This Curiously Mysterious Life

Tucson Weather Today

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A Thought To Contemplate

"Do not cut your bodies for the dead
or put tattoo marks on yourselves.
I am the LORD."
--Leviticus 19:28

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What Can One Believe?

West Valley City Mayor Mike Winder says he will accept a proposed reprimand from his city council for writing news stories for the Deseret News and KSL.com web site under a false name.

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Book Review in the New Yorker . . .

Sarmada: The Essential Novel of the Syrian Spring is a book written by Fadi Azzam, an author from Syria. It was supposed to be available from Amazon.com in November, 2011 but I'm not sure if that's true.

From the review (link above) I am tempted to purchase this book, but since I have so often been misled by puffed-up reviews in the past I have decided to wait until I hear from someone I know and trust before investing in it.

Here is a short excerpt from the review:

One morning, the man’s widow Farida has a mystical dream, and when she wakes up, she walks over to her mother-in-law and slits her breasts with a razor, pouring the spurting grief milk into several bottles. Later she uses it in sweets, and feeds them to the villagers, who are all suffering from a curse of melancholia after the death of the woman’s son. Upon eating the desserts, they writhe and cry for hours before experiencing catharsis and a sense of peace. Later, in some of the graphic sex scenes that caused Azzam’s first translator to pull out of the project, she feeds the sweets to teen-age boys in her home before taking their virginities.

The book might be just what I like to read. I'm not certain of that, though.

We'll see.


Movie Review in the New Yorker . . .

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a book trilogy written by Stieg Larsson and has been made into a movie opening December 21, 2011. I read all three of the books in the trilogy but probably will not see the movie, at least not until it comes out on DVD.

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I just recently read that Harrison Ford has been cast in the upcoming movie based on Orson Scott Card's novel, Ender's Game.

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You put in thousands of hours at the writing desk and the result is some refinement of your hundred-a-day microdecisions.
--George Saunders