The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)

I finished reading “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold last night. I came across this book a number of times throughout the past years, and I thought it would be an interesting read, so it’s been on my to-read list for a while, the only thing that made me get around to reading it faster is that Peter Jackson is currently working on making a movie based on this book, and so I wanted to read the book before the movie was released.

The novel tells the story of Susie, a murdered 14 year old girl who recalls what happened to her from Heaven, and follows how the incident affects her family and those around her, as well as the different connections that are built between them.

I liked the approach to this book and how the narrator is the murdered girl, looking down from heaven and telling the events as she sees them in detail.

Another idea I really liked in this book is the concept of heaven described in it: Heaven isn’t a place that is the same for everyone, it’s a place that is personalized for every person according to their ever-changing dreams, wishes and imaginations.

I can pretty much see how the movie will turn out and I can’t wait to see it and see the different choices Peter Jackson will make while bringing it to film.

There are places where it feels a bit stretched out and you might start to lose some interest, but it quickly tries to catch up, and it’s a pretty good and interesting read all in all.

If you’re interested in checking it out, you can buy it here.

Israel’s Oppressive Apartheid Regime

“We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we developed two judicial systems: one – progressive, liberal – in Israel; and the other – cruel, injurious – in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day.”

— Michael Ben-Yair (Israeli’s Attorney-General 1993-1996), The War’s Seventh Day; Ha’aretz, 3 March 2002.

[Via: Lawrence Of Cyberia]

Universal Red Blood Cells

An international team of academic and industry scientists has come up with a feasible way of making universal red blood cells that are stripped of their blood type. The hope is that it can be developed into a viable way of relieving blood bank shortages.

Compatibility of blood group is a bit complicated and depends on who is giving and who is receiving. If a person receives blood of a type that is not compatible with their own, there is a risk their immune system will attack it, destroying the red blood cells, producing kidney failure, and the person could die.

People with blood type “O” are considered universal donors, able to give blood to people from all other blood types, but it’s only normal that blood banks and hospitals sometimes run short of this type of blood, plus it’s not always easy to find blood of the needed type, so it’s great that this new discovery has come along to avoid this problem and help save more people’s lives.

The team’s next step is to start clinical trials to test the method’s treatment safety and efficiency. I hope all goes well and that this method is spread all over the world to save life.

[Source: Medical News Today]

The Secret Life Of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)

Yesterday I finished reading “The Secret Life Of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd. I’d picked the book up from the Waterstone’s in Manchester’s Trafford Centre a few months ago while I was shopping for books there, and I remembered hearing about it being a good read somewhere, most probably on a friend’s blog.

The book follows the story of 14-year-old Lily Owens, neglected by her father, isolated on their Georgia peach farm, and the trip she takes with her nanny Rosaleen in search of the truth about her mother, ending up in Tiburon South Carolina with three black beekeeping sisters.
The events take place in 1964, so all the racial tensions and the problems surrounding the Civil Rights Act are going on in the backdrop of the story.

It’s a great book, well written and narrated, that I truly enjoyed reading and that I went through really quickly. What got to me the most, although I guess it’s not the main objective of the book, is the passion surrounding beekeeping, and it got me wishing I could venture into beekeeping at some point in my life.

I really recommend this book, it’s light and a pleasure to read.
If you’re interested in checking it out, you can buy it here.

Hala Hala Jordan

After a hectic period of preparation, we finally made it to the Tunis-Carthage airport yesterday all three of us, to catch our flight to Amman, Jordan.

The flight was even later than usual, an hour and a half late actually, but this time to be honest it wasn’t Royal Jordanian’s fault, it was because of a group of old people who were going to Saudi Arabia for an Omra and were transiting through Amman, and who chose to hang around until the last minute to check-in.

Once on-board, we found absolute chaos; never in my life have I seen such chaos on a plane because of seat numbers; again because of the Omra group who were just sitting anywhere they pleased; It took over an hour to just get everyone seated. Personally, I wouldn’t have been amazed if any of the cabin crew went to the back of the plane and slit their wrists open; In their position I’m sure I’d have beaten up a person or two.

This of course was Adam’s first flight, and as much as we wanted it to be memorable (mostly for us I guess, I think he’s still too young to remember), we were also hoping he would sleep throughout the whole thing, but of course that was in our dreams and went out the door as soon as the plane took off, still to be honest he was a lot better and quieter than my worst case scenario.

We got to Amman at around 9PM, and we didn’t get to see much on the drive home, even though we saw hints of new buildings here and there on the way, but we were too tired to really look. I can’t wait to go out and take a spin around Amman, see what’s new, and also visit the old places I love.

I have to say that I really miss Amman, and it’s always a pleasure to be back here.
I’ll keep you updated with my doings and whereabouts, and post photos whenever I can.

Small Talk, Foreplay And Conversations

Isn’t it weird that whenever we need to talk to someone about something, we can’t simply just dive into the subject and start asking whatever we have to ask or saying whatever we have to say, we always have to start off with some small talk, a set of meaningless questions and answers that are just for the sake of making a little pre-conversation.
Is it because we think it’s rude to just jump into a certain subject?
Or is it because we want to set the mood before we launch a discussion?
Or is it because we don’t actually know how to start?

Personally, I think small talk is a waste of time, if you have something in mind, just stop beating around the bush, and go straight to it, it’ll save you both time and effort, and will win you more time talking about what you really want to talk about.

Small talk, I think, should be reserved for those awkward moments when you’re with someone and you have nothing to say to them, they have nothing to say to you, and there’s this haunting silence hanging above you; that’s when it could be considered somehow useful.

In the end, this interesting thought crossed my mind, and well I sort of liked it, so I thought I’d share it with you in the form of a quote (Yeah I’m quoting my thoughts now, I know…):

“Small talk is the foreplay of a conversation, only it doesn’t feel anywhere as good.”

True, don’t you think?

Anyway, just to make things clear: foreplay good, small talk bad, or maybe not bad as in bad, but just a waste of time.

Things It Takes Most Of Us 50 Years To Learn

I just came across a list of 16 things it takes most of us 50 years to learn; the ones I liked the most are the following:

– There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is: age 11.

– There is a very fine line between “hobby” and “mental illness.”

– People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

– If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings.”

– No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.

A Long Way Down (Nick Hornby)

This weekend I finished reading “A Long Way Down” by Nick Hornby. As with the other Nick Hornby books I read, this one was a delight as well, a light read, humorous and full of pop culture references.
High Fidelity is still my favourite book by him, and also my favourite movie based on one of his books, but this one isn’t far behind.

The story goes as follows: On New Year’s Eve, four people decide to commit suicide by jumping off the roof of a London tower block. By coincidence, they end up all four on the roof of the same tower block, and instead they form a sort of implicit pact to keep each other going on.

It’s not overly serious and neither is it a trip towards an unrealistic happy ending, it’s pretty realistic and tells life the way it is.
I really liked the way the four characters narrated the story from their different points of view, also giving you an insight into their respective personalities, I have to say it’s what I enjoyed most about the book.

I did get a feeling that the ending was a bit abrupt, and that it could go on a bit longer, but then others might have felt that it was stretched a bit; in the end, I guess it just simulated the pace of life events, bringing you close to an image of how the character’s lives would go on, and letting you imagine the rest, which I think is a good way to do it.

I ran across this book a number of times before I decided to buy it, I don’t know, I guess I just didn’t imagine what the story would turn out like at first, but well, it turned out to be quite a good read after all, and if you would like a light book to go through, and you have already read “High Fidelity”, then this book could be a good option for you.

Things I Miss From My Childhood In Tunisia

I miss, oh do I miss:

– The 5 millime biscuits we used to eat so much of.
– The Stil yogurts we used to shake, bite a hole in and drink.
– The cheap granite (lemon & strawberry) ice cream.
– The collectable cards (tsawer) and marbles (bees) we used to play with and collect.
– The small bunny-bunny firecrackers.
– The soccer matches in the middle of the neighbourhood.
– The hours of watching kaaboul, baseet, sasuki and the other cartoons.
– The trees we used to climb up.
– The times we were almost caught for doing something naughty but were able to run away.
– The way we used to sneak into strangers’ weddings to get some sweets and then leave before getting caught.
– The way we used to get out of being forced to take a nap after lunch in the summertime.
– The long summer days spent at the beach and the sandwiches we eat there peppered with sand.
– The afternoon sandwiches made with whatever we found around that was edible.

Those and so many other things I miss from my childhood in Tunisia, but most of all, I miss that beautiful and pure innocence of childhood, the freedom and irresponsibility.
Oh what beautiful days those were. I wish I could revisit them just for a day.

The Inheritance Of Dead Ideas

It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.

— Henrik Ibsen

It’s so true…
We carry so much useless and unwanted baggage that is passed on to us from the previous generations, and implicitly it just weighs us down, stifles our chances to be creative and imposes illogical limits on our lives, choices and freedom.
It is our responsibility to not pass any of that to our children and to really give them a clean slate on which they can freely draw out their lives.