I first got attracted by this book thanks to its beautiful cover (in a Seattle bookstore last year)! The book is an aggregate of three stories, loosely related around the themes of altruism and disastrous good intentions. I did not like the first story, about the disintegration of a gay couple by ways of (OCD) psychiatric issues as well as an increasing radicalism towards Ayush’s societal choices, with some shocking episodes as when he shows illegal filming from pig abattoirs to their young children. I saw some worth in the second story, when a classic academic gets obsessed with the migration of a Sudanese child-soldier to the point of obsession, removing herself from her job and civic duties, as in not reporting a possible hit & run, and eventually gifting a kidney to the refugee’s brother. As a dubious reparation for her grand-parents’ involvement in the British Raj colonialism. I mostly enjoyed the third one, where Sabita, a rural Bengali or Bangladeshi woman, receives a cow from experimental economists (in the spirit of Esther Duflo’s school), a stupendous gift that is slowly unraveling her family and her precarious finances. However, my overall impression is one of an overly ideological posture, tending to caricatures (esp. of academics) and compartmentalisation of individuals, to the detriment of the book per se and to the depth of its characters. The last story is further strongly condescending towards the main character who proves unable to manage the cow (and her family), again forcing the trait for the sake of the political argument. The Guardian is more appreciative of the book, however.
Archive for Seattle
a journal of the constant chaos year
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Travel, Wines with tags almond butter, bagels, baguette, Black Plague, book reviews, Brandon Sanderson, buckwheat, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, Dehli, French bread, Hindi, India, Journal of the Plague Year, Kerala, Ladakh, Mistborn, Montréal, motorbike, New York city, road movie, Royal Enfield Bullet, Russian invasion, Seattle, Stand Up To Trump, The Wheel of Time, Ukraine, USA on April 24, 2025 by xi'an 
Read (at last) The Cartographers, by Peng Shepherd, which I bought in Seattle last summer. And stated in India. A book that starts with the (fascinating) Fra Mauro map cannot be that terrible, but the story does not keep up with its promises, less for its core idea of taking the opposite of Korzybski’s “The map is not the territory” (since a special map is the territory!) than for its disappointing characters that prove more two-dimensional than the maps they profess to love. Dialogues are either lame or monologues. The central character, Nell, is mostly a pawn for the older characters. The constant unfolding of coïncidences is such that it makes the book sound even one-dimensional at times. The academia connections are ludicrous. The fire incident is beyond suspension of belief. And the ending is quite poor, maybe predictably since maps have no endpoints… I also started the Stormlight Archives, by (Mistborn author) Brandon Sanderson, which may take a while to complete!
Made more roasted almond and black sesame butters, more whey buckwheat galettes, and various dahls. Visited a stupendous bagel store, Shelsky’s of Brooklyn, upon my (smooth) arrival in New York City, further tasting (and appreciating) smoked sturgeon for the first time. The bagels there definitely beat the famous Saint-Viateur bagels in Montréal! And a French bakery, Bread Story, in the East Village, which is run by a former apprentice of a cousin of mine’s and which sticks to traditional French breads, including buckwheat baguettes!
Watched Dhak Dhak in the plane to New York, an Hindi road movie about four women biking their way from Delhi to the 5,359m Khardung La pass, with plenty of great views. These women are riding on the iconic Royal Enfield Bullet bikes, found everywhere in India (and now spotted in Paris), and the story does not avoid a single pot-hole in the predictable route from the range of their backgrounds and motivations for the trip/pilgrimage/escape to their coming-of-age, along with 30mn of songs, up to the happy ending! In short, that’s a perfect plane movie.
a journal of the chaos, conquest, war, abundance, and death year
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, Wines with tags Alaska, Barnes & Noble, book review, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, fig-tree, film review, First Nations, Iñupiat, Iceland, jam, Jodie Foster, Journal of the Plague Year, long night, MacGuffin, octopus, preserve, Prudhoe Bay, Russian invasion, Seattle, True Detective, Ukraine, varieties of radishes, zucchini flower on September 21, 2024 by xi'anRead The Daevabad Trilogy by S. A. Chakraborty within a few weeks, after I started the first book in a NE Seattle Barnes & Noble on a bookstore long stop between two Airbnb‘s. A suitable choice to read out the sleepless bouts induced by the jetlag. Some original ideas around a Middle East djinn kingdom, a compelling enough central character, and a page-turning scenario, but also too much info-dumps, a syncretic mismash of religions, and a terrible tendency to find excuses for mass-murderers…
Made heaps of fig preserve and jam (with honey, lemon, maybe too much lemon, and chia seeds) as our fig tree delivered an outstanding harvest, at the end of a particularly wet summer (even the tomatoes more than survived our three week absence!). And radish leave pesto (while waiting for my own radish harvest to come out). Also cooked an octopus for the first time, which proved much easier than I feared (no freezing, no beating, just a long enough boil) and delivering! And zucchini spaghetti every other day or so, since large late season zucchinis have now appeared in the local markets.
Watched the entire True Detective Season Four, featuring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as the detective duo (and mostly women as the leading characters). It widely differs from earlier seasons for so many reasons… It is set in coastal Alaska (if shot in Iceland), during the long night (as in Prudhoe Bay where it lasts close to two months). It seems to involve supernatural events, connected with First Nations myths and traditions. Possibly overdoing it. It does involve First Nations, quite forcibly, as Foster’s character’s step-daughter is a Native Iñupiat woman, searching for her roots. And many other characters are from that community. A major environmental pollution by the local mine leading to still-births (ghastly moment when Foster visits the storage with coffins waiting for thaw to be buried). Scientific MacGuffin very weak and further scenario impossibilities. (Also an orange wool hat turning green. Or blue.) The end is not that satisfactory, from the resolution of the scientists disappearance to the duo escaping consequences of their actions. But this is a great show, almost par with Season One.
a journal of the Pacific and Northwest tƿēnight
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags 10k, Africa, Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, bagels, bakery, Barnes & Noble, book review, boulangerie, bread making, COVID-19, farmers' market, First Nations, frijoles, glacier, huckleberry, Journal of the Plague Year, JSM 2024, Miguel de Cervantes, Mount Baker, Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Mount Hood, Netflix, Oregon, Pacific North West, Paris 2024 Olympics, Portland, ramen, Russian invasion, rye bread, Seattle, sequel, skillet, smoked salmon, spelt, Thai cuisine, Ukraine, USA, wheat, William Marx, William McIlvanney, wynn rune on September 7, 2024 by xi'an
Read both the first (1605) and the second (1615) books of Don Quixote along with the (William) Marx commentary (Un été avec Don Quichotte) over the PNW vacations, a delight in discovering how modern it is! Even modern enough to write a follow-up (II) and to initiate the meme that sequels are not as good as the original, although the parts where Don Quixote and Sancho Panza debate of their own characters in tome I are hilarious and the prologue of tome II made me discover a certain Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda had written a (poor) sequel of his own, published in 1614. As well as the detective novel The Heretic by Liam McIlvanney, set in Glasgow in 1975, which I enjoyed a lot (except for the lazy, easy, hurried ending), presumably due in part of the references to places near the U of G that sounded so familiar. The political aspects are more stringent than in the earlier book. (And those of his uncle.) And Gab’s Road to Freedom, of course! Also came back from a Sunday aft at Barnes & Noble, in NE Seattle, with a pile of books that threatened to overflow my luggage allowance!
Made frijoles negros over a rainy day in Mount Hood Village. As it takes a while to soften the black beans and then further simmer them to turn them into a yummy paste, this was the perfect opportunity! And I made enough to recook the dish several days in a row, improving each time! I also learned there how to cook with an iron skillet (found in the first airbnb cabin we rented), after rescuing (overcleaning?) the skillet from its greasy state and starting the fire alarm a few times (only frightening the nearby bear, I presume). Mount Hood Village where I bought some outanding smoked salmon from a local First Nations fisherman, with a long discussion on running (as I was wearing my Huckleberry 10k tee-shirt) As I had not time at all for cooking while at JSM in Portland, I gave into the opportunity to get great lunches at Hat Hei Belmont (advertising Thai levels of spicy that remained rather mild) and Kiboshi (red) Ramen (that fuelled a great training session the next morning). While near Mount Baker (with no true bakery on the radar!, as many “bakeries” I came across neither bake nor sell bread…), I baked our daily (whole wheat if not rye) bread with a spelt substitute I had brought from France and on the same bake made a first attempt at whole wheat plain bagels, which ended up eatable if on the hard side. (Blame the oven!)
And watched no Netflix or any other video during the entire PNW trip, mostly due to early sleep – early run schedules, followed by long hikes on most days, and on top of frequently checking the Olympics events in the (PNW) mornings. And of course due to meeting with (no enough) friends during JSM! (Leaving Paris during the Olympics was presumably a wise move in this respect as I would have otherwise spent most of my days there watching events!)
when bib, beer, bug, bran, and belly unite [Lake Union 10k, 43:18, 84/1770, 2/33 M61-70]
Posted in pictures, Running, Travel with tags 10k, Adrian Raftery, Lake Union, road race, Seattle, University of Washington, USA, Washington State on August 23, 2024 by xi'an
Thanks to Florence Forbes, who was also celebrating Adrian Raftery’s carreer (so far!), I became aware the day before that there would be a 10k race in down-town Seattle, around Lake Union, Sunday morning, and decided to join, despite the hefty entry fees (although reduced for seniors like me!), and with a rather poor week, training-wise. With the impression that it was an easier race than the week before, being mostly flat… After a very fast, too fast, start, I began to feel belly pains, which forced me to stop twice by convenient bushes and to slow down to standard training times (despite keeping to 20mn at the 5k mark). A counter-performance, when I could have been among the 20 first runners with last week time (39:26). I wonder what is the origin for these belly issues, between having drunk (a small amount of) beer the previous evening, eaten deep-fried oysters the previous lunch (on Seattle harbour), swam in Lake Washington (with otters!!) the previous morning, or simply opting for a cereal breakfast too close to the time of the race… In addition, my time did not get recorded properly and I got listed as non-finisher, missing the podium in my age group. Oh well, not all races can be great and enjoyable!
