You could design your own cover art, travel the country dressed in a riduculous outfit, or arm-wrestle a guy to get him to buy your book, like Eragon author Christopher Paolini. Or you could call a different book club every day, as did Lucia, Lucia author Adriana Trigiani.
Link via PL.
You might not have caught this (in between the Kobe and Arnold news), but Mike Hawash, the Intel Engineer whose detention without charge back in April sparked dozens of protests* (and thousands of mentions on the Internet, including on this very site) has pled guilty to a “federal charge of conspiring to help the Taliban in Afghanistan.” I can only imagine how this is going to play. Ashcroft supporters will start screaming “See, See!!” and all the civil libertarians who supported the man will look like fools.
I feel sorry for Hawash’s friends, who banded together to create a website and seek funds for his defense, for his wife and children, who are waking up to find a man they probably never knew, for American Muslims, who inherit another liar and terrorist whom they have to dissociate with, and for all those who may be unrightfully detained in the future–few will be inclined to believe them now, even if they are held without having the right to know the charges against them. What a waste.
*I still think it was wrong of the FBI to hold Hawash for so long without charging him and without access to his lawyers. But there you have it.
Update: Tarek has some caveats to that plea, worth reading. Via Tacitus.
If you liked Land-Grant College Review as much as I did, then you’ll really enjoy this new piece they have up by the talented Mikhail Iossel: “Some Of The World Transactions My Father Has Missed Due To His Death On September 14, 1999.”
Newsweek‘s Malcom Jones writes about the surge in used-book sales. Says he, “I own a couple of Cormac McCarthy hardcovers from the ’80s, for instance, that are now worth $1,500 each. My indifference to collecting took a beating the day I discovered those prices online.” Heh. What’s in your attic?
I came across this interesting opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor in which Ahmed Nassef argues that Muslim practices should be tailored to fit life in America. I found myself agreeing with him that there is “a gulf between the highly conservative nature of most Muslim American institutions and the liberal views of many [American Muslims.]” It didn’t surprise me to learn that most American Muslims don’t attend mosque or participate in major religious celebrations, or that many mosques are run by Wahhabi clerics–it’s hard for supporters of more liberal rites to compete with Saudi money.
But I didn’t buy Nassef’s claim that the conservatism is more of a characteristic of Muslim immigrants as opposed to native-born American Muslims (perhaps because I’ve seen far too many conservatives in the latter camp, and far too many liberals in the former.) I also disagreed with his claim that “progressive Muslims in America are taking their inspiration from Islamic scholars trained in Western universities who tend to be critical of authoritarian interpretations of Islam and who treat the real diversity of Muslim societies more inclusively.” I think it’s a bit too simplistic to claim that liberal interpretations are the apanages of Western training (for example, mosques run by clerics who follow the Malekite rites are pretty liberal.) The proposition also tends to bring up that whole East-West dichotomy, which I don’t find particularly illuminating. But the article makes quite a good read. Read it in full here.
or so it seems. Howard Kurtz talks about the naked-women-in-paintball-games hoax and how major media screwed up.
Louisa Young writes about her brief reign as the “next J.K. Rowling.”
Amy Tan has contracted Lyme Disease, says the Washington Post is this atrociously titled article. Symptoms include fatigue, memory loss, and “dropping first letters of words when writing by hand and replacing words with similar-sounding gibberish when speaking.” What a nightmare.
This summer, the Guardian is publishing a bunch of new short stories by famous authors. Dave Eggers made the list this weekend, with “Something Might Plummet, Something Might Soar” and it starts like this:
“Mrs Gunderson. Whahaooaoooa. Mrs Gunderson. This is about Mrs Gunderson and it gets dirty. ”
Read the entire story here.
The BBC is asking different writers to talk about the city they live in, the fiction it has produced, and literary works set there. Aleksandar Hemon talks about Sarajevo. The program also includes Orhan Pamuk on Istanbul and Zadie Smith on London.
