Thursday, December 29, 2005
2005 brief review
Ah...how time flies...new year 2004 seems like yesterday and now 2005 will be gone in a few days time....and another fairly exciting year for me in more ways than one....
if i were to pick a few personal defining moments in 2005 these would be my being almost frozen to death in Moscow in february and the trans-siberian rail journey with train #4 from yarolavsky station to Beijing, visiting mai lai massacre memorial in central vietnam , (staying) just 100 meters away from the raja restaurant in kuta October 1st , the day of the 2nd bali bombing....(but i was all the way up in ubud when the explosion occured) , and the week i spent in emperom Acheh helping building houses for tsunami victims the week before that..
regarding books....this year like any other it's more of books that are read but left unfinished more than anything else....but .... finally finished kurt vonnegut's galapagos after first picking it up almost a complete year ago...and despite having terrible food poisoning thanks to 'nasi gudeg' in jogjakarta last week...managed to plough through his arguably best and certainly most well known novel 'slaughterhouse five'....a very depressing book.....and still very relevant to today's world and ....still not much has changed from the senseless bombing of dresden described in this book and the current crazy bloodlust of america and it's lapdogs in iraq and afghanistan today......
but if anything my most memorable read this year are in fact short stories.... Orhan Pamuk's "Famous people" in GRANTA 68, David Mitchell's "The January man" in GRANTA 81:Best young british novelists 2003 and "Dear Mr President" by Daniel Voll ..a completely unknown writer (to me) in STORY are three that stuck in my mind most....
among non fictions..a story that really got to me was an article that i read in the Sunday Times magazine Feb 6 while on the trans siberian train..."riddle of the lost artist"... about the discovery of paintings and sad life of a painter Josh Woodrow....another depressing read....
if i were to pick a few personal defining moments in 2005 these would be my being almost frozen to death in Moscow in february and the trans-siberian rail journey with train #4 from yarolavsky station to Beijing, visiting mai lai massacre memorial in central vietnam , (staying) just 100 meters away from the raja restaurant in kuta October 1st , the day of the 2nd bali bombing....(but i was all the way up in ubud when the explosion occured) , and the week i spent in emperom Acheh helping building houses for tsunami victims the week before that..
regarding books....this year like any other it's more of books that are read but left unfinished more than anything else....but .... finally finished kurt vonnegut's galapagos after first picking it up almost a complete year ago...and despite having terrible food poisoning thanks to 'nasi gudeg' in jogjakarta last week...managed to plough through his arguably best and certainly most well known novel 'slaughterhouse five'....a very depressing book.....and still very relevant to today's world and ....still not much has changed from the senseless bombing of dresden described in this book and the current crazy bloodlust of america and it's lapdogs in iraq and afghanistan today......
but if anything my most memorable read this year are in fact short stories.... Orhan Pamuk's "Famous people" in GRANTA 68, David Mitchell's "The January man" in GRANTA 81:Best young british novelists 2003 and "Dear Mr President" by Daniel Voll ..a completely unknown writer (to me) in STORY are three that stuck in my mind most....
among non fictions..a story that really got to me was an article that i read in the Sunday Times magazine Feb 6 while on the trans siberian train..."riddle of the lost artist"... about the discovery of paintings and sad life of a painter Josh Woodrow....another depressing read....
