed off at Muslims who feel that engaging in such acts of violence (hurling gasoline bombs? smashing windshields? throwing missiles? Thanks, buddies, you're really helping yourself and the rest of us look good) is justifiable. Calm the hell DOWN, people.

[For those of you who've been living under a rock lately, check this, there's a wikipedia entry already, with a description of the cartoons in question here.]

So, not only because I'm tired of it all, but also because I'm not smart, analytical, and articulate enough to write up a real deal post on this topic, I'm sending you off with links yet again. Many of the weblogs I regularly frequent have already written about this, so go visit.

- Basit's post is my favorite, because I'm feeling quite desensitized myself

- Yaser's post is succint and to the point, something I always find admirable about him because I don't have that quality, sadly

- Abhi at Sepia Mutiny: The Danish cartoon controversy: A contrast in protests

- Baraka at Truth&Beauty: Merry Go Round

- Safiyyah: Stupid Cartoons, Even Stupider Reaction

And for you slackers who are too lazy to click over to the weblogs I highlighted, here's a beautifully apposite Rumi poem that Baraka appended to her abovementioned post:

When you see the face of anger
look behind it
and you will see the face of pride.
Bring anger and pride
under your feet, turn them into a ladder
and climb higher.
There is no peace until you become
their master.
Let go of anger, it may taste sweet
but it kills.
Don't become its victim
you need humility to climb to freedom.

-Rumi

Off you go, children. Real post(s!) coming soon.

Smile on your brother & sister

Alright, so I know Eid ul Adha is long gone and that I'm addressing this disgustingly late (as usual), but I hope all y'all had a beautiful, blessed one inshaAllah.

Which reminds me, Zahir over at Fall of Icarus had a post highly pertinent to Eid, entitled "This may be blasphemous/haraam but...."

My favorite part:

Sometimes I wish Muslims would speak more anecdotally. Khateebs often need not to dig through books of hadith, tafseer or fiqh for material. Tell us something that moved you, that inspired you and speak with humility--chances are it will move us too.

And Basit had posted something weeks ago that I had meant to make you all read, an entry that made my breath stop - because it was so beautiful and true and well-written - but then I forgot to share, and so I had to dig through his archives to find it again. Go. And while you're there, you should check out his archives, too, because if you're not reading his weblog regularly, you're seriously missing out.

One more! Sister Scorpion has a poignant entry on teaching her 6-year-old daughter about the significance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Well, I know there's a reason to change

Every day brings us closer to spring, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

As the year winds down to a close, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:

Smile on your brother: The tsunami victims who are still struggling to rebuild their lives, the people devastated by the South Asian earthquake, the strangers on the street. These are just a few examples of those whose stories have deeply touched me this year. You can find dozens more, if you take a minute to look around.

I'll put my "heartless bastard" reputation to rest for a moment and admit that this article about building orphanages in Indonesia, post-tsunami made me tear up:

What does $1 pay for in Aceh? someone asked.

"What does $1 buy here?" Alyan asked back.

"Candy!" the kids said in unison.

"In Takengon," Alyan said, "one dollar will pay for three meals for a child."

Her answer drew silence at first. Then one of the children said, "Let's send more."

[You can read more about the orphanage and Give Light at www.givelight.org. Someday I will share my tsunami poem here, if you think you can handle the scrolling involved.]

Please continue praying for the Attari family. And send some prayers for my uncle - my aunt's husband - who passed away recently as well.

May the year 2006 be one of beauty and blessings.

Sense of style

Okay, I promise I'll stop with the links soon and actually give all y'all a real deal post to read, but, for now, lemme just say I'm having way too much fun browsing this website called HEL LOOKS, which has photographs of street fashion from Helsinki, the capital of Finland [via Oh My That's Awesome!]. Shut up, I know I have too much time on my hands.

Umm, no, I don't follow fashion, really [I just do my own weirdly-randomcool thing], but this site is fascinating. Go see! Oh, and the only reason I thought to share this is because there's a hijabi on there, too! And she's a neo-con! In terms of fashion, apparently. She's got too much black goin' on, but I'm 'bout to steal her bag, seriously. And her jacket. Oh wait, I have too much black in my wardrobe, too. Damn.

p.s. I like this kid. And this one. Orange! Oh, and there's one dude who's wearing a sweatshirt with a fat hole in it because he cut out the logo. Right up my alley. I love it. Here's to logo-free clothing. There's one girl who says, "Hair has to be backcombed." That's right! (Or, if you're me, never combed at all.) Also, who wants these boots? And computer keyboard cables as belts! Check the red and black, but all the pink is killing me. Here's a strangely normal kid. And a girl and a guy and another girl rocking a kaffiyeh. Wow, just vow.

One last thing: Finnish people are seriously obsessed with Japan. And tight jeans. What's up with that?

Alright, I'll stop now. I've already gone through fourteen of the twenty pages. Seriously on crack. Which pics are you liking?

An American girl

Is how we pray what makes us American? Or is it the sum of all the other moments in life that we share?

Strangers in this vast network of webs

I love love love the random smallness and coincidences of the online world. That's the beauty of existence.

(p.s. And, yes, cynical Mr. Elysium, I did indeed verify it.)

'Cause if you're not trying to make something better/then as far as I can tell you are just in the way

Hey, kids, how goes it? I'm still around, just trying to find things to do with myself besides chase the sunshine around the house. Somedays, it's just so much easier to uploads photos to Flickr and deal with brusque titles/captions (or none at all) than it is to compose coherent pieces of writing for this joint. But I'm getting to it, don't worry.

Meanwhile, for your personal amusement, I've found an index of mp3s of old TV theme songs [via Kottke]. I haven't listened to them yet - I've just been scrolling through and giggling at the list - but Knight Rider and He-Man are on there, so what more can I say? Let me know how it goes.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I've got two important things I need you to pay attention to (and I know you will, because you are rockstars):

ONE.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005 is Blog Quake Day [via Baraka at Truth & Beauty]. DesiPundit explains:

We request each of you to make a small post about the earthquake, and direct your readers to a suitable avenue for donating to the relief efforts.

Every single dollar contributed, multiplied by the vast numbers of bloggers, will go a long way in helping these people rebuild their lives. Our experience of the last few weeks showed us that, no matter how small our blogs, and no matter how few our readers, the words we write and the way we use our blogs can have far-reaching consequences. We learnt not to underestimate our powers. Let’s now use our powers for good.

A small list of relief organizations is available in DesiPundit's post. You can also directly help relief efforts by buying hella slick tshirts through Chapati Mystery.

Please, please contribute, whether through weblog posts or direct donations or whatever you can do. It would be gorgeously rockstarish of you.

TWO.
A business associate of my father's sent me the following email a couple days ago:

Your father gave me your email address. I spoke with him earlier today about an idea that my women friends & I have been kicking around. We’ve been noticing and discussing how pervasive fear and hatred (especially of other ethnic groups) have become in our society again in the last few years, and how many of the politicians have fed this fear to promote their own agendas. We’d like to do something at least on a local level in our community to stem this tide & help people of all ethnicities to relate to each other as people. Our thought is to start with a group of women in Sacramento. We’d like to invite women from most of the major ethnic groups represented in this area to start a multi-ethnic women’s group. Would you be interested in helping us form such a group?

I know you graduated recently (congratulations, by the way!) and are not up here on a regular basis, but if you’re in the area for other things we can arrange a time to get together that fits your schedule.

I am humbled by the ladies' compassion and decision to engage in some form of active change, and am honored to have been asked to help in any way I can. I replied back with some thoughts, but I'm feeling a distinctive lack of ideas at the moment, mainly because I haven't really sat down and brainstormed yet. I've had plenty of experience with women of color discussion circles and intercultural dialogue and alliance in college, but it's been a few months and I'm worried I may have lost so much of what I learned through such experiences over the past few years.

So I need your help in brainstorming concrete thoughts and ideas regarding mission statement/goals/problem areas or issues that you feel a group such as this must focus on addressing. Anything and everything regarding intercommunity/intercultural relations and dialogue and safe spaces and women and diversity and all that fun stuff. I'm looking at all of you: Guys and girls, Muslims and non-Muslims, and whether or not you identify as "ethnic." Apparently my comment box is seriously on crack, so drop me an email whenever you have any ideas. Help a kid out. I promise I'll write back.

p.s. Once more, don't forget: Blog Quake Day! on the 26th!

EDIT: Looks like my comments work again. I think. Otherwise, try the email. Thanks much.

Hurricane Katrina and disaster relief

My thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by Hurrican Katrina, those who, like cncz and Maitri, are worried for the safety of their family and friends, and for their loved ones' homes and jobs utterly destroyed in the wake of the hurricane.

Maitri, especially, has been writing much about Louisiana, although she has safely evacuated to Houston, from where she has turned her weblog into a "Katrina resource full of neighborhood information, updates from the ground and opinion."

Michael in New Orleans "is providing posts from his refuge in a highrise in the CBD. He has diesel-fueled generators and, amazingly enough, Internet connectivity" [via Anne Central and Looka].

Sunni Sister has some thoughts on both Hurricane Katrina and the nearly 1,000 Shia Muslim pilgrims who died in a stampede in Baghdad just a couple of days ago [via Sister Scorpion].

And wicked_wish has composed an extremely thought-provoking essay entitled "Disjointed thoughts on the socio-economics of disaster" [EDIT: via Saurav at Dark Days Ahead]. Go read.

When you are done, help somehow, if you can. Here is a good place to start.

i promise i will update for reals tonight, so get off me

Blogs for you to go see, so you can take a break from harassing me about my fake hiatus from this place:

Via HijabMan's recommendation of the hilarious Qiyamah Forecast blog, I came across Fall of Icarus and Coming Out Swinging. Awesome writing, mashaAllah. I highly recommend reading the archives.

Get to it, kids. 1, 2, 3, go.

for all my fellow bookworms.

Check this: The 100 favourite fictional characters... as chosen by 100 literary luminaries [via Kottke]

Tin Tin! Dr. Watson! God! Jane Eyre! Paddington Bear! Antonia Shimerda! Anne of Green Gables!

(I think I need to expand my literary collection, is what.)

And, in response: Character witnesses, as chosen by Independent readers

Sidney Carton, Holden Caulfield, Tom Joad, Rebecca de Winter, Jo March, Atticus Finch!, Eeyore!

(Ditto the parenthetical confession above. Good lord, why haven't I read barely any of the other books on this list?)

And: My anti-Hero (because the bad guys are so much more interesting)

Also, because I am now obsessed with the Enjoyment>>Books section of this site:
- Interviews with authors whose books I want to read:

* Nuruddin Farah
* Eric Carle (one of my very favorite authors/illustrators of children's books)
* Asne Seierstad
* Sarah Vowell (a.k.a Violet Incredible!)
* Nadeem Aslam ("Most ordinary Muslims say, 'We just want to get on with our lives. Don't identify us with the fundamentalists.' But it's a luxury. We moderate Muslims have to stand up. As a child I was really frightened of the game Hangman. I was terrified that my not knowing the answer was going to get somebody killed. As a grown-up, I feel that a game of Hangman is being played on an enormous scale in the world, and that sooner or later I'm going to be asked certain questions, and if I don't give the right answer somebody is going to get hurt.")

Plus, an argument: Independent versus Chain bookstores