See You in Istanbul

I have just published my first book, See You in Istanbul, in both e-Book and print format!  It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  See You in Istanbul is a collection of funny stories about travel, food, and family.  It is about the misadventures we often go through as we go exploring outside our realm.  I was influenced by the great, hilarious David Sedaris and Laurie Notaro, two of my favorite writers.

Please check it out readers!  I hope you enjoy it.

Amazon Link:
http://www.amazon.com/See-You-Istanbul-Peri-Unver/


Barnes & Noble Link:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/see-you-in-istanbul-peri-unver/


Some pictures of the yummy food described in See You in Istanbul (good thing you guys can't see me drool...

In Istanbul, the de-salting of fish, a sort of extravagant process

Sea bass

A type of burek (fried pastry filled with ground beef) that my Aunt makes

Sigh...manti. It is a delicious dish with ground beef in little dough hat-like shapes boiled to perfection.  Add garlic yogurt and a spicy butter sauce and voila- it's nom nom nom time.

My dad, who is like a master chef, makes scrumptious Turkish dishes often.  This one is a favorite, kofte (beef patties) with "Shepherd's Salad," tomato-butter rice, tursu (Turkish pickles), and purslane and garlic yogurt.  We keep trying to tell him he should open a restaurant.

A giant kumru sandwich-made of toasty sesame bread with sucuk (spicy beef sausage), tomato, and cheese melted to greatness.

Don't bring any guilt around here! Lokma is like a donut, fried dough with a sweet syrup and cinnamon on top.

Quotes

I am an aficionado of quotes.  Whether it be funny ones, like when Modern Family's Cam says of Lily's biting problem: "It's like Twilight back here!" or on The Good Wife when Alicia Florrick says to her husband's female political opponent "People wonder whether men and women can be friends.  The question is, can women?"

I like quotes from books, movies, and television shows but I also like quotes or lines from songs too.  Recently I've been listening to Grace Potter's "Stars" and loving the lyrics.  I dare you to listen to this song and not feel nostalgic.  Every time I listen to it I can see certain images.  My favorite lines are:

"I lit a fire with the love you left behind
And it burned wild and crept up the mountain side...

I can't look at the stars
They make me wonder where you are...

And if I know you at all, I know you've gone too far"

Actually, I don't think Taylor Swift gets enough credit for her ability with words.  Off of her latest album, from her song "All Too Well," there's a particular phrase that I have fallen in love with.

"You call me up again just to break me like a promise.
So casually cruel in the name of being honest
I'm a crumpled up piece of paper lying here..."

A favorite poem of mine that is beautifully haunting is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.

"And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown."

My chest hurts and feels hollow after I read this poem no matter how many times.  As Dumbledore says to Harry, "Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it."

Spring and All Its Secret/Hidden Memories

Springtime is bittersweet.  Whereas Autumn is filled with the fluttering of beginnings, spring usually means the end of something.  In my case this spring would have been the time I graduated from Stanford.  One of my tutees (who is in elementary school) recently asked me if I cried once I went on leave because of my knee.  Cried for what I asked?  He wondered if I cried because I missed school and my friends.

I told him I hadn't but that's a supreme lie.  Sure I cried.  Hell I still cry sometimes and let the tears fall on Pilgrim's fur, crimping it in the area that becomes wet.  Mostly I cry for what I remember and what I feel like I'm missing.  Lost time and lost experiences, lost years I guess are what I cry for.

I can see the path that would have led me to graduation this year, a senior.  I guess I would have already had to decide whether or not I wanted to pursue a Master's or PhD degree.  Would I want to teach or would I have been as set on writing?

Then I think that I would've almost been stuck in time without ever really growing or evolving.  I would have been set in my ways, in a box.  Stuck with the same old friends and close-mindedness.  I wouldn't change or trade the person I am today for the naive one I was.

I hadn't written for a while.  Tomorrow I am seeing my surgeon to find out if the cartilage transplant was semi-successful.  I am back on the two crutches and feel like throwing them into the fire.  I want to be able to walk Pilgrim finally and to return to college in the fall. 

The summer is an open book.  What lies ahead I don't know but I feel some excitement in the air. 

Star-Crossed Loves

I have found a new doomed romance.  That's my weakness.  Doomed romances, ships passing in the night.

Scandal has the pair that I am obsessed with.  Kerry Washington and Tony Goldwyn portray Olivia Pope and the President of the United States, otherwise known as Fitz, respectively.  They are a duo that never quite find peace.  When one of them is ready to go all-in the other isn't.  One is always begging for the other to trust them, to give in to them while the other is angry.  Still, they can't give one another up.

These romances I find so intriguing.  I am enamored with them and with the whole idea of loving someone that much in general.  I blame my mother for reading Pride and Prejudice with my sister and me when we were younger.  We used to cuddle up under the blankets on rainy days and watch the BBC version of P&P and Ang Lee's/Emma Thompson's angsty Sense and Sensibility.  My dad would see the television and roll his eyes.

Flash forward to today and nothing has changed.  In fact, we still watch those same films with the same enthusiasm.  I would like to review two movies that have come out recently on DVD that are of that genre.


Anna Karenina:

Anna Karenina, famously said to be the most well-written novel ever, is creatively brought to film in a way much unlike the adaptions starring Vivien Leigh and most memorably, Greta Garbo.  This writer/film lover/movie reviewer also admittedly has a bit of a thing for tragic heroines (ie. Tess from Tess of the d'Urbervilles) and not just doomed lovers.  

Keira Knightley captures not only Anna's beauty, but also her strength and her passion in a time and place that repressed such feelings in women.  Anna Karenina is a dutiful wife and mother who discovers that both lust and love do exist in the world although they seem foreign and forbidden for women especially.  

Jude Law plays against type as Anna’s stern, older husband.  Law lends too much sympathy to the character, though.  We must feel for Anna more than for her husband although we may disagree with her actions.  After all, this is the man who forbids her to see her own son after her affair with Captain Vronsky.  Aaron Taylor-Johnson (an up-and-comer) stands out as the striking Vronsky.   

What leads to the film being so polarizing is the way in which it is directed.  Filmed by Joe Wright, who shot Atonement and Pride and Prejudice, the movie is like a play.  It is filmed on a stage with moving set pieces and much imagination (Anna’s letter to her estranged husband crumples into snowflakes) but becomes predictable and tiresome.  It also seems like it gets in the way of the story rather than aiding its message and fluidity.  Whether this direction was the right decision for the film is an important question.  Did Wright mean to say we are all just players in life or as inconsequential as moving set pieces?  Or does he mean to show that country life is the only thing that is real not the falsities of city society?  The scenes set in the country are not on the stage while the scenes in the city are.  What we are meant to take from it is unclear and whether this choice in direction was necessary is unclear as well.

A Royal Affair:

I had been excited to see A Royal Affair for a while.  It had gotten good reviews and it looked right up my alley, a costume drama with a tragic romance.

Luckily I wasn't disappointed.  A Royal Affair is a beautiful film that is hard to forget after the final scene.

The film is set in Denmark in the 1700s before the Enlightenment.  We are being told the story by a young English woman, Caroline, who is married off to the Danish king, an immature, mentally ill man.  He doesn't know how to take care of himself yet alone run a country.  This is where Struensee, a doctor, comes in.  He has high hopes to get close to the king and change the country for the better.

Struensee, with the help of the queen, is able to do this but at what cost?  The ending is a disturbing image of how one's good intentions often don't mean very much in the end.

Alicia Vikander, who plays the queen, is excellent.  She is a talented actress (also in Anna Karenina) and definitely one to watch.  She has a knack for making all of her characters relatable and sympathetic.  Mads Mikkelsen (who I am obsessed with currently) is phenomenal.  His eyes are haunting and he is reminiscent of Charles Darnay.

Even though this film is based on true events in history and you know it cannot end well, you still fervently root for Caroline and Struensee to make it.  A Royal Affair is romantic and heart-wrenching, powerful and poignant at the same time.