I Hate Memes…
… But I respect Péter Marton. He tagged me, demanding I participate. So I feel I must. Here are the terms:
I. You have to look up page 123 in the nearest book around you.
II. Look for the fifth sentence.
III. Then post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123.
IV. And then tag five people, just like you were tagged!
Ugh. Because my professional and personal interests happen to partially coincide, I usually wind up reading several books at once. So I’m doing the three books I currently have in my man purse. Deal with it.
Afghanistan, 1980 Edition, by Louis Dupree
“‘Dead, many years ago. He died of a broken heart because his son, Khadi, left without a word, the ungrateful wretch!’
Khadi sadly returned to the clump of trees.”
I know, right? This is from a section where Dupree is describing various folklore and legends. In this case, the legend demonstrates attitudes concerning love and jealousy—and the general preference for family-arranged marriage between a man and his father’s brother’s daughter, “or as near that relation as availability permits.” How romantic.
Next up is:
Dirty Diplomacy: The Rough-and-Tumble Adventures of a Scotch-Drinking, Skirt-Chasing, Dictator-Busting and Thoroughly Unrepentant Ambassador Stuck on the Frontline of the War Against Terror—possibly the worst-titled book EVAR, by Craig Murray the stripper-lover. It is the U.S. edition of the much more seductively-titled (in-the-UK, that is) Murder in Samarkand.
“‘Uzbeks would be beaten and imprisoned. Western business are groveling for favors, and diplomats simply don’t. Take Azimov.’”
No I will not. This is a conversation Murray had with Ahmet Erozan, the head of the OSCE Center in Tashkent, about the fate of diplomats versus businessmen and regular people in pre-Andijon Uzbekistan. Naturally, it’s all about Bush. Somehow.
Lastly is one I started earlier this week, and it will probably demand my full attention very soon:
Urban Battle Fields of South Asia: Lessons Learned from Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan, by the inestimable C. Christine Fair.
“One of MQM’s strategic successes was its ability to internationalize or externalize the conflict: it successfully made Karachi the target of the international media. Violent events taking place in Karachi contributed to an evolving narrative in which the city of Karachi and its province, Sindh, were cast as sconses of lawlessness and crime. Any group wishing to put pressure on Islamabad needed only to conduct an operation in Karachi to draw the attention of the international media and put pressure on Pakistan’s only commercial and financial hub.”
I’m nowhere near page 123, as I only began reading it this week (and remember: I’m in the midst of two other books as well), but it is in a section where Ms. Fair is describing the various militant organizations operating in south Pakistan, and, from what I can tell, their capacity to foster instability. The rest of it looks damned interesting.
So, five people who should fill this out? Joshua Kucera from his blog and Eurasianet.org, super war-reporter David “I H8 USAF” Axe of War Is Boring, Seth Weinberger of Security Dilemmas, energy super-reporter/historian Steve LeVine of The Oil and the Glory, Jeb Koogler of Foreign Policy Watch, and Michael Manning of the most excellent The Other End of China. He’s freshly back from chilling in Tibet (get it?) so he should have the time/ability to waste his time on this crap.
So I hope at least some of those guys read us. Go, waste your precious precious seconds of life on this.
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Tags: Site Announcements, Books.
Posted by Joshua Foust on February 7th, 2008
Permalink | Trackback | Comments: 9
Comments
Time: 2/8/2008, 9:12 am
Staying off-track, all those murses (man+purses)-slash-manbags are really ugly. You want something old-school and manly … like this.
Time: 2/8/2008, 9:13 am
Erk! link went all futzy:
http://www.purseuing.com/bags/man-bags/chewbacca-wears-the-ultimate-manbag-000563.php
Time: 2/8/2008, 1:54 pm
I really liked Murray’s book. It is too bad that diplomats do not usually share much of what they saw in Uzbekistan. I think it can be beneficial for a lot of people…
Time: 2/8/2008, 2:47 pm
Murray’s book will get onto my reading list, but I doubt that I’ll enjoy it. I’m sure it’s as sensational as all get-out, but I just have heard too many stories from former Uzbekistan Peace Corps Volunteers that had run-ins or knew crazy “when I met Mr. Murray at the club” stories.
The story closest to me is actually in my lap. I was thinking of posting a review, though it’s not Central Asian, but Caucasian. The book is Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart, recommended to me by a Peace Corps friend and fellow Registan reader. Here we go:
Her face was as powdered as an American doughnut.
“Eh?” I said.
“Golly Burton? KBR? Thirty percent discount for you.”
This is an exchange between the protagonist/narrator Misha Vainberg and an anonymous prostitute outside his penthouse suite in the capital of Absurdistan. She prefers the boys from Halliburton, it seems. Absurdistan seems to be some crazy mix of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, or any other vague Caucasian country. This book is funny, but it definitely qualifies as education through “realistic” [read: mean-spirited] satire, a la Bissel or Packer. There’s nothing apologetic about the cultural warfare between East, West, and in-between. But I’ll save that for the review!
Time: 2/8/2008, 4:35 pm
Oh, no you didn’t!
Time: 2/8/2008, 6:18 pm
I love Absurdistan! Some tropes were annoying, but it was brilliant political satire.
Jeb - gurl I SO did.
Time: 2/10/2008, 6:13 pm
Josh,
Well, I’ve retired from blogging, my site is purely for self-promotion now. But I’ll play along here. I was on vacation when I saw this, and like you, I had work reading: The Ghost of Freedom - A History of the Caucasus.
“The Russian Steam Navigation Company began operations in 1857 with a commission from Tsar Alexander II, running routes across the Black Sea to the major Caucasus ports. In 1885 the Transcaucasus railway was opened, joining Baku on the Caspian with Batumi on the Black Sea. Travel no longer required bouncing along in a horse-driven convoy, swatting flies and peeking at the mountains through a phalanx of Cossack or Kabardian outriders.”
It’s more interesting than that excerpt makes it sound…
Time: 2/12/2008, 10:18 pm
I personally e-mailed Michael with my thoughts on Murray’s book and I just thought I would share some of my thoughts here for the rest of the crowd. In a nutshell, I think Murray is the Man. His book stands out in a raw of traveling non-fiction on Central Asia that talk about the ancient streets of Bukhara and prostitutes of Tashkent. Well, Murray talks about what’s really going on in Uzbekistan. He talks about all stuff that many Uzbeks living in Uzbekistan do not know and I think it is a very valuable aspect of his book. He is not a good writer and very often paragraphs can become tedious to read but he is the Man who is not afraid and I respect that.
Time: 2/8/2008, 8:20 am
Sorry. Off-track here. “Man purse?” I thought a man-purse was cargo pants. (I keep home/jeep-car-thing keys in one pocket, office keys in another, cell phone in another, two memory sticks in another with, occasionally, CDs/DVDs for work, wallet in another [left back pocket — was told that it means something but dunno what], and breath mint plastic thingies in the last one. Sunglasses go in shirt pocket.) How small can these books be with at least 123 pages, or what do you call a man-purse?
(The book nearest me right now is a phone book. I wouldn’t post that online.)