bookporn #24: the maxims of ‘ali, SOAS brunei gallery

ok, enough blasphemy: this will be the last qur’anic bookporn for a while, though you must concede that this Ottoman Turkish gold-leaf book of the Maxims of Prophet ‘Ali is rather a stellar note to end a series on.
in Paris, hitting all the bookshops with unbridled enthusiasm.

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thinking out loud about translation

I’ve been reading a lot in translation recently. Mainly in a valiant attempt to resurrect my dangerously moribund Malay and Indonesian language skills, I’ve taken to reading original literature with English translations as a crib. But as my proficiency creeps back slowly, I’m increasingly plagued by the poverty of many Malay/Indonesian-English translations I’ve been reading.
Caveat: [...]

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links for 2007-12-15

Lazy Library: Take-A-Seat Concept Has Your Library Chair Follow You Around Like a Dog After a Bitch on Heat
ohmygod, the zenith of laziness/decadence/human technological accomplishment.
(tags: library technology weird awesome)

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bookporn #23: qur’ans at the V&A, london

I am fond of Qur’ans: those wondrous word-of-god recitations so conscious of themselves as books, so much so that amongst its many beautiful names — al-Qur’an (Recitation), al-Furqan (Discernment), Dhikrallah (Remembrance of God), al-Hikmah and al-Huda (the Wisdom and the Guide), and the one to be intoned sonorously, Kalamallah, word of God — it is [...]

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links for 2007-12-08

BLDGBLOG: The future warehouse of unwanted books
oh god. here is where books go to die (the outskirts of london, apparently). via manan ahmed – thanks!
(tags: books future library booktomb)

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transatlantic pursuits

a heavily-condensed version of my MPhil thesis has been accepted for a conference at UIUC in March next year — the 9th annual graduate symposium for women’s & gender history — w/ potential for publication, though it may be that I am to publish with another journal, if/when I get my act together. despite [...]

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bookporn #22: the UL, cambridge

I thought, since I had written about it recently, that it was about time that I bookporned the myriad faces of our University Library, affectionately known as the You-El (UL), which varies so wildly in character from section to section that no one photo will do its manifold glory justice; therefore consider this a humble [...]

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links for 2007-12-05

Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah اﻟﻤﻗﺩﻤﻪ
definitely to read
(tags: toread islam history philosophy)

FilmChat: Philip Pullman — the extended e-mail interview
awesomeness! Philip Pullman discusses His Dark Materials and the “atheology”, should I say, behind the scenes (via Snarkmarket).
(tags: atheism religion philosophy film interviews awesome)

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links for 2007-12-03

Ortolan! The Recipe!
this is so, so profoundly wrong
(tags: recipes ethics terrible ortolan)

France’s songbird delicacy is outlawed – Telegraph
more on l’ortolan. oh, the french.
(tags: ortolan food ethics terrible)

Tafsir Al-Azhar Online: Professor Dr. Hamka
Qu’ranic exegesis in Indonesian context, as provided by Hamka — as far as I can tell from a brief survey, somewhat reformist in tone, [...]

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the misery of admin

I despise filing, but I do not think I can escape it much longer; having several full-to-bursting files of photocopied articles, archive flotsam and scrawled notes on paper, loosely organized by date and some vague topical delineation is just not working anymore — not to mention a notebook which contains everything from seminar notes, reading [...]

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