Category Archives: book review

Books in Chennai: Anna Centenary Library and Starmark

During our first week in Chennai we discovered the Renga Lending Library here in our own neighborhood (Click here to read that post: “Saved by the Neighborhood Library“). The following week we trekked a little farther afield to three other book sites: The Anna Centenary Library, built in 2010; The Phoenix Mall Starmark, one of the newest bookstores in Chennai; and Higginbotham’s, India’s oldest bookseller.

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New Book: What Counts as Evidence in Linguistics?

I just read an announcement for a new book: What Counts as Evidence in Linguistics Edited by Martina Penke and Anette Rosenbach, and published this year by John Benjamins.  According to the description of the book on the LingusitList, this book focuses on the innateness debate and shows how formal and functional approaches to linguistics have different perspectives on linguistic evidence. The three guiding questions for this volume are: What type of evidence can be used for innateness claims (or UG)?; What is the content of such innate features (or UG)?; and, How can UG be used as a theory guiding empirical research?

This book will be on my list of books to read after I finish my MA Thesis.

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Land Beyond the River, by Monica Whitlock « Birds’ Books

Birds’ Books just posted a review of Monica Whitlock’s Land Beyond the River,

An informative journalistic description of the social and political developments in Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan during the 20th century.

The book gives accounts of the turbulent, and unfortunately often violent, recent events in the region such as:

unrest and revolution in Bukhara in the second decade of the 20th century, the Tajik civil war and its resolution in the 1990s, and ongoing displacement of Tajiks due to war, forced migration, and other hardships.

Read the review at: Land Beyond the River, by Monica Whitlock « Birds’ Books

Everyday Islam–Soviet Anthropologist on Central Asia « Birds’ Books

 Jamela just posted a review of Everyday Islam, a book by a soviet anthropoligist about the tenacity of tradition and failure of sovietization in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. You can read it here:

Everyday Islam–Soviet Anthropologist on Central Asia « Birds’ Books