UNESCO: Tsubota, Zaman, Varma, Arishima

I read the CAA Magazine, the Lee Valley catalogue, The New Yorker, OK Magazine, Eclectic Reading, and several articles on scenario planning. I can't say I read the entirety of The New Yorker, since most of the articles were fan clubs for Barack Obama. That's certainly not the reason I read the magazine, and I hope this doesn't happen too often.

I have also read an essay on Fred Astaire, by Joe Epstein, Varma's A Pilgrimage to the Himalayas, Tsubota's Children in the Wind, The Prisoner by Fakhr Zaman, Vesaas's Bleaching Yard, Arishima's A Certain Woman, and I started Bostridge's biography of Florence Nightingale. Epstein was pretty light-weight, what with detailed discussions of Astaire's clothing, and not much in way of discussing dancing technique or biography. Varma was a wonderful book about the poor in India, so real to me I could scarcely bear to read some of the sadder stories. Vesaas' first book I didn't like, and I didn't much care for this one either. Arishima was more interesting, although I thought the treatment of the woman was sexist, in the way that Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina were also sexist. Tsubota's novel of children in Japan in the 30's is skillful: I like catching glimpses of the developing fascism. Zaman's searing novel I couldn't bear to read in parts, because it describes torture and execution in a Punjabi prison before World War II. Bostridge I can tell I will enjoy unreservedly.