Nasim Marie Jafry's Blog, page 14

A batch of free ebooks from The Friday Project

It's not just The State of Me that is free to download (for another week) at moment. You'll also find The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman, which I read and loved a while back (before gifting it to someone). And Something Beginning With by Sarah Salway, which I have just downloaded. The whole list of free ebooks - in UK -  is over on Me And My Big Mouth's website.

Free ebook and a review!

Summer give-away by The Friday Project: the ebook version of The State of Me is available as a free download for a limited period! I was pleased to see this new, rather lovely,  review (4 stars) on Amazon yesterday:  I love the honesty of the review and that the s/he feels bad about pointing out the 'negatives'. 

This chatty, funny and insightful book was thoroughly absorbing. Nasim has done a wonderful service to people with ME, by being very open about all aspects of the illne...

Fabrication (in fiction and medicine)

It's something of a relief to be finished Karl Ove Knausgaard's A Man in Love (I finished a week ago) though I would still recommend it. There are four volumes of the series (of six) still to be translated. I skipped the first one as I don't much want to read about alcoholic fathers, especially when I am trying to write about it (have been sporadically for the last year). I feel the same way, these days, about alcoholic father narratives as I do about illness narratives, jaded, but I rec...

The man in the camel coat

Last year, in April, I was coming out of Waterstone's in Edinburgh's west end and a smiling man opened the door for me with a flourish, he seemed familiar, I knew I knew him but I couldn't place him. He had a kind face. I remember he was wearing a camel coat, though  memory is fragile so I can't be sure. When I got home I looked up Waterstone's and Iain Banks was doing an event that evening and of course it was him who had held open the door. Like many, I was gutted to learn of his diagn...

Notes by Dr William Weir from 8th Invest in ME Conference, May 2013

From Invest in ME's Facebook page:
Notes made by Dr William Weir at the 8th Invest in ME Conference, May 2013.

Permission to repost.

INVEST IN ME

Synopsis of proceedings of 8th International Conference held on 31st May 2013. Dr William Weir FRCP (Lond) FRCP (Edin)

The main theme of this conference focused on the three burning questions which all ME sufferers want answered, namely what causes ME, what is being done to discover this cause and what treatments might be effective? What was ver...

A Norwegian writer, a Pakistani orchestra & a biomedical conference

Have recently discovered:

Karl Ove Knausgaard's novel/memoir A Man in Love (part two of a six-part series. I skipped part one, and the others are not yet translated). His writing is slow and self-obsessed, but there is something comforting about the pedantry and rhythm. I am wading through, it is worth it for the gems, and observations on the Swedish/Norwegian arts and writing scene. I first came across him in this review a while back, and a Norwegian friend has since filled me in on the stoos...

Louis MacNeice

I recently read that the poet Louis MacNeice had been sent by the BBC to India  in 1947 to report on Partition. I knew his name, of course, but was not familiar with his work (I don't read much poetry, shame on me!). Tonight, I came across his poem 'Snow' and I had to read it three times, I loved it so much. Now, I want to know everything about him.

Some articles on Pakistan election

Have been fascinated by the election in Pakistan (though I still get a bit confused with all the parties). Some great articles and different perspectives:
Writer Mohammed Hanif in the Guardian.
Journalist Declan Walsh, who was, ludicrously, expelled from Pakistan last week.
Writer Bina Shah on her blog.
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad in London Review of Books.
And this was before the election, a long article by  Mira Sethi which I still have to finish, but  gorgeously informative.
When we visite...

Reading from a Chesterfield with Lister looking on...

Last week, I read at the Dissecting Edinburgh 'Writing Medicine' event in Surgeons' Hall, alongside Alison Summers and Tracey Rosenberg (their websites are listed in the previous link). Alison is writing a novel about Pick's disease, and Tracey, a novelist, has also published poetry about cancer. The venue was changed from the pathology museum to the library and what a gorgeous library those surgeons have!  I had a wonderful Chesterfield armchair and  Lister looked down from his pai...

The power of narrative (for good and ill)

I am increasingly interested in why we read stories, I think it might make you a better writer if you understand the seduction of narrative (though maybe it is better not to think about these things at all, and just write).  I've been dipping into The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall:  The riddle of fiction comes to this: Evolution is ruthlessly utilitarian. How has the seeming luxury of fiction not been eliminated from human life? My stepdad continues to bemuse us with na...