What We're Reading

It is a balmy sixty degrees here while I watch all my friends in America get snowed in (again and again!) and marvel at how skiers hurtle down the slopes at the Olympics. I miss snow, not to mention snow days. It's been a while since we did a reading/seeing/watching list, so here we go!

-- After reading so many good reviews, I was very excited to hear that The Square, the documentary about Tahrir Square in Cairo, was available on Netflix. It is definitely a story told from a specific perspective, but I highly recommend it. See also, al-Aswany's latest dispatch.

-- On the cooking end of the spectrum, we also loved Haute Cuisine, about Francois Mitterand's private chef. (There aren't really movie theaters in Algiers, so we watch a lot of Netflix!)

-- The preview for Return to Homs is beautiful, though I know watching it will break my heart. (Also, oooo, how I miss hearing Syrian dialect!)

-- This song, Zina, was voted best Algerian song of the year and I agree! Algeria has a great independent singer/songwriter scene. It's even on iTunes.

-- I always pick up a copy of the Brown Book at the airport. Case in point: this little story about Algerian Coffee Stores.

-- Karl Ove Knausgaard's famous tome is awaiting me on my Kindle, but I'm procrastinating by reading the 2014 Pushcart Prize volume (highly recommended), stories in the New Yorker, and Osama Alomar's latest slim volume of poetry, here.

-- Finally, because we all need more jumping cows in our life.

(Photo taken in Palermo, Italy.)