Author’s Note: I decided to write this disclaimer after I finished writing this post for the sole purpose of encouraging anyone wishing to comment on the post or the subject matter that there is a need to read the post all the way through. It should also be noted that I have not read the […]

FP Passport has an interesting feature on what is best described as “graphical journalism”. The book, “After 9/11″, is essentially a graphical representation of the 9/11 Commission report. You can hear about the artists/authors on NPR.
The reason I wanted to post this is mainly because I am always fascinated, if not infatuated, with how information […]

Remember this big cultural phenomenon about a boy wizard named Harry Potter? Well, if you do, you might be interested to know that the Arabic version of Harry Potter has just been banned. Ponder that for a moment. I know. It’s heavy. Let it sink in.
Oh, wait. This time, the ban is actually political […]

While I tend to read a lot of books, for some reason, I tend not to review (hardly) any of them on the Black Iris. It might have something to do with the difficult task of summing up a book in several lines, that took several hours, stretched across several days to read/experience. Also I […]

Readers is having a big sale. A bunch of books throughout the store are wrapped in a red ribbon, which means they’re 50% off and you can score some pretty cheap deals. For about 30JDs I got about 5 books, including a hardcover copy of Alan Greenspans’ The Age of Turbulance (total of 11JDs), which […]

Besides varying artwork and font selections as well as hardcover or soft cover choices, I would argue little has changed in the publishing world during the past century when it comes to books (at least presentation-wise). But now, Penguin, one of the biggest publishers in the world, has started, what we might call, a web […]

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” - The Second Law of Clarke’s Three Laws
To Arthur C. Clarke, whose words fueled my imagination growing up (especially the wanting-to-become-an-astronaut phase). May God rest your soul.

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In the state of siege, time becomes space
Transfixed in its eternity
In the state of siege, space becomes time
That has missed its yesterday and its tomorrow…
The siege will last in order to convince us we must choose
an enslavement that does no harm, in fullest liberty!
- Under Siege by Mahmoud Darwish
Gaza is still under siege
Mahmoud Darwish […]

I first passed by Readers a few weeks ago, in July, soon after they launched on the day the last Harry Potter book came out. At the time, I was impressed but I didn’t get the chance to really browse through the place. First of all, it’s easily accessible which I love, especially when compared […]

FOR YOUR MUGGLE READING PLEASURE, THIS POST IS SPOILER-FREE.
So the tale of Harry Potter comes to an end in The Deathly Hallow, with over 750 pages worth of reading. Let me say this, I never thought Rowling was a great writer; she had a great idea but not the best of writing to back it […]

Why oh why did someone have to go and ruin everything by making this movie?
Hannibal Rising is as the title suggests, about the young Hannibal Lecter years and years before he became the psychopath portrayed by the extraordinary Sir Anthony Hopkins (neglecting Brian Cox in Manhunter). I never read Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Rising which […]

An excerpt from Chuck Palahniuk’s novel “Haunted” that I found quite telling of the human condition…

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Within a minute of boarding a plane and sitting down I always reach for the emergency pamphlet just to chuckle as I resurrect Tyler Durden’s eternal observation: Emergency water landing, 600 miles an hour: blank faces, calm as Hindu cows…

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It started with ‘Da Vinci Code’ and ended with ‘Deception Point’ as I’ve only recently managed to cover all of Dan Brown’s books. My conclusion? Brown is a pretty bad writer. I’m sorry, I know there are big fans of the guy out there but he’s frankly a bad writer. So what makes it for […]

Can you imagine life without music? Monday morning’s without a soundtrack? Every car ride you’ve ever taken, every time you’ve been out cruising, without a single tune as your GPS? I admit I sometimes take music as seriously as Jack Black’s character, Barry, in High Fidelity. I’m the guy who goes on one hour rants […]

I freaked out when I read this, the kind of freaking out that results in hair pulling but currently my hair is too short to pull so I slapped myself hard to make sure I wasn’t dreaming…
Jordan’s Al-Dastour newspaper reports that the Department of Publications is taking Jordanian poet Ibrahim Nasrallah to court over his […]