With Teachers

All through my childhood and early teenagehood I wanted to be a teacher. Because to the influenceable little me being a teacher seemed like the greatest job ever. Teachers knew everything! They were neat and grown up. They had their powerful red pens- I was enchanted by red pens. I longed for a time when I had such an all-powerful tool- a tool that gave words and calculations worth. My sisters and I would sit around old newspapers or textbooks with a rich red pen, making nonsensical markings around random words and numbers, pretending we were marking; impressed by the color and the authority it brought with it.

Even now, that I am all "grown up", I get a rush when I'm asked to explain something. I feel slightly smug when I'm given a pen to explain a calculation, I stand a little taller when I'm speaking to crowd. Because a part of me still wants to teach. A part of me still wants to mold a generation. Perhaps I am romanticizing the notion, I do have a habit of being biased towards my role-models. But nevertheless, I admire the transfer of knowledge. I admire the imposer of knowledge.

It saddens me to now see teachers being gradually stripped of their proverbial red pen. Slowly teachers are losing their luster, so to speak. I seldom meet a child who wants to be a teacher. Even though I could swear that was the norm in my childhood. Slowly teachers are losing their authoritative position in the community. Their red pen no longer makes that much of an impact. They are depicted as the butt of jokes by the media and dismissive parents alike. And I say it is about time we give teachers their authority back. I say we don't dismiss their requests. I say that a generation that has lost respect for teachers is a dangerous generation. (Although, arguably, I can't point out why.)

Now I don't know the point in time that teachers started losing this respect, and I can't say whether or not they had a hand in it, but I do know that our community is capable of rectifying this, for our own sake. So just stop with the hate, show your children that you respect teachers as well, and give teachers their red pen back.

With Modern Adaptation Web Series - 2

It is now Fall and the promised adaption of Emma by Jane Austen is currently airing. (If you don't know what that is I posted about it here). And boy is it marvelous. You can really see the effect of larger budget and audience on the series. After the Emmy-winning LBD came to an end the producers at Pemberly Digital (It is an actual company now, although owned by John Green and Bernie Su and not the fictional William Darcy) promised a larger series and they're certainly delivering with obviously higher production costs and more Transmedia.

 From the get-go they managed to put me off Emma Woodhouse. A Beauty guru and lifestyle expert "documenting her greatness for future achievements". Emma's inflated ego drives me up the walls but we don't have to like the character to like the show. And I do like the show. Besides, I wasn't a fan of the Emma in the book either.

If you read my earlier blog post, you would have seen that I had some reservations. And I still have them. I wish they would've gone for a bolder book; not just a typical novel that is sure to please their targeted demographic. Perhaps experiment with a different author. Nevertheless, the series is nice. Go ahead, watch the first episode.

Although it has an obviously smaller budget and production team, I like The Autobiography of Jane Eyre more than Emma Approved. The Autobiography of Jane Eyre is closer to home. The characters are far more realistic, the development makes sense. In short, it is less of a chick flick. To be honest, the credit to most of this belongs not to the producers of the series, but to Charlotte Bronte, the original  author.  But I take off my proverbial hat to the producers of AOJE, they did good! And you can see that for yourselves here:

There is another major modern adaptation Web-Series going on right now; The Nick Carraway Chronicles. An adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Now this is a series I do not like. I stopped watching it a few weeks ago because frankly; they can't act. I took the poor acting in the first few episodes as realistic jitters, but it hasn't approved much since. Besides that, I don't feel like they put enough effort into modernizing the plot. It isn't as witty as I would like it to be. No sly references or winks or sarcasm. It's just bland.

Check out all of the above series and tell me what you think. Perhaps you can recommend others to me.

With How to Be Good – A Book Review

This is the third book I read by Nick Hornby. And ironically-or conveniently - enough this is the first of his books that I like. The book is narrated by a 30-something year old woman who is tired of her grumpy husband, and wishes he would change. Or that the marriage would end.  And her husband does change but she soon resents his new found moral code as she was used to being the "good" one.

Hornby has such a magical way of writing even the mundane events into interesting plot points and this is what got me through his other books. This one is certainly no exception. The book is short and sweet, there are no complications in the plot, no unnecessarily complex flash backs. Everything just flows nicely.
But what makes this book my Hornby-Favorite is that the characters are so incredibly relatable and complex. Their relationship grew and progressed in such a charming way I could barely keep my eyes clear.  Frankly, I became genuinely invested in their lives. I wanted to know what happens. Their behavior was consistent, justified, in-character… so to speak. They felt like real characters and that is very rare! The story felt like it was real. Beyond any doubt these are events that could genuinely happen. No happy-sappy or melodrama.

All this just makes the downfall of this book all the more irritating; there is no resolution. When I was reading the last page I kept desperately thinking "come on, drop dead, set the house on fire, go crazy, something, anything" but no. The words ended but the story didn't. That’s the only way I can explain it. And I guess it makes sense. Since these characters exist, this is only a chunk of their lives. There is no resolution and a neatly packed ending tied-up-in-string, because there never is one in reality. Events keep on going, and life keeps on happening.

But I really want resolution. I want to make sure the characters are alright. I want to make sure they find themselves, and fall back in love with each other.  Hornby managed to create a friendship between these characters and myself but I'm not allowed to see how they turned out. I can't call or text or drop in, because he didn't finish their story. The words ended but their story didn't, like reality, and realty sucks.

With The Twitter Diaries - A Book Review

I have to be honest. The only reason I bought this book is because I thought it would be interesting to review. Written by Georgie Thompson and Imogene Lloyd Webber in the form of tweets. Yes. The entire books is written in the form of 140-character-messages between the two protagonists. Stella designs shoes for men while Tuesday, is a daytime-TV reporter. Although they are in different continents they become close over twitter and bond through their DM's.

There's usually an air of inconsistency in books that are co-authored and this book is definitely not an exception. The plot is weak at best and generally gave me no chance to relate to the characters. But perhaps this is expected from a light "chick-flick-book" ( I'm sure there is a better name for those) there is no denying that it is a fast read. That is, of course , if you plow through it. The story contains all the shallow humor and dry wit that is expected of chick-flicks. Along with the unrealistic catharsis and character improvement.

Now I love Twitter. But reading a story form through tweets is annoying.. and having characters defined only as ambiguous handles like @AllThatGlittersIsGold at times, and unrealistic ones like @mum at others can really take its toll on ones sanity.  There's also the oh-so-subtle allusion in the number of Twitter followers. The character gains followers in the high of the plot, and loses followers in the lows.

I wouldn't read this book again and I don't think I will recommend it to anyone. Unless they want a really light read for a plane ride or something.

With Logos Hope

The largest floating book fair, Logos Hope is currently parked in the Sultan Qaboos Port in Mutrah. Logos Hope is a German Ship that is operated by a christian charitable foundation. The ship is continuously travelling from port to port selling books. Logos Hope will be in Muscat until the 7th of October; open from 2pm to 10pm.

The event is really well organized- Because they can't accommodate for cars in the port, you park in a designated parking lot, and then ride a bus to the ship. A ticket costs 300 bz for anyone over the age of 12, and free for anyone below. The staff on the ship are really friendly. They come from all over the world, and they all seem to want to get to know our culture. I had some really interesting conversations with a few of the crew members.

Now, The Logos Hope is run by a christian organization, so you do feel a kind of religious vibe to it, but they try to accommodate for our culture by having closed areas for women and men.

I must say that the collection of books wasn't impressive at all. I haven't heard of any of the titles in the best-sellers and there are quite a lot of Bibles. I did however manage to buy a few books from the classics section- Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by R.L Stevenson and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. I also got a book called Under the Covers and Between the Sheets, which gives a kind of behind-the-scenes of classical books and characters. I will be posting a review of the latter soon, as I have a lot to say about it.

The children's books section is quite nice though. There is a whole section for Enid Blyton and a few Arabic books. I got a few of these for my brother.

On the 6th there will be a time for ladies only on the ship. I recommend you find the time to visit it, if only to see what it is like. 

With Grammar

Grammar fascinates me, as does anything else that gives science and structure to seemingly non-quantifiable things like literature and art. English grammar is especially interesting. Because of the various origins of the language there are hardly any set-in-stone-rules regarding spelling and sentence structure. So grammaticians come along and try to build a decent language structure from this debris of Greek and Latin. And they have come up with some pretty cool things.

An acronym for instance, is different that an initialism. They are both the collective first letters of a phrase or title. However, while you can pronounce an acronym like "NASA" and "LASER" you can't pronounce an initialism, like "CNN". (The abbreviation of Al Sahwa Schools should by nature be an initialism).

Acronyms and initialisms are when we turn sentences into words. What about the other way round? Well, that's called a backronym. No joke. SOS, for example doesn't actually stand for anything. But is often taken to mean "Save Our Souls", "Save Our Ship" or "Someone Over Shoulder".

And speaking of jokes, a while back a few people tried turning sarcasm into a part of speech. They proposed the use of a "percontation point", a reversed question mark, at the end of a sentence that is meant to have a hidden or sarcastic notion. Thankfully this was never implemented and a majority of the world is still in the dark regarding half of written literature. Can you imagine having to point out every tongue-in-cheek remark and satirical statement to the general public? Yikes. I will however, start using a reversed question mark on social media sites when I don't want what I'm saying to be taken seriously.