say: for our last outing to Bars never before had we laughed got drunk gripping tight to the joke, it rained smoke rings, jazz music, hedonism. Your trace was hunger under silver cloches this, a warm spell astounds surely you muffled then: “I just wanna cut and paste you hold you, smell you, taste of you is difficult to die when you have a kind of gunk. Malignant.” Blog, share, click, it’s important to love and sign in, log in, here’s your ass just for him.

...Becker crisscrossed the globe, from the beaches of Sri Lanka to the game reserves of sub-Saharan Africa, from the vineyards of France to America’s national parks, measuring the impact of the tourist trade. And while she finds plenty of inspiring examples of wise governance and corporate responsibility, in many other cases greed and shortsightedness have ruined once-pristine environments, exacerbated human misery and destroyed the spontaneity that once made travel an adventure.

...she saw something, coming...The ocean looked closer. It looked foamier. Before long they and their two young sons were running. There was no time to warn her parents, staying in the same hotel. The four of them made it into a Jeep, and were driving away, when the tsunami overtook them. Her husband died in the churning water. So did their sons, ages 5 and 7. So, it happens, did her parents...

...congee neither lengthens nor curtails your life. And it’s just right there between comforting and bland: eating it makes you feel like you’re on the one hand nourishing your needs and on the other hand doing penance for your sins.

a Ceylonese Odysseus...Through [the] protagonist’s...eventful life, Boyagoda explores themes of shifting identity, of the diamond-hard determination to evade one’s destiny, and of the inner landscapes of an island that itself undergoes a dramatic transformation.

“The Cat’s Table” is about an 11-year-old boy, “green as he could be about the world,” who takes an indelible sea voyage in the early 1950s. The boy’s name is Michael, as is the author’s, and both sailed to England from Sri Lanka; but this lovely, shimmering book of Michael Ondaatje’s is no memoir. It is a tender meditation on how a child can be “smuggled away accidentally, with no knowledge of the act, into the future.”

...de Kretser's displaced and subtle characters are genuinely interesting, and her writing is emotionally accurate when it isn't holding trendy poses. Such posturing is probably, and understandably, camouflage. A young author, particularly a woman, who refuses the artificiality and ironic distancing expected of successful novels in the current modernist style can be excused for disguising subversion with the very manner she is subverting.

...He asked if I knew where a particular conference room was. I pointed to the location on my program. I looked at his beautiful white hair. I listened to his voice steeped with Canada and Sri Lanka. I looked at his hands and thought about all the beautiful words that had come from them. I didn't say "You're Michael Ondaatje!" I knew. He knew I knew.  He thanked me and nodded as we got off the elevator and went in opposite directions. "I love your work," I said over my shoulder and wished I could have come up with something more genuine, something closer to how I really felt. What I wanted to yell was "I write better because of you!"

Indian-Americans are the most educated, most affluent and among the most entrepreneurial of all groups in this country, according to the U.S. India Political Action Committee. Their median household income is $69,470, nearly twice the $38,885 of all U.S. families; close to two thirds of those over 25 have at least a bachelor's degree and almost 58 percent of all Indian-Americans in the work force are professionals and managers..."Like any immigrant community, South Asians [Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans] had survival as their first priority, which translated as 'I want to make sure my child is getting to Harvard,'" explained Shefali Razdan Duggal, 39, an Indian-born Democratic activist in San Francisco who has worked with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Barbara Boxer. "The next generation, my generation, has the luxury to be able to pursue and participate in politics"...Her generation is also flexing its political muscle in both parties as never before...