I haven't read it yet.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

I'm sending this off to hawksgirl this afternoon, so their bookring could continue!! Glad to be of help!! :)

Ok, re-starting my ring with sarkiegirl's replacement book, received today. Thanks again!





Journal entry for the original with the ring order is here:
hawksgirl
Chantie - Canada
Shivers82 - Ireland (no response, no JE)
**restarting with sarkiegirl's copy)**
mazzlestar - UK
k2005 - UK
voveryte - UK
turnpages - UK
bumbelbee - Netherlands
French-girl - Netherlands
LadyTrinity - Norway
libresco67 - Belgium
mrbaggins1 - South Africa
mummafour - Australia
briz-cowgirl - Australia
Easterngirl71 - US
sarkiegirl - US

Let's keep this one going! Thank you everyone for participating!

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

On the way to mazzlestar!

Got a few at the moment (ha, a few doesnt cover it!) but should be moving faster once I've pushed my way through The Invisible Man, which i'm not really enjoying...

I really enjoyed this book, but it's taken me an absolute age to get through, for which I apologise! Sending out on Friday :) thanks for sharing.

The postman was unable to deliver the package and it went back to the sorting office. Unfortunately i've been working in another town recently and today was the first chance i've had to collect it! Sorry for the delay, i have a few days off now so i'll finish it as quickly as poss and get it moving again. :-)

Received 2 days ago. Looking forward to read this one!

I don't know what to think of this book. It was not what I expected, and I found it difficult finishing it, though I was looking forward to reading this book for a long time. I'm not sure if I am great fan of her writing style and we don't share the same taste in clssics. However, I really liked the Thursdays classes and the trial of "The Great Gatsby". Also, it was interesting to learn about oppression and the revolution in Iran, culture of Iran. Even if it was not a fiction, some of the characters were really amazing.
5 stars only, as the book didn't impress me at all and left somewhat annoying aftertaste.
Travelling to turnpages.

Thank you for the Ring and for sending the book on to me. As usual, there have been some rings arriving at the same time, but I'll try to get through them one by one and so the book shouldn't be with me for too long...

Well, here we are now. I have finished with this book.
I really enjoyed reading the first section, where Nafisi relates her experiences in Tehran to Nabokov's "Lolita". However, after that I really struggled with the book, as it was repetitive and less well referenced and linked. But overall a fascinating story about a country we don't usually learn about.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

As from today, this book is on its way to the next reader... Enjoy!!

I received the book today and am quite curious about it. I actually like the physical feel of the book (I hope this doesn't sound to strange), but the book has a nice soft, worn and read feel to it. I like that in a book. Let's hope the story it tells can live up to the expectations the feel of the book gives me!

I finished the book a couple of days again and I found it a very touching book. It's gives a thourough image of live in the Islamic Republic of Tehran and you can relate better to the oppresion, but also to the continuing of 'normal live'.

I've already pm-ed French-girl for her adress, so I'll sent the book along as soon as I have it. Thanks again for sharing hawksgirl!

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

I send the book on friday to French-girl!

Received quite some days ago... Sorry for posting late. Thank you very much for sending it bumblebee + hawksgirl for strating the ring!!

Thank you again hawksgirl, sarkiegirl, bumble bee for the nice read! (And sorry for being that late!)

This book is not a novel, not an autobiography (the author does not really tell much about her family life for instance), not a literature text book. Maybe it is a bit of it all? Nafisi gives an account of her life as a university teacher and a literature freak in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nafisi gives us a peek at the necessity of literature when one is living under a totalitarian regime. She also describes how it feels to live a life without individual freedom.

`As I try now to piece together the disjointed and incoherent events of that period, I notice how my growing sense that I was descending into an abyss or void was accompanied by two momentous events that happened simultaneously: the war and the loss of my teaching job. I had not realized how far the routines of one´s life create the illusion of stability. Now that I could not call myself a teacher, a writer, now that I could not wear what I would normally wear, walk in the streets to the beat of my own body, shout if I wanted to or pat a male colleague on the back on the spur of the moment, now that all this was illegal, I felt light and fictional, as if I were walking on air, as if I had been written into being and then erased in one quick swipe.`

Another quote I like is when Nafisi explains what the situation feels like for Mashid, one of her students that was very religious already before the Islamic morality became almighty, and how this change did not alter her life for the best either. That will stay with me for a long time.

`Mashid, I thought, more than my most secular students, has the most troubling questions about religion. In her class diary and papers, with a rage as restrained as her smiles she reviewed and questioned minutes details of life under Islamic law. Mashid later wrote in her class diary ``Both Yassi and I know that we have been losing our faith. We have been questioning it with every move. During the Shah´s time it was different. I felt I was in the minority and I had to guard my faith against all odds. Now that my religion is in power, I feel more helpless than ever before, and more alienated.`` She wrote about how ever since she could remember, she had been told that life in the land of infidels was pure hell. She had been promised that would be different under a just Islamic rule. Islamic rule! It was a pageant of hypocrisy and shame. She wrote about how at work her male superiors never look her in the eye, about how in movies even a six-years-old must wear a veil and not play with boys. Although she wore the veil, she described the pain of being required to wear it, calling it a mask behind women were forced to hide. She talked about all of this, coldly, furiously, always with a question mark after each point.`

I loved the reflections on the relevance of fiction. Never thought about that, at least not since college! I regretted not to have read most of the classics Nafisi is talking about. It is not a requisite though. And I do feel like reading then now … :o)

Off to LadyTrinity as soon as I get an address!

18-07 PMed LadyTrinity for the second time.
01-08 PMed Lady Trinity for the third time, if I don't get an answer before 8 of August, I'll mail the book to the next person on the list!

02/01/2012 On its way to Libresco... Just with a little delay ;)