Tripoli Reads

01/06/2020

طال غيابنا، وأمام ذلك، لا نملك، متابعينا الاعزاء، سوى الاعتذارات المقرونة ببعضٍ من الخجل...

هذا، وإزاء ايماننا الشديد بأن إنسانية الانسان تبقى منقوصةً إذا لم تقرن ببعدٍ ثقافيٍ عميق، يفضي إلى الترفع عن الصغائر وإلى نشر روح الأخوة بين مختلف أطياف وفئات المجتمع.

ونظراً أن حياتنا اليومية في لبنان تحولت، بسبب سوء تدبير طبقة سياسية تعاني إفلاساً فكرياً محدقاً، إلى إحدى أعمال "مسرح العبث" (théâtre de l'absurde باللغة الفرنسية).

و مع قناعتنا أن الثقافة على اشكالها، وإن كانت تأتي بجرعاتٍ بسيطة في بعض الأحيان، تشكل لقاحاً للمواطنة أمام محاولات نزعها عن المواطن ونفيها إلى الدرجات السفلى على سلم الهوية.

سوف نسعى في الوقت الحالي إلى العمل على تفسير بعض المفاهيم والأفكار المتعلقة بالسياسة، واللتي باتت متداولة في المجال العام في لبنان، آملين أن يساهم هذا العمل، وإن كان بشيءٍ بسيط، في بناء الوعي لدى اخوتنا من المواطنات والمواطنين, مما يسمح بتسخير طاقاتهم لخدمة المواطنة في المديين الاني والطويل.

إلى أن نصبح على وطن.

07/02/2019

"Remember, remember the fifth of November..."

A frightening and powerful tale of the loss of freedom and identity in a chillingly believable totalitarian world, V for Vendetta stands as one of the highest achievements of the comics medium and a defining work for creators Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

Now I know most of you watched the movie, but the book portraits reality with its protruding ugliness. The hint of feminism in the movie is amplified in the book where the writers drew Eve's transformation relating it more to a vivid classification and judgments of society.

17/07/2017

The term Cyberspace is usually traced back to William Gibson's 1984 Novel "Neuromancer". Considered as a seminal work of the cyberpunk genre, the novel was one of the very first to investigate the increasingly complex relationship between mankind and technology. The novel is one of the very first works of literature in which mobile phones feature heavily, often as plot devices.

Soon after its publication, the novel rapidly became a cult phenomenon. Noted for its bleak, almost nihilistic style, the novel proves prophetic throughout its narrative.

28/05/2017

When the title of a book is directly taken from Shakespeare's "Macbeth", you know the author is onto something.

While mostly famous for his magnum opus, "Fahrenheit 451", Ray Bradbury was undeniably a master of dark fantasy. In "Something Wicked This Way Comes", Bradbury channels all the elements of fantasy and horror against the backdrop of a small town nestled in the American Midwest. When a travelling carnival rolls into town on a cold October morning, Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway can't help feeling fascinated, and to a certain measure, petrified by the carnival. Jim and Will soon encounter the carnival's mysterious leader, "Mr Dark", a mysterious figure with an eerily vibrant collection of tattoos.

A page-turner with at times frantic pace, "Something Wicked This Way Comes" is definitely worth a read.

29/04/2017

Billy Pilgrim woke up on Tralfamadore and took a long look at Montana and their newborn baby, almost in disbelief. How was this even possible? Wasn't he in a trench somewhere in Belgium, surrounded by German soldiers, just a moment ago?

Billy Pilgrim is a chaplain's assistant, an optometrist, an American Soldier in WWII, oh, and a time traveler. But this ill-trained, disoriented, fatalistic, and most hapless of characters happens to be central to the narrative in "Slaughterhouse Five", a masterpiece of modern American Literature, and, arguably, Kurt Vonnegut's most recognized work.

Slaughterhouse Five is a perfect example of post-modernist American Literature. Vonnegut spares no technique to tell the story of Billy Pilgrim's travels through time. The story is told in a nonlinear fashion, from the perspective of the unreliable narrator and contains a series of autobiographical elements.

Witty, fun, insightful and poignant, "Slaughterhouse Five" reads out as a satirical novel, but concludes with one of the most thundering anti-war statements in literature.

17/04/2017

Arabs are an ethnic group inhabiting the Arab World. Arabs derive their name from their mother tongue, Arabic, which is spoken by nearly 350 million people.

That was awesome, but we'll do without the academic wording; this isn't what makes this book interesting.

In "A History of the Arab Peoples", Albert Hourani traces the history of the Arabs from pre-Islamic times and the advent of Islam up to the end of the 20th century. Insightful, erudite, and quite readable, Hourani draws heavily on Ibn Khaldun's theory of "Aasabiyyah", highlighting it as the underlying theme behind dynastic and political changes across Arab history, but also as a force which allowed the Arabs to develop advanced and unique political systems across their history.
The book attempts to contextualize the history of the Arabs through an analysis of dominant political doctrines, their evolution and respective implications. Throughout the book, Hourani argues that the doctrinal differences between national and religious identities are key to understanding the turmoil witnessed in the Arab world in the 20th century.

For anyone interested in the modern history of the Arab World and the Middle East, this book is definitely worth the investment.

26/12/2015

Football is more than a game. Played by over 27 million people worldwide and followed on a weekly basis by billions, football is perhaps better described as an addiction, an obsession, a way of life or even, maybe, for the overzealous, a religion.

But is football merely about luck, or is there something deeper behind the beautiful game ?

By means of witty commentary and meticulous data analysis methods, Soccernomics tells the story of Football like never before. Using some of the most advanced metrics out there, the book tells the stories of some of the most improbable events in Football history, from Denmark's shock victory at Euro 92 to Porto's almost-unbelievable Champions' league triumph in 2003.

Real Football fans have always known why England always loses (I mean, it's England in the end), but for questions with less obvious answers (Read: Barcelona's champions league drought between 1992 and 2006), this book is a must read !

15/12/2015

Can a nation win a war against........ a disease ?

In the postwar years, a frightening and terrible disease was rampaging across the United States. Endemic to the country at the time, Polio was sweeping across America, infecting over 15000 people a year.

In those who were infected, the Polio virus would slowly creep his way to the nervous system, slicing through the motor neurons, leaving patients' lower limbs maimed and disfigured and the patients themselves often paralyzed.

In this Pulitzer Prize winning book, David Oshinsky tells the gripping story of the Polio terror- from the Arknasas epidemic of 1943 to the outbreak in New York city in 1955- and the intense effort to mobilize the public against it through the founding of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, better known as the March of Dimes.
A considerable part of the book is also dedicated to the stories of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, the two scientists spearheading the effort of vaccine development, but also to the story of Isabel Morgan, one of the most fascinating female scientists of the modern era.

Erudite and extremely readable, "Polio: an American Story" sheds a fascinating light on how we, as a society, perceive diseases.

10/12/2015

Here are 23 books that you should've read in high school! If not, start now !

23/11/2015

"Time is the only real currency you have in your life [...]. It's possible to exchange your time for nothing at all. The earth doesn't sit still even if you do, there are real problems out there for you to solve."

From Mehran Sahami's class day lecture at Stanford University.

Class Day Lecture gives graduates, their family and friends a unique occasion to experience what makes a Stanford education so special. For over 40 years thi...

22/11/2015

"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way,who nods at them and says "Morning boys, hows' the water ?"
And the two young fish swim on for a bit and eventually, one of them looks at the other and goes "What the hell is water ?" "

In this insightful and very erudite speech, David Foster Wallace gives his take on life, adulthood, the purpose of one's education and why the obvious, most important realities are the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.

A Great Commencement Speech Given in 2005 at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH Comments disabled because the author; David Foster Wallace has passed away. (While...

27/10/2015

إقرأ ،فإنها لخسارة كبرى أن تذهب إلى نهاية العالم بعقلك الذي ابتدأت به.
سهام العبودي