Let me be the first...

[Norma]

I don't know what happened to the old forums, but I'm glad to be here and I hope everyone else trickles in at a steady pace.

Hmm...an off-topic topic...how about...

Anyone read any good books lately? I just finished "The Bonesetter's Daughter" by Amy Tan. I'm about halfway through "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy. (For about the tenth time. )

 

[Maria_Aya]

Stragling for months with Albert's Hurani "History of Arab nations"
Its a history book, full of dates, names etc and I hate hate history!!!
But everything for oriental dance lol

Maria Aya

 

[Demelza]

i just finished Queen Noor's Autobiography - 'Leap of faith'.... It was a good read. D x

ps. now I'm reading a bood called 'A Culture of Desert survival' (Bedouin Proverbs from the Sinai and Negev - by Clinton Bailey). The author gave the first printed copy to a Sheikh in Sinai who helped him with info on the proverbs, and as a gift, the sheikh gave it to me cos he couldn't read !! Its such a nice book - with a written explanation of each proverb.

I like books by Naguib Mahfouz (winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature) - they're about the only 'novels' that I've really enjoyed. Try 'Midaq Alley' - my favourite......it's basically a rich account of a back street in a poor quarter of Cairo in 1947, about the life of a young girl who becomes a prostitute!!

Also 'Palace Walk' by Naguib Mahfouz - the first part of a Trilogy, the story of a twentiety century Egypt, set in the old quarter of Cairo - a sweeping family saga crossing three generations.

Demelza xxx

 

[Zurah]

I love book discussions. Let's see, I just finished the sixth Harry Potter book (my brother saw me put it in my weekend bag when I was packing for a trip and said: why on earth are you taking a dictionary w/you?). Now I've started re-reading the first volume of Anaïs Nin's diary. One of these days I'm going to find that my to-read pile has grown as tall as me, as I have less and less time to catch up

For those bellydancers who can read Spanish and are interested in Ancient Egyptian themes, there's an author and amateur Egyptologist you might like: his name's Terenci Moix and he wrote several books set in that period of history... check out and 'El Arpista Ciego', set right after Tutankhamon's ascent to the throne, and 'No Digas Que Fue Un Sueño', a recreation of the last days of Cleopatra's reign.

 

[Shanazel]

I have to slip in here with the highly unintellectual but always delightful Hercule Poirot's Casebook by Agatha Christie. I have been reading The Mists of Avalon and The Mabinogian and needed some nice soothing murder mysteries as a balance.

Zurah, I have been reading Isabel Allende's Hija de Fortuna- well, more like painstakingly translating it one paragraph at a time to improve my Spanish. It is slow going, and if I hadn't already read it in English, I'd probably be lost. I translate a page, then check it against the English copy. I don't think the United Nations will be calling me any time soon for a job as a translator.

Demelza, are you Cornish, or did you just collect the name for the Forum? I have always liked the name Demelza, though my husband rejected it as a name for our daughter.

 

[Demelza]

shanazel !

I'm English. My mum happened to be watching Poldark (is that what it's called ? - ).....at the time of her pregnancy with me. It's funny - there were 4 'Demelza's in my class at school !!

 

[Shanazel]

Ah, the Poldark series. I saw part of it back in the seventies. One of my friends was a devotee and I occasionally went to her house to eat Oreo cookies and watch the show. Oreo cookies were an essential part of the evening's entertainment. As I recall, I basically wanted to slap all the characters on the show and tell them to get real, but that is really very hard for fictional characters to do...

 

[Demelza]

....Actually I've never even seen an episode !! - but there were 4 women in my area who named their babies after the woman in it

 

[Kiadorin]

I am about halfway through Turkey: True Stories. Mostly a good read so far, but a few of the stories have been tough to get through.

 

[Zurah]

LOL, Shanazel... I had a similar experience over a month ago: I decided to try reading my first book in German, a translation of G. G. Márquez 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', then gave up when exams came... I had hoped that the fact I'd read it about five times in Spanish would be of some help, but it was kind of discouraging to have to stop constantly to write down all the new words or look at the dictionary. I had to try, anyway... when I was taking English classes, I found that reading books I enjoyed was extremely helpful. Let us know how it goes with Spanish.

 

[Marisha25]

I just finished reading Mineko Iwasaki's memoirs "Geisha: A Life" and Liza Dalby's "Geisha" . These books are beatiful counterpoints to the fictional Arthur Golden's book "Memoirs of a Geisha" that clear up a lot of things that Mr. Golden got confused. Now every time I hear that oriental dance is dying/changing in the wrong direction/is plain misunderstood I think of geisha's and how misunderstood their craft is. "Geisha" means "a person of art"! and so many people think that they are courtesans! Liza Dalby's book is amazing since she was the only American/Western woman to ever become a geisha, and since Ms. Dalby is an antropologist, I definitely appreciated the scholarly aspects of her work.

 

[Shanazel]

I read Hundred Years of Solitude so long ago that I've forgotten the plot. I also read his book, Love in the Time of Cholera, which I thought was very good. I wonder if I can find Dr. Seuss in Espanol? The Sneetches is one of my all time favorite books (Now the Star Belly Sneetches had bellies with Stars, but the Plain Belly Sneetches had none upon thars... do you suppose there is a metaphor for belly dancing there somewhere? Now Style A belly dancers thought their bellies had stars and that other style dancers had none upon thars...)

 

[Sara]

I'm in the middle of Pride and Prejudice for the 100th time, and The Secret Garden, and Flase Dawn; My life as a Gypsy women in slovakia.

I love Cornwall- seen Poldark loads of time even been and have a home where they filmed it. Beautiful place.

 

[slinks]

I'm reading The Clan of the Cave Bear "Earths Children" series by Jean M Auel.... for about the 17th time, I've been reading them since 1989 I just can't seem to put them down lol.... I've even started reading the first book as soon as I've finished the last !! I just love it...

But I have read other books they I enjoy re-reading too.

 

[Inanna]

I'm going to have to check out some of these books. I'm always looking for something new to read

Right now I am reading a book called Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. Great book so far, I have a hard time putting it down. Once I finish up with this book I plan on reading Neuromancer by William Gibson.

 

[Viv]

Unfortunately most of my reading list is W.O.A....waiting on author. I just finished Gorge R.R. Martin's A Feast of Crows. The guys my mom used to work with had gotten her hooked on his books, she in turn got me hooked and I got my dad hooked. Wonderful writing!! The four books out right now are all around 700+ pages and when you get to the end you are just counting days until the next book in the series comes out.
I suppose I ought to slog through the lastest Robert Jordan Wheel of Time book. I started reading those when I was pregnant with my now 13 year old daughter. One of those series where the books started out really good but have become a chore to read anymore due to how much time passes between books. However I've invested this long int he silly things, ought to actually see the series to the end...LOL!

 

[Demelza]

Moomin books ! x

 

[Zahiraah]

Let's see, I just finished the sixth Harry Potter book

Me too ^_^. Horrible book I must say, not that I mean that it is lousy, it's just tragic... I cried many times, I just wasn't prepared for this person's death O_O. I've got a question for you. In my book there were 10-15 pages in the beginning which were also in the end and marked with those page numbers and after these pages the first chapters came. Was this on purpose or was it just something wrong with my book?

 

[Zurah]

I know Zaahirah! I was kinda shocked too, it was so sad. Not long ago I read Mineko Iwasaki's book too, and I was so glad I did... not to say I didn't enjoy Arthur Golden's book, but I had trouble believing some of the stuff he wrote about Sayuri's life as a geisha... that mizuage thing in particular as he described it really creeped me out. I too am reminded of a lot of the things I read about in this forum's discussions when I think about geishas now.

 

[Michelle]

haha... you read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" five times? Okay, you beat me.... that is one of my all-time favorite books and I have read it 3 times, in both English and Spanish...Shanazel, she's right, keep trying because the more you read, the easier it becomes.