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Books and the Iphone

By Anita Mathias

Liked the book? Try the app

Eager to find new ways to involve his readers in the mysteries of numbers, mathematician Marcus du Sautoy looked to new technology. A revolution is coming, he argues, and the whole idea of what a book can do is about to change
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  • Marcus du Sautoy
  • The Guardian, Saturday 3 July 2010
  • Article history
from Alice in Wonderland for the iPad
Illustration from Alice in Wonderland on the iPad. Photograph: Atomic Antelope
Consider two books: Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Not the printed books, the apps – software for mobiles and the iPad. The Wolf Hall app is a thing of beauty. It contains the text, of course, but readers can also move slickly between the text, family trees of the Tudors and the Yorkists, extra articles by Mantel and a fascinating video discussion between the novelist and historian David Starkey. All of which gives a deeper and richer understanding of the novel’s historical context and its characters.
  1. The Num8er My5teries: A Mathematical Odyssey through Everyday Life
  2. by Marcus du Sautoy
  3. 320pp,
  4.  

  5. Fourth Estate,
  6. £16.99
  1. Buy The Num8er My5teries: A Mathematical Odyssey through Everyday Life at the Guardian bookshop
But this is nothing compared to Alice for the iPad. You can throw tarts at the Queen of Hearts, help the Caterpillar smoke his hookah pipe, make Alice grow as big as a house and then shrink again. You can watch as “the Mad Hatter gets even madder”, and throw pepper at the Duchess. Over the 52 pages of the app there are 20 animated scenes. Each illustration has been taken from the original book and has been made gravity-aware, responding to a shake, tilt or the touch of a finger. The story is never the same twice, because users are Alice’s guide through Wonderland. The Caterpillar will smoke his hookah in a new way when you tilt your iPad, or you can throw more pepper the second time around.
It would have been quite simple to convert the printed files of Carroll’s book and drop it straight on to the iBookstore, but what Atomic Antelope (atomicantelope.com) has done, through painstaking artistry, is to capture, for adults and children alike, the fantastical nature of the story. This is about recreating what a book is and can be. With the advent of new technology – devices such as the iPhone or iPad, the Sony Reader or the Kindle – authors and publishers are being offered a huge challenge: to reconceive their content to provide a visual and interactive experience that the printed book cannot provide. Art books with huge numbers of accessible images; architecture books with 3D plans of buildings; travel books with videos and interactive maps; children’s books with games and characters who introduce themselves; and so on and on. The potential is vast. This is not a case of simply trying to cram written content on to an e-reader; this is about taking that content and completely reinventing it.
Currently readers are being offered little more than the novelty of a book on an electronic device, but the thrill of turning the page by clicking a button quickly pales. Many of the current projects are just tarted-up books for electronic media, but if it doesn’t move the experience on to a new level, to enhance the material, what’s the point? What authors and publishers need to do is to go back to the drawing board and, at the moment ideas are conceived, work out how – if at all – to make use of these new toys.
Before we get too cross-eyed about what the technology can do, there are a number of caveats. In 80 days Apple sold 3m iPads worldwide. It’s a staggering amount, but on the tube people reading books outnumber those reading from iPads by more than 100 to one. And books are a great invention. They are durable, portable. Their batteries don’t run out. They look great, and it is much easier to show off that you are reading Tolstoy in the original with a paperback than it is on an e-reader. Perhaps most important, the rules for publishing, say, Annie Proulx’s short stories are not the same as those for publishing Simon’s Cat on a portable Playstation. What can and should be done with one type of book will not necessarily translate to another.
Non-fiction surely provides more potential than fiction. It’s difficult to see what else could be done with a novel such as Wolf Hall, however elegant the app. (And to read the novel on an iPhone would take 40,000 swipes or tilts of the screen.) The exception is children’s fiction. Already game developers and publishers are working on augmented-reality books that follow on from Mobile Art Lab’s PhoneBook, available from Amazon Japan, a hybrid that combines the iPhone with an ordinary book. The iPhone is placed inside the covers of a picturebook and, as you turn the page, you simultaneously turn the page on the iPhone to reveal interactive imagery.
Non-fiction is different again. What is a footnote, after all, but an attempt to break out of the linear structure of a book? How reference books could change can now begin to be imagined, but I’m particularly interested in apps for non-fiction that are not designed to break up a narrative in a radical way, but rather to augment a storyline – for me, non-fiction works best when it tries to emulate the narrative that drives a reader to the end of a novel.
To understand how to make the most of the new technology, I decided to go back to first principles and analyse what it is that I do as a mathematician and a writer. My job is, as the jargon goes, to “deliver content” in as many different forms and to as many different people as possible. I prove theorems; I present TV and radio programmes; lecture in schools, universities, prisons and to government; I collaborate with theatre companies and composers to create artistic pieces that explore mathematical themes; and I’ve worked with games developers to create mangahigh.com, an internet maths school that allows students to play and get better at maths. None of this will change. Now, however, technology has become so sophisticated in the way it engages its users that I can bring something of the experience of TV and lecturing to the books I write.
My new book, The Num8er My5teries, could have been written before the advent of the digital age and the arrival of smartphones and web-browsing ereaders. But these technologies offer new possibilities. The book is being launched in conjunction with a gaming app, and is an interactive experience: for the first time, I’m using technology to bring the maths alive – to demonstrate, in real time, problems that until now have been explained only in ink or in person.
As the book evolved, it became clear that it was bursting to get free of the constraints of the page. Mathematics is not a spectator sport. You want your readers to get their hands dirty, exploring, investigating, playing and achieving their own “aha” moments. The book contains mathematical experiments that explore the dynamics of population growth, experiments that are best appreciated by doing them yourself; and there are games whose mathematical strategies the reader can try out on the app.
The experience is still highly text-based; it’s not a book that would work better as a website, and it’s far from a videogame. It has a strong narrative line, telling the story of five of the greatest unsolved problems in mathematics. The first mystery is the challenge of finding a pattern behind the enigmatic prime numbers. A curious cicada in north America turns out to have been the first species to embark on an exploration of these numbers. The book describes an experiment that helps readers to explore why primes might have been the key to the evolutionary survival of this strange insect. But it is the unpredictability of these numbers as one climbs through the universe of numbers which represents one of the biggest mathematical mysteries. A game of prime number hopscotch gives the reader a real feeling for their wild behaviour, as do the page numbers, which vary according to whether they are prime or not.
Other mysteries include the search for the elusive shape of the universe. Exploring the bagel shape that hides behind the 1970s videogame Asteroids turns out to be the best warm-up to navigating the four-dimensional contours of our real universe. The ability to predict certain developments in the future using the equations of maths is something that not only mathematicians but also climate scientists, astronomers and economists would love to develop.
One chapter has games at its heart. Mathematics is a very powerful tool for producing winning strategies in a range of games, from Monopoly to chocolate-chilli-roulette, from the lottery to the roulette wheel. But there are some games that are currently beyond the limits of mathematics. It is these unsolved mysteries which make it a living subject, constantly evolving, changing and surprising.
The Num8er My5teries draws heavily on technology from Japan, and features, among the games and puzzles, Quick Response (QR) codes. These are rather peculiar-looking barcodes that, when you take a photo of them with your smartphone, will take you out of the book to different websites to show you maths in action. My favourite is the video I’ve included of Roberto Carlos demonstrating chaotic and laminar turbulence in one of the most staggering free-kicks ever taken in the history of football . Watching a video of Carlos bending the ball delivers something that no explanation in words or still photos ever could. These QR codes were first used on a dating site where teenagers would wear a T-shirt with a code on the back – if you were interested, you took a photo, followed the link to the website and got in touch.
The Num8er My5teries is still intended to work as a traditional literary experience – to provide a place in which to immerse yourself for more than just a few clicks through pages on the web. It is still principally linear, with a narrative to take you from A to B. But it also aspires to be something different, something more than a book. The games and experiments are there to get the reader actively involved. As Clay Shirky’s new book Cognitive Surplus argues, the internet, computer games and mobile devices are creating a new generation of active producers and sharers of content, rather than passive consumers. New technology, far from dumbing us down, is getting us involved in building a more engaged, democratic and creative world.
Ebooks and apps make it possible to reconceive books for devices that people use to email, call, play games and tweet, in a way that allows an author to reach people who have rarely bought books before. Conversations have begun between publishers and the gaming industry, who previously have had nothing to say to one another.
The future offers much more. One of the most intriguing prospects for me is to use social networking facilities to conduct mass-participation experiments to explain the science discussed in a book. You can already download for nothing an app that allows you to join the Galaxy Zoo project to help astronomers explore the universe. Twitter and Facebook offer the opportunity to create communities bound together by the experience of reading a particular book. The app that lets you read the series of Scott Pilgrim comics on your smartphone is already exploiting the power of social networking to create dialogue between readers, who use the characters from the comics as their avatars.
Authors and composers have for centuries explored ways for readers or listeners to have some involvement in the act of creation – to navigate their way through a piece to create a unique, personal composition. Obvious problems are encountered. Mozart’s Musikalisches Würfelspiel, or musical dice game, produces a different waltz according to the throw of the dice (it is available through an app). The game can produce around 46 million billion different waltzes. Played one after the other, it would take 200m years to hear every waltz. But none of the waltzes compares to any of the compositions that Mozart had total control over.
BS Johnson’s notorious 1969 novel The Unfortunates was unbound and published in a box. The first and last chapters are fixed but readers can choose the order of the 25 chapters that form the body of the book. That’s 15,511,210,043,330,985,984 million different books. The French writer Raymond Queneau, co-founder of the Oulipo movement, provided readers with even more options with his sequence of sonnets in which there is a choice of 10 different versions for each of the 14 lines of the sonnets. Like Mozart’s dice game, this produces work that would take over 200m years to recite. For me, it is a mathematician, Henri Poincaré, who best sums up the problems with these attempts: “To create consists precisely in not making useless combinations. Invention is discernment, choice . . . The sterile combinations do not even present themselves to the mind of the inventor.”
But that doesn’t mean that the new technology doesn’t offer readers a chance gratifyingly to navigate their own passage through a narrative. The challenge of how to use this technology without breaking the narrative experience shares something with television trying to discover what it can do creatively with the red button to enhance rather than interrupt the viewer’s experience. It’s a problem TV has not really been able to crack yet.
The gaming industry has probably made most progress with creating interactive narratives. The Playstation3 game Heavy Rain allows players to make choices at points during the game, resulting in a seamless film-noir experience that varies from player to player. Because you’re responsible for the death of a central character in the closing sequences, you feel more emotionally involved. Fable II for Xbox sees your character morphing, becoming more or less evil, fatter or thinner, according to your actions. Bodies such as the Independent Game Developers’ Association are now seeking out traditional “content providers” to collaborate on new digital projects, and some authors are being drawn to experiment with writing for the gaming industry. Graham Joyce, who has won the British Fantasy award four times, was hired in 2009 to write the storyline for the fourth instalment of the shoot-’em-up videogame Doom.
Such collaborations are beginning to break down barriers. Three years ago the government launched a scheme to provide funding to UK companies that collaborate on digital initiatives in an attempt to stimulate new ideas. Similarly, Artist’s eBooks (artistsebooks.org) has been set up to explore “new platforms and formats” for authors. One book that it features, Niven Govinden’s L’histoire de Bexhill Baudelaire, includes links to YouTube videos which comprise the book’s soundtrack.
Marvel Comics’ app gives you access to more than 500 comic books, featuring Iron Man, Captain America, Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor and more of the world’s most popular superheroes. The app brings the world of Marvel to iPad owners with each comic presented at high resolution, and includes a search engine and innovative viewing options. But apps such as this also often feature a comic shop locator, allowing users to source a local retailer – an indication that the app editions are at present being seen as supplementary to the printed book, not a cannibalisation of an existing market. (I am very grateful to Robin Harvie of Fourth Estate for many of these examples.)
In January, the Diary of Samuel Pepys app was launched – iPhone and iTouch users are sent the relevant diary entries for each day. This, of course, is merely offering a new way to read wonderful things. Writing for new platforms – Japanese mobile phone novels, such as Deep Love by “Yoshi”, are an obvious example – is only just beginning. (For a taste, see theliteraryplatform.com.)
Though one of the central themes of The Num8er My5teries is the power of mathematics to work out what will happen next, maths isn’t much use in predicting the shape that books will take in the decades to come. The nature of literary fiction is unlikely to change, but in different areas of publishing new developments are inevitable. Reading experiences can take many forms. I am always on the lookout for new ways to convey the excitement of my subject, and have now begun to take advantage of the amazing new technology being developed to enrich a reader’s experience. Things are changing fast. Like every writer, I’m already thinking about the next book. But when it arrives, it may not look the way you expect it to.

Filed Under: books_blog, Literature and technology

Books now available as Iphone Apps, with extras (chapters, character sketches..)

By Anita Mathias

The iPhone apps throwing light on best-selling books

Authors such as Iain Banks and Martina Cole are increasingly supplementing book releases with apps full of bonus material
  • Alison Flood
  • The Guardian, Monday 28 June 2010
  •  larger | smaller
Iain Banks
Novelist Iain Banks has an iPhone app to accompany his latest book, Transition. Photograph: Christopher Thomond
The way the books industry is interacting with digital media is developing faster than many had foreseen, with the latest example an attempt to offer fans of author Iain M Banks exclusive unseen chapters, his original notes and commentary for his latest novel.
Mobile software company TradeMobile has worked with Banks’s publisher Little, Brown to develop the free application for the iPhone, which launches this Thursday (1 July). Readers who have bought the paperback of Banks’s latest novel, Transition, will be able to scan a unique barcode on their edition with their iPhone, and companion features for the novel will be transmitted to their screen.
A best-selling author, the publishers also hope the new app may entice readers uninitiated into his complicated universe of difference worlds and civilisations. “For something as complicated as Transition it makes sense,” said Banks. “It’s very much like a DVD extras.”
The app also includes character biographies; after a “slightly anguished” email from his German translator, Banks realised that a character called Bisquitine might need her language and cultural references explaining.
“She appears toward the end of the novel and has an important part to play, and a very eccentric way of expressing herself,” says the author. “It took half a day to write and three to explain.”
Kirk Bowe at TradeMobile says: “You’re able to tap in a page number and get back all the characters, scenes and locations which may be relevant to that page.”
Beyond the iPhone
TradeMobile is currently in talks with Little, Brown about extending the application to other handsets as well as the iPhone. “This helps people who aren’t particularly familiar with an author, especially an author like Iain whom they might not have approached before … it will fill in the blanks that may sometimes scare people away.”
In March the number of books available as iPhone apps passed the number of games for the first time. “It was a tipping point,” says digital editor Dan Franklin at rival publisher Canongate. “The plan is now to be creating something you can only experience digitally” — something which, he admits, defies the instincts of a publisher. “It’s our next challenge [but] it’s difficult,” he says.
TradeMobile’s Bowe feels the “companion” approach works particularly well for fiction. “Tolkien for example would be amazing,” he says. “Really for authors with rich, detailed characters and locations it’s great.”
Banks agrees. “It works well for science fiction, especially when you have a universe or place you go back to. These places gradually build up.
“It’s there if you want it – and that’s the beauty of it, it’s an opt-in thing. It’s not being forced down your neck; if you just want the story, you can have it,” says the author. “We’ll see how it does with the science-fiction stuff – if it’s successful it’s the obvious thing to do to extend it to my other novels.”
Added value
Little, Brown is part of the UK’s largest publishing conglomerate, Hachette UK, which has already launched a similar app for popular crime novelist Martina Cole, and has apps in development for authors including Stephenie Meyer, Patrick Holford and Ian Rankin.
“Anyone can replicate the experience of reading a physical book in an app. Our feeling is that just isn’t very exciting,” says head of digital George Walkley. “With Iain Banks and Martina Cole we’ve tried to provide added value and extra material for authors who have very passionate followings.”
At Canongate, Franklin is impressed with Little, Brown’s new app. “What is cool is that they’re getting it to directly interact with a print edition,” he says. “It’s very clever and something we’re looking to do.”
Canongate is no slouch in the digital department itself, however, launching a (paid-for) enhanced iPhone app for Nick Cave’s novel The Death of Bunny Munro in September, complete with videos of Cave and an audio version synched to the text of the book, scored by Cave himself. The app won second place in MediaGuardian’s own innovation awards, the Megas, earlier this year. And in May, it brought out an enhanced app for David Eagleman’s short story collection Sum: Tales from the Afterlives, featuring videos of Eagleman discussing the book, and a synched audio version read by the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Stephen Fry and Noel Fielding.
Like Walkley, Eagleman believes it is important for an app to be more than just an electronic version of a book. “An electronic version of a book merely grants portability. But a thoughtful app can open new inroads to explore the material, as well as ways to keep the material updated and fresh,” he says.
“By having the option to explore a book beyond the original text — by dint of videos, living links, and so on — it becomes a living, breathing, updating organism, just like the rest of our technology.”
Banks adds: “Everyone’s feeling around – no one knows what’s going to work. It’s quite a nervous time to be a publisher. They’re trying to do what they can to keep books interesting. We will just see how it goes.”
Eagleman agrees. “We’re at an exploratory period now, and no one knows where it’s going. If you imagine yourself 100 years from now looking back, it’s clear that apps are in their infancy and just learning how to crawl. Once they become adults, they might offer such a different experience of the material that they will speciate into an entirely different storytelling animal — as has happened, for example, with movies.”

Filed Under: books_blog, Literature and technology

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My Books

Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India

Wandering Between Two Worlds - Amazon.com
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Wandering Between Two Worlds: Essays on Faith and Art

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Francesco, Artist of Florence: The Man Who Gave Too Much

Francesco, Artist of Florence - Amazom.com
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The Story of Dirk Willems

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Premier Digital Awards 2015 - Finalist - Blogger of the year
Runner Up Christian Media Awards 2014 - Tweeter of the year

Recent Posts

  • “Rosaries at the Grotto” A Chapter from my newly-published memoir, “Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India.”
  • An Infallible Secret of Joy
  • Thoughts on Writing my Just-published Memoir, & the Prologue to “Rosaries, Reading, Secrets”
  • Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India. My new memoir
  •  On Not Wasting a Desert Experience
  • A Mind of Life and Peace in the Middle of a Global Pandemic
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If you'll forgive me for adding to the noise of th If you'll forgive me for adding to the noise of the world on Black Friday, my memoir ,Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India, is on sale on Kindle all over the world for a few days. 
Carolyn Weber (who has written "Surprised by Oxford," an amazing memoir about coming to faith in Oxford https://amzn.to/3XyIftO )  has written a lovely endorsement of my memoir:
"Joining intelligent winsomeness with an engaging style, Anita Mathias writes with keen observation, lively insight and hard earned wisdom about navigating the life of thoughtful faith in a world of cultural complexities. Her story bears witness to how God wastes nothing and redeems all. Her words sing of a spirit strong in courage, compassion and a pervasive dedication to the adventure of life. As a reader, I have been challenged and changed by her beautifully told and powerful story - so will you."
The memoir is available on sale on Amazon.co.uk at https://amzn.to/3u0Ib8o and on Amazon.com at https://amzn.to/3u0IBvu and is reduced on the other Amazon sites too.
Thank you, and please let me know if you read and enjoy it!! #memoir #indianchildhood #india
Second birthday party. Determinedly escaping! So i Second birthday party. Determinedly escaping!
So it’s a beautiful November here in Oxford, and the trees are blazing. We will soon be celebrating our 33rd wedding anniversary…and are hoping for at least 33 more!! 
And here’s a chapter from my memoir of growing up Catholic in India… rosaries at the grotto, potlucks, the Catholic Family Movement, American missionary Jesuits, Mangaloreans, Goans, and food, food food…
https://anitamathias.com/2022/11/07/rosaries-at-the-grotto-a-chapter-from-my-newly-published-memoir-rosaries-reading-steel-a-catholic-childhood-in-india/
Available on Amazon.co.uk https://amzn.to/3Apjt5r and on Amazon.com https://amzn.to/3gcVboa and wherever Amazon sells books, as well as at most online retailers.
#birthdayparty #memoir #jamshedpur #India #rosariesreadingsecrets
Friends, it’s been a while since I blogged, but Friends, it’s been a while since I blogged, but it’s time to resume, and so I have. Here’s a blog on an absolutely infallible secret of joy, https://anitamathias.com/2022/10/28/an-infallible-secret-of-joy/
Jenny Lewis, whose Gilgamesh Retold https://amzn.to/3zsYfCX is an amazing new translation of the epic, has kindly endorsed my memoir. She writes, “With Rosaries, Reading and Secrets, Anita Mathias invites us into a totally absorbing world of past and present marvels. She is a natural and gifted storyteller who weaves history and biography together in a magical mix. Erudite and literary, generously laced with poetic and literary references and Dickensian levels of observation and detail, Rosaries is alive with glowing, vivid details, bringing to life an era and culture that is unforgettable. A beautifully written, important and addictive book.”
I would, of course, be delighted if you read it. Amazon.co.uk https://amzn.to/3gThsr4 and Amazon.com https://amzn.to/3WdCBwk #joy #amwriting #amblogging #icecreamjoy
Wandering around Oxford with my camera, photograph Wandering around Oxford with my camera, photographing ancient colleges! Enjoy.
And just a note that Amazon is offering a temporary discount on my memoir, Rosaries, Reading, Steel https://amzn.to/3UQN28z . It’s £7.41.
Here’s an endorsement from my friend, Francesca Kay, author of the beautiful novel, “An Equal Stillness.” This is a beautifully written account of a childhood, so evocative, so vivid. The textures, colours and, above all, the tastes of a particular world are lyrically but also precisely evoked and there was much in it that brought back very clear memories of my own. Northern India in the 60s, as well as Bandra of course – dust and mercurochrome, Marie biscuits, the chatter of adult voices, the prayers, the fruit trees, dogs…. But, although you rightly celebrate the richness of that world, you weave through this magical remembrance of things past a skein of sadness that makes it haunting too. It’s lovely!” #oxford #beauty
So, I am not going to become a book-bore, I promis So, I am not going to become a book-bore, I promise, but just to let you know that my memoir "Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India," is now available in India in paperback. https://www.amazon.in/s?k=rosaries+reading+secrets&crid=3TLDQASCY0WTH&sprefix=rosaries+r%2Caps%2C72&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_10My endorsements say it is evocative, well-written, magical, haunting, and funny, so I'd be thrilled if you bought a copy on any of the Amazon sites. 
Endorsements 
A beautifully written account. Woven through this magical remembrance of things past is a skein of sadness that makes it haunting. Francesca Kay, An Equal Stillness. 
A dazzling vibrant tale of childhood in post-colonial India. Mathias conjures 1960s India and her family in uproarious and heart-breaking detail. Erin Hart, Haunted Ground 
Mathias invites us into a wonderfully absorbing and thrilling world of past and present marvels… generously laced with poetic and literary references and Dickensian levels of observation and detail. A beautifully written, important, and addictive book. Jenny Lewis, Gilgamesh Retold 
Tormented, passionate and often sad, Mathias’s beautiful childhood memoir is immensely readable. Trevor Mostyn, Coming of Age in The Middle East.
A beautifully told and powerful story. Joining intelligent winsomeness with an engaging style, Mathias writes with keen observation, lively insight and hard-earned wisdom. Carolyn Weber, Surprised by Oxford 
A remarkable account. A treasure chest…full of food (always food), books (always books), a family with all its alliances and divisions. A feat of memory and remembrance. Philip Gooden, The Story of English
Anita’s pluck and charm shine through every page of this beautifully crafted, comprehensive and erudite memoir. 
Ray Foulk, Picasso’s Revenge
Mathias’s prose is lively and evocative. An enjoyable and accessible book. Sylvia Vetta, Sculpting the Elephant
Anita Mathias is an is an accomplished writer. Merryn Williams, Six Women Novelists
Writing a memoir awakens fierce memories of the pa Writing a memoir awakens fierce memories of the past. For the past is not dead; it’s not even past, as William Faulkner observed. So what does one do with this undead past? Forgive. Forgive, huh? Forgive. Let it go. Again and again.
Some thoughts on writing a memoir, and the prologue to my memoir
https://anitamathias.com/2022/09/08/thoughts-on-writing-a-memoir-the-prologue-to-rosaries-reading-secrets/ 
#memoir #amwriting #forgiveness https://amzn.to/3B82CDo
Six months ago, Roy and I decided that finishing t Six months ago, Roy and I decided that finishing the memoir was to be like “the treasure in the field,” that Jesus talks about in the Gospels, which you sacrifice everything to buy. (Though of course, he talks about an intimate relationship with God, not finishing a book!!) Anyway, I’ve stayed off social media for months… but I’ve always greatly enjoyed social media (in great moderation) and it’s lovely to be back with the book now done  https://amzn.to/3eoRMRN  So, our family news: Our daughter Zoe is training for ministry as a priest in the Church of England, at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. She is “an ordinand.” In her second year. However, she has recently been one of the 30 ordinands accepted to work on an M.Phil programme (fully funded by the Church of England.) She will be comparing churches which are involved in community organizing with churches which are not, and will trace the impact of community organizing on the faith of congregants.  She’ll be ordained in ’24, God willing.
Irene is in her final year of Medicine at Oxford University; she will be going to Toronto for her elective clinical work experience, and will graduate as a doctor in June ‘23, God willing.
And we had a wonderful family holiday in Ireland in July, though that already feels like a long time ago!
https://anitamathias.com/2022/09/01/rosaries-readi https://anitamathias.com/2022/09/01/rosaries-reading-secrets-a-catholic-childhood-in-india-my-new-memoir/
Friends, some stellar reviews from distinguished writers, and a detailed description here!!
https://amzn.to/3wMiSJ3 Friends, I’ve written a https://amzn.to/3wMiSJ3  Friends, I’ve written a memoir of my turbulent Catholic childhood in India. I would be grateful for your support!
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