Check out Uzee's blog!

Hey kids, the lovely and talented Uzma Aslam Khan has now got her very own blog up and running. Unlike mine, hers is less of an ongoing conversation full of smart-alecky comments, and more of a central point to links about her books, her online nonfiction articles, and various other items of interest such as interviews. Info can be found there about her new novel, The Geometry of God, which is forthcoming from Rupa & Co., India, within a few weeks, as well as numerous articles she has written, including a prescient one on Pakistan's judicial crisis, written way back in March. Also of particular interest (to me anyway) is her most recent article, written for Drawbridge magazine in the UK, about a trend in literature that is problematic, and encapsulated in novels like The Kite Runner and Brick Lane, and non-fiction about oppressed Muslim women and the men who treat them so bad. So if you've read any of that stuff (and even if you haven't), take a look.

All this and more can be found at

http://uzmaaslamkhan.blogspot.com/

I'll put a permanent link on the sidebar here so it'll be easy to find in the future.

In other news, for those of you who are keeping track of such things, Benazir is still under house arrest, we still don't have independent news channels, and the latest promise is that elections will be held by January 9. Which would mean a couple more months of martial law/emergency rule. John Negroponte is on his way to Islamabad to lean on Mush, which is nice. Shame it didn't happen last year, three years ago, five years ago, seven years ago, but whatever. You can't have everything.

We watched Before Sunrise a couple nights ago. It was sweet, worth a look. We also watched The Usual Suspects and were underwhelmed, despite the great cast (Kevin Spacey, Benicio del Toro, Chazz Palmentieri, Gabriel Byrne). Somewhere along the line, somebody decided that crime thrillers would be a lot better if the chronology was all messed up (21 Grams, etc), and sometimes, okay, it works. But sometimes it doesn't really do much except seem confusing while trying to cover up what is, after all, a pretty thin plot. Oh well.

Hey! The Coen Brothers' adaptation of No Country For Old Men by Cormac Mccarthy--a great book--is coming our Friday. I won't see it here in Pakistan, but somebody, go watch and tell me how it is. If you dare. Fargo remains one of the great movies of all time and I've been waiting for the Coens to match those heights. This might be the one.