I was in Dubai for a few days and by chance I was lucky to find myself wondering a few bookstores. Though I picked up a few, there was an array of books that I was interested in seeing that stayed within their shelves:
The Intriguing:
It was the first time I see entire Qur'an sections in bookstores. What was really funny actually was that among them was the American book store chain, Borders. They had Quran's in Arabic, English, Quran studies, Islamic studies and so on. I was glad to see it, it was quite novel to me.
the totally-up-my-ally-but-I-couldn't-carry-too-many books:
Coming from London I had the intention of looking out for urban/architecture books from the Middle East. I did get one book of essays (Planning Middle Eastern Cities: an urban kaleidoscope in a globalizing world), but here are a few that I hope to have a closer look at sometime in the future.
the totally Orientalist:
I was so surprised to see that the commonalities of the books in the duty free were the themes of "weird", money and terrorism. Illustrating them were equally as interesting images attempting to symbolize the archaic meeting ultramodern. Camel caravan silhouettes against an urban backdrop, burqi ladies on mobile phones: the Orientalist nightmare just won't end.
This one was especially interesting, the back cover description described the author of the book, a White, New Zealander wife of the Jordanian Bedouin, as "as much of a curiosity as the cave dwellers."
interesting:
Then, I just thought these two were interesting and worthy of a mention.
Putting the "how to WRITE your WILL" book in the 'business' section was a bit eerie and just didn't seem right.
I think they're turning Japanese.
