Book Thoughts
Saturday, 3 June 2006 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daToday's Globe and Mail Books section has two new books worth noting:
Iran Awakening by Shrin Ebadi. She's just awesome. From the review:
Ebadi was an esteemed judge in Iran when the shah fell, and she was a supporter of the revolution that brought him down. Like many anti-shah protesters, she had no idea that by helping to bring down the shah, she was "contributing to my own demise." Not long after Ayatollah Khomeini comes to power, she is demoted from judge to clerical work at the Ministry of Justice. Then, she is demoted as a person under "Islamic law" when women are declared half as valuable as men and, among other travesties, unable to divorce without their husband's permission. In typical fashion, Ebadi fights this with a legal strategy. She draws up a post-nuptial agreement that supersedes the country's laws, and she and her husband Javad drive to a notary to make it official and keep their marriage equal.
This — as chronicled in her memoir, Iran Awakening — will be her modus operandi for the next 25 years, eschewing the "chanting of radical slogans" for painstaking legal work that has made her the stealth heroine of Iran, an effective agent of democracy and human rights, and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.
Ironically, this book was banned from being published in the U.S.:
She is surprised to learn that U.S. sanctions mean that publishing this memoir in the U.S. could have brought severe penalties, including jail time, for all Americans involved. [...] As winner of the Nobel, she could obtain a special licence to publish in the U.S., but that would do nothing to help other Iranian writers, and writers from other embargoed countries. So Ebadi and her agent, with the help of a legal firm working pro bono, sue the U.S. government, specifically the Treasury Department, to change the regulations.
She wins.
The first chapter of the book is available from the globe and mail link above. It's beautiful. I look forward to reading the rest of it (this will be dan's parents' birthday present to me; they gave me an amazon gift certificate last month...).
The second book is for the foodies on my f-list. Heat
is by Bill Buford, a food-writer for the New Yorker. The full title puts me off a bit; it's Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. But it sounds like an entertaining read. The author is an extremely curious amateur chef, who is taken under the wing of Mario Batali, a somewhat sadistic NYC restauranteur... and eventually surpasses his mentor, at least at pasta, by learning from his mentors in Italy. I expect this book will convince anyone I know who idly thinks of becoming a chef, that they face pain and degradation if they do, at least on the way up...
Iran Awakening by Shrin Ebadi. She's just awesome. From the review:
Ebadi was an esteemed judge in Iran when the shah fell, and she was a supporter of the revolution that brought him down. Like many anti-shah protesters, she had no idea that by helping to bring down the shah, she was "contributing to my own demise." Not long after Ayatollah Khomeini comes to power, she is demoted from judge to clerical work at the Ministry of Justice. Then, she is demoted as a person under "Islamic law" when women are declared half as valuable as men and, among other travesties, unable to divorce without their husband's permission. In typical fashion, Ebadi fights this with a legal strategy. She draws up a post-nuptial agreement that supersedes the country's laws, and she and her husband Javad drive to a notary to make it official and keep their marriage equal.
This — as chronicled in her memoir, Iran Awakening — will be her modus operandi for the next 25 years, eschewing the "chanting of radical slogans" for painstaking legal work that has made her the stealth heroine of Iran, an effective agent of democracy and human rights, and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.
Ironically, this book was banned from being published in the U.S.:
She is surprised to learn that U.S. sanctions mean that publishing this memoir in the U.S. could have brought severe penalties, including jail time, for all Americans involved. [...] As winner of the Nobel, she could obtain a special licence to publish in the U.S., but that would do nothing to help other Iranian writers, and writers from other embargoed countries. So Ebadi and her agent, with the help of a legal firm working pro bono, sue the U.S. government, specifically the Treasury Department, to change the regulations.
She wins.
The first chapter of the book is available from the globe and mail link above. It's beautiful. I look forward to reading the rest of it (this will be dan's parents' birthday present to me; they gave me an amazon gift certificate last month...).
The second book is for the foodies on my f-list. Heat
is by Bill Buford, a food-writer for the New Yorker. The full title puts me off a bit; it's Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. But it sounds like an entertaining read. The author is an extremely curious amateur chef, who is taken under the wing of Mario Batali, a somewhat sadistic NYC restauranteur... and eventually surpasses his mentor, at least at pasta, by learning from his mentors in Italy. I expect this book will convince anyone I know who idly thinks of becoming a chef, that they face pain and degradation if they do, at least on the way up...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Saturday, 3 June 2006 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Saturday, 3 June 2006 07:21 pm (UTC)...Plus, they're getting me half of Allison Bechdel's new memoir/graphic novel.
no subject
Date: Saturday, 3 June 2006 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Saturday, 3 June 2006 07:39 pm (UTC)I like the blurb, "If david sadaris could draw, this is what he'd produce."
no subject
Date: Saturday, 3 June 2006 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Saturday, 3 June 2006 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Saturday, 3 June 2006 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, 4 June 2006 04:13 am (UTC)Agreed, as long as they're not about friends; those I find tend to be anger-inducing, except for the ones that are amusing as well..
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 24 January 2007 02:16 am (UTC)Lotus
http://lotusreads.blogspot.com
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 24 January 2007 03:28 pm (UTC)Your post and comments in it remind me that I need to read "Reading Lolita in Tehran". But first, I need to read "Lolita." :)