The Lucifer Effect

This is part three of a series that has started in my head after the death of Qaddafi, which evoked something I have been thinking about a lot and a book came to the rescue. Part one is The Death Of Qaddafi  and two is Who Do We Hate ? And Why ?


How do you judge people? Don't pretend that you don't judge, we all do. So how do you judge them ? based on what ? most of us do so based on their actions, if they do good things then they are good and if they hurt others then they aren't and we would gladly call them "evil". We do it daily with dictators who kill their people, with rapists, killers, even normal people like you and you and you, cuz I wont judge me !!!.
But do you judge those who stop the evildoers like those who killed Qaddafi too ??


what do we know about the human nature?. How do people turn to good or bad ? How do they react in a good or bad way in the face of tragedies or with evildoers? 


The book that came to help, and believe me books can help you a lot in different parts of your life, is called "The Lucifer Effect, understanding How Good People Turn Evil" by Philip Zimbardo. If you ever heard his name then you would know that he is the one who staged " The Stanford Prison Experiment" . The book is trying to answer questions like "what makes good people do bad things" "how and why we are all susceptible to the lure of "the dark side" ..etc.? .


In the very first pages of the book, Zimbardo explains:
"The Lucifer Effect is my attempt to understand the processes of transformation at work when food or ordinary people do bad or evil things. We will deal with the fundamental question "what makes people go wrong?" but instead of resorting to a traditional religious dualism of good versus evil, of wholesome nature versus corruption nurture, we will look at real people engaged in life's daily tasks, enmeshed in doing their jobs, surviviing within an often turbulent crucible of human nature" and believe me the book has done so and much more. 

Its a big book of 550 pages and a big part of it is a detailed description of his Stanford Prison Experiment. you can read how normal people who were supposed to be prisoners and guards for only two weeks turned in the short time of one and two days to something evil and submissive. It explains a lot about what happens in our world and how do some can control others and how the rest can obey completely. Things we keep saying daily that we wont submit to, we wont let anyone treat us this way or that. I loved the part of the book that explains about "Crimes Against Humanity: Genocide, Rape, And Terror". Leave you wondering and in pain. 


What I love mostly is that unlike lots of psychologists, he doesn't judge, he simply explain to you the why's, the what's and the how's of our human nature. 


 The scariest thing  is that anyone of us can flip at any second if we don't be aware, awake, teach ourselves that we are all the same no matter what religion, race, country or gender we belong to. These things will help us realize that we can be on the good track. Cuz as much as it's scary to harm yourselves, it will always be horrifying to hurt and kill others. 


And keep praying it will help if you are a believer. 


More: Lucifer Effect
Lucifer
Lucifer Effect Overview

P.S: A free version of the book is available. 

The Help

My thoughts and review of "The Help" 

From Bad Mood To ...

My mood has changed completely today.
I was a bit happy that it's weekend tomorrow after a whole long week of starting school -despite skipping two days off my self, I was sick- .
Anyhow, my mood has changed completely an hour ago when I received a sack - literally a sack- of 15 books from Amazon :D

books do really change my whole life completely.

I must of have done something good today :)

My New Blog

Since i am jealous from all those with blogs about books and seems well educated and sophisticated :P, 

i decided to have a blog about books and call it "Wafa is reading", is not a silly name?  lol

And i will move my two pages (Free books / 52 books in 2011) there too, so for those few of you who check it, follow me :D 

I am a slow reader but i will try my best to post there regularly not once a year. T

he blog will be all about books, news of books...etc. 

So if you are interested, come visit me and check what i am reading in " Wafa Is Reading "

Free Books

So I decided to give my books for free . 

any more ideas are still welcome :) 

you can check the list and the notes on Free Books 

P.S: if you love to recommend books , that's welcome too :)

Thank you : ) 

Books Dilemma !!

I love, love reading books so i buy lots of them, yes they stay for long sometimes for their turn to be read ,but they are going to be read eventually and here is the dilemma :D, 

what shall i do with them after that ? . 

I don't keep  books, i used to but not anymore,  i rarely re-read a book again. 

 then, i used to send them to some of my cousins ,they say they like to read books but apparently they aren't, cuz the packs i sent a few years ago are still not finished or maybe "the take time to read a book" is a gene in the family. Now, they say they don't want any :( 

Libraries here are for selling books, and the only place to sell them is by "bunch" of them only. And i don't care for selling books.

Public places only allow religious books and i can not find anyone to want them !!

 So what do i do with them, right now i have almost 10 finished books but there are 108 are waiting , So...

I thought of giving them as gifts to people who visit my blog here , what do you think ? Is it a good idea ?

Please don't read and leave... give me your opinion, what shall i do with my already-read-books and the rest !!!

BBC Meme: How Many of These 100 Books Have YOU Read?

In 2003, the BBC have conduct a search for the nation's most beloved novel and they have a list of 100 book, over the years the list became a list of how many books have you read. 

Below you will find the list . 

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe 

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell 

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy. 

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert 

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth. 

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville 

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

 78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt. 

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery 

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare 

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo 

Source:- The Big Read 

 Fiona from A Fork in the Road have a great point of view which she shares on her site.

Forget the BBCs booklist, how many of these have you read?

Fiona believe that the list is limited and she shared a list of books by African author or about Africa that must be read .

beautiful list , read it all here

For those who read in Arabic , what will you list of a must read Arabic novels would include ?

Share with us, please :) 

And how about lists of books from each Arabic countries 

And another from every single countries in the world, it would be a great way to widen our knowledge of the whole world.

If you knew any of the lists, share with us please :)

Update:  Chiara  has provided two amazing sites you can check for more books. Free books :)


Free eBook By Project Gutenberg 

Arabic Literature (in English)

Thanks Chiara :) 

Nationality الجنسية

Let me begin by a saying i love and believe in 

"Nationalism is a disease" .

And despite believing in this , I still believe in the right for all to have a nationality and a place he/she can call home.

I remember when picking this book thinking it seems about a Saudi guy writing about non-Saudis but i was in for a surprise. The author was actually non-Saudis who has lived almost all his young life in here.

I loved how he gave a prospective to those Saudis without nationalities as i like to call them. People who have been born and raised here but don't have the Saudi nationality cuz their father is not a Saudi.

The book is called " The nationality" or الجنسية in Arabic. 

 The author is Mutaz Quttainah 

معتز قطينه

It is not a novel nor an autobiography. It's a mix of both probably. It's not perfect but if you look outside your nationality and all these nonsense as i think of then you would understand it.

Saudi Arabia is a big country with a small population and it's rich too which attracts lots of people from different places with different abilities. Unfortunately, it's one of the countries like most Arab countries that wont grant you its nationality even if you are born on its land or stayed for a long time.

I wrote about the real Saudis without nationality in here before. 

The problem is that there are no good reasons for such laws, some have been here for over 40 years and still didn't get the nationality. 

I can understand the frustration of someone who has been wanting to be recognized as from this country but I can not even dream of understanding what's it like for someone who has born here and can not be considered a Saudi cuz he/she doesn't have the nationality. 

I quote some of Mutaz's words from the book 

" لقد كنت دائما مزيجا بين اثنين, دون ان افكر بالامر على محمل الورطة , فالاجنبي الذي يعيش فلسطينيا في السعودية هو ذاته الذي يقضي 

صيفه السنوي سعوديا في شوارع القدس "

" I was always a mixture of the two without considering it a dilemma, for the non-Saudi who is Palestinian in Saudi Arabia is the Saudi spending his yearly summer in the streets of Jerusalem" 

***

"عالم مجهول بيوت الوافدين العرب ! لايعرفه احد و لا تسلط عليه 

العدسات "

"The houses of the Arab workers is a mysterious world, no one knows what's in it and no one cares" 

***

"و اقتحمنا المكتبه العامة المجاورة لمدرستي الابتدائية لنستعير قصص الاطفال و انتظرنا تحت شجرة اللوز البجري آباءنا لـ يقلنا الى منازلنا في نهاية اليوم المدرسي. كانت تتشكل شخصياتنا سويا و تحمل صفاتنا التى تاثرنا بها بعضنا و اثرنا بهاعلى بعضنا قبل ان نعود الى اسرنا التي تخلق في شخصياتنا انفصاما و في السنتنا لهجة اخرى و في 

حياتنا المنزلية قناعا مختلفا عن و جوهناالتي نحملها في المدرسه "

" we invaded the public library near my primary school to borrow children's book and we waited our fathers below the almond tree to take us home at the end of the day. Our personalities were forming together with our similar characteristics before going back to our families which create another personality with another accent and another face than the one we carry at school"

***

"نادرا ماكنا نرى في المدرسه طفلا اجنبيا غير متفوق, لقد كانوا يعلموننا اننا اتينا هنا و نحن غرباء و علينا لكي لانفضح انفسنا الا نشمت بنا احدا "

" Rarely have we seen a non-Saudi who is not hard working and smart. Our families taught us that we are strangers and we shouldn't let people gloating on us"

***

"لم يدركوا ان حقيقة اخرى اخذت في النمو بعيدا عنهم, ان هويتي الفلسطينية التى غرسوها هذه السنوات لم تعد تشكل العصب الوحيد في تكويني فثمة ملامح سعودية في لساني و اخرى مصرية و جزائرية و يمنية "

" They have not realize the other reality that has started to grow away from them. that the Palestinian identity they have install in me is not the only things running inside of me as there are other Saudi,Egyptian,Algerian and Yemeni features in me" 

***

" كيف يفكر هؤلاء الاباء , يغرسون ابنائهم في تربه يختارونها و يعتقدون ان بامكانهم في اي وقت ان يطلبوا تحويل الحصاد الى تربة اخرى"

"How do parents think when they grow their children in another place thinking they can and at any time ask them to switch their life to another place ?"

***

"لماذا نحن اجانب ؟ و كيف تشعر حين تكون اجنبيا "

"Why are we foreigners? And how does it feel to be one? "

***

"ان حياتنا المشتركة مع اخواننا السعوديين شكلت في دواخلنا عقدة نقص اسمها الجنسية .......وكل منا له في هذه الجنسية شأن ...."

" Our live with our Saudi counterparts grow a complex inside of us called the nationality and each wants it for his own reason"

***

" رغم ان حياتي في السعودية لم تكون اقل ايلاما ,فحين تسمي انظمة الارض و قوانينها ابنها اجنبيا يمضي حياته و هو يشعر انه البطة السوداء القبيحة "

" Despite having a tough life in Saudi Arabia but when the land and its law calls its son a foreigner, he spends his life thinking he is the ugly black duck" 

***

"لماذ يعتقد ابناء القبائل  ان الهوية السعودية تخصهم وحدهم وان الجنسية السعودية التى يحملونها لاتكافىءالجنسية التي يحملها القادمون من اقاصي اسيا و الشام و اقاصي افريقيا "

"Why do the Saudi from a tribal origin thinks that the Saudi identity is something belong to them only and that the Saudis from the far Asia , Africa or from Syrian or Lebanese origins are not equal to them "

***

I hope that these words have got you a glimpse into what's the book is all about. And probably into the mind of Saudis without nationality. 

And i hope without high expectation that the day people like Mutaz and many who known no land but this to be equal to me in having the nationality. 

Love,Life and Disability

I just finished my third book of the year :)

it's called " Handle with Care" by Jodi Picoult. 

I love a book that made me think all the time  and that's what this book did. 

I wrote about OI here  which is something you are going to read about the whole book. 

But what this book made me think mostly is love. How love is not a one way, and even the toughest actions can be the product of love. 

It's a long one -648 pages- that leaves you wondering if a mother knew that she is going to have a severely sick child and was giving the chance to abort it before, should she go with the idea or is it an action of  not feeling any kind of love towards this child, what if it's actually an action of love ?. 

Whether you are with or against abortion or if your religion says it's wrong or right? , you just keep wondering. 

What about the idea that people with disability are better of being not born. Is life only for the healthy?, are disabled people the wrong kind of people to be on earth?. What about those healthy ones who got a disability 

later on, should we kill them ? . 

I have two nephews and one niece who are disabled, they have cerebral palsy. they don't speak, see, hear or move. I know that their parents should take more care about them cuz i have seen people with the same disability but in a way better shape, but i wonder do their parents-my sister and her husband- think that since they are disabled, it's better to leave them this way, after all-as what everyone keep saying-they will die soon. The oldest of them -Ahmed-have passed away 4 years ago actually. I remember during my sister's grieving and until now everyone wonders why would she cry over him, it's better that he is dead !! 

cuz he is in constant pain and suffers a lot , that's their excuse.

I wonder if these people would say the same about a healthy kid. !!! 

But then the book also question  the love of mothers. Do all mothers necessarily love their kids ? what if your kids sickness and disability got you out of life, you basically have no life because of them. Will that make you love them or hate them more ? . What about if this mother wanted to abort you but didn't, would that make her lesser mother, a monster mother , a bad mother? What if she shows you every single seconds of your life that she loves you, would that substitute for what she tried to do ?. 

When i was reading the book, i remember the times that my mother fails me- when i was younger- the time that she should support me but she didn't, the times that she should stood by me but didn't, the times she let me down and i wonder: didn't she shows me every single moment after that that she loves me and would die for me, wouldn't that substitute this for that ? 

Would that make her a better mother , a loving one. And the answer is yes for me. 

I's just a long journey in which you are going to live and cry with Charlotte , Amelia, Sean and Willow. There are some lines that made me cry, made me close the book because i couldn't read much more, i couldn't even continue the same lines. I loved Charlotte a lot despite labeled badly by everyone else.

Maybe some of us have a certain problem with his/her body but that doesn't make them less or more than the rest of us. 

They maybe need special treatment, but isn't love commitment. 

And remember that bad times can be replaced with great time if you allow it, after all the only disable person is the person who can't/don't/wont love. 

The only disability is in the feelings. 

P.S: Thanks Becky for introducing me to Jodi Picoult and this amazing book :) 

September Books

September was not a productive month :(

First, there were the Eid, then school started with its preparation and adjusting to different hours.
And now we are very busy with the final touches on the new flat which we will- hopefully- be moving to soon.

So i only managed to read only ONE book and a half  :)

but here it's anyway,

1- Brida- Paulo Coelho

This book has touched me so deeply and had reasoned with me.

This is what the back cover of the book says :-

This is the story of Brida, a beautiful young Irish girl, and her quest for knowledge. On her journey she meets a wise man who teaches her about overcoming her fears, and a woman who teaches her how to dance to the hidden music of the world. They see in her a gift, but must let he make her own voyage of discovery. 

As Brida seeks her destiny, she struggles to find Balance between her relationships and her desire to transform herself. 

 Some excerpt from the book to give you a bit of sense of the book :-

" Now, I've discovered that the search can be as interesting as actually finding what you're looking for"

"There's no point in understanding the entire universe if you're alone"

"our relationship with the world come through our five senses" 

"And what makes you think that we, with our path and our dedication, understand the universe any better than other people?"

"play your part and don't worry about what others do. believe that God also speaks to them, and that they are as engaged as you are in discovering the meaning of life"

"right now, while we're here eating, ninety-nine percent of the people in this plant are , in their own way, struggling with that very question, why are we here? Many think they've found the answer in religion of in materialism, others despair and spend their lives and their money trying to grasp  the meaning of it all. a few let the question go unanswered and live for the moment, regardless of the results or the consequences" 

"what is now proved was once only imagine" by William Blake, one of her fav. authors said so which gives her enough faith to go in search of wisdom.

" we are all masters of our own destiny, we can so easily make the same mistakes over and over. we can so easily flee from everything that we desire and which life so generously places before us"

"finding one important thing in your life doesn't mean you have to give up all the other important things"

"there are no beautiful or ugly bodies, because all had followed the same trajectory, all were the visible part of the soul they inhabited"

"even if she were seventy years old she would still be proud of her body, because it was through her body that soul could do its work"

beautiful review of the book here 

I guess the book helped me a lot more in understanding my femininity.

August Books

I love Susanne monthly list of books she read. 

I love books , i love looking at them, reading them, flipping through their pages. Libraries are one of my favorites places. But sometimes i am completely away from any book and can not even flip a page so i thought that if  need to finish the 30 something books i already have, i probably should make a list like each month like Susanne, thanks for the idea dear  :)

So here is the list of books i read this month "August" :-

1- Laughing Without Accent- Firoozeh Dumas :

A very funny and lovely book. It's about the author's life in Tehran and America. 

Firoozeh lived a very short of her life in Abadan, Iran. A quiet place as the writer describe it , her home town and the place she loves most. Her family had to move to Tehran due to her father's work, a place she didn't quiet like. At an early age, the family moved to America where she portraits in a funny way her life there and the difference between two worlds especially for her parents hence the name " Laughing Without Accent".

Amazing book with no judgments . 

more about Firoozeh and her book from here 

2-The Valkyries- Paulo Coelho

Another beautiful book from the author of "the pilgrimage" and "Veronica decides to die" .

This one is about the visit Paulo and his wife made to the United States of America many years ago. Paulo wanted to see his angel and in his quest to do so he met "the Valkyries" .

I didn't like some of Paulo's books but this one find its way to my heart. 

You can read more about the books and part of it from here 

3- مذكرات من نجا- دوريس ليسينج

I tried to read this book for the 2007 Nobel Prize winner in Literature Doris Lessing " Memories of a Survivor", but seriously couldn't. I guess it was not meant as any kind of reading but very deep. I was not in the mood to go on reading mere description so i stopped. I live books with lots of dialogue so this one was not for me or maybe i should read it in English, though i am sure that the translator was doing great. 

4-الملعونه-اميرة مضحي

One of the books of the more rising authors in Saudi Arabia and it's all a silly love story, closed it quickly.

5-يمنى-سمير عطالله

I love reading the articles of this writer, and i guess i made a mistake of buying a book only because of the name and it failed me. 

6-Playing Cards in Cairo- Hugh Miles:

i wrote about it here . And i said it again, one of the most beautiful books that talks about the life of women in Egypt . 

The writer who was born in Saudi Arabia, describes his second visit to Cairo, Egypt. And how he met Roda, the beautiful Egyptian woman who introduces him to the life of women in Egypt by inviting him to play " taraneeb" a card game. In each thing and place he sees or visits, Hugh goes into the history of it and the how's and why's. If you are an Arab and sensitive about the way Arab or Muslims people are portrayed in a negative way mostly , then this book is not for you. 

Yet, it's funny, honest and describes the lives of a lot of women in the Arab countries.


7- ستر- رجاء عالم
What an amazing Arabic book. A unique look at a love story , its people and the people surrounding them. The author- a very well known Saudi author- make an amazing story, with love in its core but everything else is the key to it. What's is love ? is it based on feelings or physical attraction and desires only.
The life of two Saudi ladies who were looking for love, but get a lot of things along with it.
I don't like reading love stories as i said but this one makes you forget that it's a love story. 

So this is my list for this month, hopefully i will be having a longer list for the next :).


 And thanks again Susanne for the idea :)

P.S: any suggestions for a good reading are welcome :)