Visit to Iran

TO IRAN CAME I, BURNING, BURNING....

Our trip to Iran is just a couple of weeks away.  And suddenly, something that seemed in the
distant future, is upon us.  I have spent weeks creating and revising nine or ten PowerPoint presentations on topics I'll be lecturing on/conducting workshops/learning games on...and now am done with my preparations.  Until tomorrow, that is...though now I'm tired of working on the
presentations.  So far, when I think I'm done with working on a lecture, something else
comes to mind and so the next day I'm back revising the presentation.

I have a little red bag and am bringing eighteen of my books to Iran as gifts to the
university there.  Eighteen different books.  I know it is difficult to get books
in foreign countries and, by chance, we are flying on Turkish airlines which allows
passengers two suitcases free.  So one of my bags is the red one with books...and other
stuff I'm putting in the bag so the books don't shift around and get damaged.

I don't know how many students I'll have or any other details.  I will be giving a lecture
to some cultural studies professors, who are having a banquet in my honor.  That
should be very nice.  This Iran trip is an adventure that I could never have anticipated,
until I was invited.  From what I've read in books, etc. Iran is a fabulous tourist destination
and now the New York Times and various tourism companies offer trips to Iran.  And, if
you like pistachio nuts, it is--so I've been told--the center of the world.

Below is the Iranian translation of my academic murder mystery, Durkheim is Dead:  Sherlock
Holmes is Introduced to Sociological Theory.  The face on the cover is not Sherlock Holmes, or
so I imagine.

CAN YOU  TELL A BOOK BY ITS COVER?

I'm now working on the fourth edition of my book Media and Communication Research Methods: An Introduction to Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches.  The first edition was published in 2000 so I've been working on the book for fifteen years.  The third edition was published in 2014 so the fourth edition will be appearing two years after the third edition--a bit of a speed up.

Here are the covers of the first three editions.  You can see how cover art has evolved over the years.  I wonder what my publisher will  have in store for me for the fourth edition cover.  They give me a few choices but I don't think my decision  about which cover I like best is final.

THE LITERARY LIFE

That is the title of my blog on Facebook...I send stuff to it from my
smartphone but find this blog easier to use and it has some virtues
the Facebook blog doesn't have.

It seems that the Iranians have translated four of my books into Farsi:

Media Analysis Techniques
Narratives
Cultural Criticism and
Durkheim is Dead.











I find it interesting that any of my books were translated--it was a big
and pleasant surprise to me, and that one of my academic mysteries
was translated...though it is a didactic mystery featuring Sherlock Holmes,
and not my usual detective, Solomon Hunter.

I've written a number of mysteries when there was an editor at one
of my publishers who liked them.  When she left that was the end of
my career as an academic (didactic) writer of mysteries.

The Chinese have translated four of my mysteries including:

The Hamlet Case
Durkheim is Dead
Postmortem for a Postmodernist

I forget the name of the fourth one.  They've translated something like a dozen
of my books.  Amazing.. But so far, nothing in French or Japanese.