Archive for censorship
the symposium is cancelled
Posted in Books, pictures, University life with tags British history, censorship, Centre arabe de recherches et d'études politiques de Paris, Collège de France, Europe, French history, French Ministry of Higher Education Research and Innovation, French politics, Gaza, Gaza war, history, Israel, Israeli bombardments, Palestine, symposium on December 8, 2025 by xi'an
it was just an accident […unlike the Trump administration returning Iranian refugees to Iran]
Posted in Books, Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags censorship, Farsi, femme vie liberté, Festival de Cannes 2025, film, France, Human Rights, Iran, Islamic Republic of Iran, It was just an accident, Jafar Panahi, movie, Oscars (Academy Awards), Palme d'Or, political oppression, refugees, Sydney Film Festival, theocracy, Trump administration, US politics, USA, یک تصادف ساده on October 11, 2025 by xi'an
a journal of the chaos, conquest, war, famine, and death mid’year
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, Wines with tags BD, book review, Brussels, censorship, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, Don Quixote, film review, frijoles, gangster movie, graphical novel, Guatemaltec cuisine, Journal of the Plague Year, maze, Netflix, ospedale, Paris, Paris 2024 Olympics, PSG, rhubarb, Russian invasion, time travel, tortilla, Ukraine, ze kitchen galerie on August 24, 2024 by xi'an
Read a third of (a physical copy of) T.J. Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets before giving up. Unbearably boring, predictable, dripping cheap sentimentality and cheaper robotic humour. Worse than the earlier House in the Cerulean Sea. That I already did not much enjoy. (I bought the book in Edinburgh while at SMC 2024, as a 3-4-2 deal, along another one I had to return because it was volume 2 of a series I had not yet started!, not so much of a deal in the end!!, even though I manage to exchange it for Naomi Novik’s The Golden Enclaves) Also read the silent BD Béatrice, by Joris Mertens, set in the same imaginary city as Nettoyage à Sec, a mix of Paris (mostly) and Bruxelles/Brussels (partly), except with a fantasy side. The 1960’s atmosphere, the asphyxiating weight of the city, the isolation of the young saleswoman, the large scale boxes make both BDs outstanding. And I started Don Quixote (in French), which reads surprisingly well (possibly thanks to the translation) and layered with many levels of irony and pastiche, never too late to discover classics I had not yet read!
Made heaps of rhubarb preserve and jam (with honey, lemon, maybe too much lemon, and chia seeds). And learned from friends how to make Guatemalan maïze tortilla and frijoles. Had a great meal with them at Ze Kitchen Galerie, on the eve of the Paris Olympics, which meant entering a maze of barriers installed along the Seine river (and Xing paths with the president of the local football club, not that I would have had the slightest clue of who he was without the excitement of passerbys). Alas missed a chance-in-a-decade opportunity to have dinner at Da Franz, due to my ospedale days.
Watched the first season of Travellers, a 2016 Canadian TV series about time travel agents arriving in the current era to save the future and the many paradoxes it induces. Soon spiralling into homely concerns and out of the slightest plausibility, if with enticing characters.
a journal of the chaos, conquest, war, famine, and death year
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel with tags Al Capone, Bible, book review, British Empire, Canton, censorship, China, COVID-19, D.H. Lawrence, Daniel Defoe, English comedy, film review, gangster movie, Ian Rankin, Irish travellers, Journal of the Plague Year, Liverpool, lost in translation, Mexican stamps, Netflix, Opium War, pulled pork, Russian invasion, rye, Sonora, Ukraine, University of Oxford, wheat, William the Conqueror on June 15, 2024 by xi'anRead R.F. Kuang’s Babel. (Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution.) With a nice (magical) premise, some forays into linguistics, but fairly lazy in sticking so much to actual 19th Century Victorian history despite the fantasy openings of this alternate history, and in over-(over-)indulging (as in many college-life novels) into the perks of college life at the University of Oxford, plus glaring coherence gaps in the story and in the character construction, along with a simplistic writing style. The last part is particularly painful (in its suspension of belief) and the “necessity of violence” quite readily embraced by the main characters, with poor ethical arguments. Which makes the 2022 Blackwell’s Book of the Year for Fiction Award and 2023 Nebula Award for Best Book of the Year somewhat of a surprise. (While her exclusion from the 2023 Hugo Award list as ineligible was both a scandal and an argument for not holding book awards in dictatures.)
Made Sonoran tortillas (half-wheat & half-rye) to handle a large batch of home made pulled pork, which lasted for an entire week meal-wise! Justifying the 2½ hours and 4 steps they require .
Watched The Gentlemen Netflix series, a British comedy which I found terribly cliché and prejudiced against disadvantaged social groups, e.g., Irish travellers or Mancunian working class gangsters, despite its advertised pretence at aiming primarily at the British aristocracy, “the original gangsters [with] William the Conqueror worse than Al Capone“. And increasingly boring since realism gets out of the window from the very beginning. Loads of potential references to spot though, like a Ian Rankin’s gangster citing the Bible or (very obviously) Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s lover.
Hugo[red] Awards 2023
Posted in Books, Kids, Travel with tags Adrian Tchaikovsky, amazon associates, Ben Aaronovitch, book reviews, censorship, China, Communist Party of China, dictature, fantasy, Hugo Awards, science fiction, worldcon on February 23, 2024 by xi'an
Here are the 2023 awards [connected to my read & to-read lists]. As the votes were made by participants to the 2023 Chengdu Worldcon, Chengdu, China, censorship later came to light, regarding authors critical of the Chinese government, like Kuang, Zhao, and Gaiman, who did not make it to the shortlist…
Best Novel
- Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Books) [to read]
- The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi (Tor Books) [to read]
- Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree (Tor Books)
- Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom) [not read yet, as the amazonly supported book sits at a friend’s place in the US!]
- The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books)
Best Novella
- Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom) [to read]
- Ogres, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris) [to read]
- What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Nightfire) [to read]
Best Series
- Children of Time Series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Pan Macmillan/Orbit) [1/3 read]
- The Locked Tomb, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com) [2/3 read]
- Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch (Orion) [read]
- The Scholomance, by Naomi Novik (Del Rey) [2/3 read]
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
- Everything Everywhere All at Once, screenplay by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Sheinert (IAC Films / Gozie AGBO) [watched]
