Blacker Book Club
Cause Untrue, book cover
The Barefoot Book Club as it were is having a meeting with David Blacker on his book Cause Untrue. This Wednesday at 6. That is in time to make Quiz after (8, Inn on the Green). Again, Book Club at 6 on Wednesday. Cause Untrue is an innaresting book, probably the only fun book about the war. It pastes an international espionage thriller onto what, appears to us, and ungodly mess and its detachment from the moralizing and hand-wringing is refreshing. Think what a lot of us forget is that war, on the right side of the gun, is exciting and peace is not a truly desired human state. I was reading this Dalrymple book about India and his trips about. He spoke bout how the Tigers were inspired by Rambo and Schwarzenegger films. There is still a glory and a thrill to violence, and I don’t think we can deny that. Not saying that Blacker glorifies the war, but the book is entertaining.
Blacker is a unique character in that he wrote a book, and he is very active online and on Moju. He has the perspective of a soldier, having served in the 6th Singha Rifles, but he’s also a Burgher and currently living in Germany. If perspective is an unique angle on things then he certainly has one. The book is available at Barefoot and Yapa among others (I think) and it’s well worth a read. I read it in a few quick gulps in Nuwara Eliya cause it goes down like a thriller, just set in places you know. I only wish GOSL was so organized and the LTTE so self-destructive, but it’s a good read.
Anyways, Book Club, 6pm, Wednesday (tomorrow), Barefoot. Sanjana wrote a more comprehensive review on Moju. If you haven’t read the book, WriteClique has an excerpt if you want to wing it.
I recently wrote about gay marriage, which is not even on the radar in Sri Lanka. But we have another type of marriage discrimination here as well. Foreign marriage. If you marry someone non Sri Lankan, they can never become a citizen. Their lives and their rights to even be in the same country as their children are permanently unstable, and it’s patently unfair.
When 
I started off not really liking General Sarath Fonseka, him being part of the aggressive war effort. I didn’t support the war (largely cause I thought it would fail), and I thought Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Fonseka were gleefully stomping everything. Fonseka even came out and said “I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people,” in 2008 (
General Sarath Fonseka was arrested on a bunch of trumped up charges, but mainly for daring to threaten Mahinda in a Presidential election. Despite his poor health, Fonseka was arrested in February 2010 and sentence to three years. Word on the street now, however, is that he’ll be released soon. Like any day now. President Mahinda Rajapaksa has told 
I’ll probably make it, as long as we can go for the quiz afterwards.
Return of Colombo Pub Quiz
thanks indi. hope to see some of you here.
I’m in the process of reading it…and I love it!
you run off to germany now david…?
y men?
thought you were “mr. SLA”
this book is FANTASY
I thought it was fiction? …anyways idiots aside I thought the book was very entertaining…not something you can say for most of SL fiction, which though ranging from good to subliminal (and some shit inbetween)…generally has a more serious undertone..
Its definitely an interesting read and I enjoyed David’s characters. His familiarity with the military adds more than a semblance of reality to the book.
look forward too seeing you here at 6:00, david.
I’ll be there. Look forward to seeing Truely. Really.
sorry, prior commitments david…
woulda loved to have talked to you about your fantasys
That’s ok, I’m sure your shrink would’ve understood. It’s funny how the retards are all committed. Oh well.
Thanks for coming, David. I somehow feel I missed an opportunity to sell more of your book.
Hopefully, next year, or whenver it may be- we will have more time to organsie it.
It was fun, Naz, thanks for having me. And it was cool to finally meet Indi & Sophist and put faces to the handles. Thank Dom again from me for the pix. I guess he can make anyone look good!
Thank you for this link. That WriteClick excerpt was superb. Albeit, I prefer the poetry, exemplified by their top ten:
“how to dump a nerd” http://writeclique.net/work.php?ID=5176
“imagining the mind of that self same nerd” http://writeclique.net/work.php?ID=5173
Forgive my titles — it is in my nature to perceive greater depth — to be clairvoyant about an author’s hidden meanings of her compositions — and these implied themes just flowed with those poems. Albeit, accepted, my amateur interpretation may well be far from the truth — although “what is truth but what one makes it to be?”
Excellent writing skills. Albeit, I hope the writer hasn’t actually behaved in that prescribed manner toward a living man. It seems a little too realistic.
Do not stray away from reading #5 and #7 on the top ten, which read very well too.
Rather irrelevant to this topic isn’t it? But true those writeclique.net poems were good and had a feel of being personal. I fail to read in a definite connection with “nerds” and will not try to comprehend that!