Mark Arax

What Salpi Ghazarian is reading

The Dreamt Land Chasing Water and Dust Across California
Scandal, storytelling and serious water issues, by the Fresno son of rabble-rouser grandparents from Van.

Not a Creature Was Stirring, the first Gregor Demarkian mystery
Jane Haddam
The top-notch detective who lives in Philadelphia’s Armenian neighborhood and figures out crimes – and people.
![Sulamita, Sevaki mets sere [Sulamita: Sevak’s Great Love, in Armenian] by Hovik Charkhchyan](https://armenian.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/book-cover-e1593615045911-213x300.jpg)
Sulamita, Sevaki mets sere [Sulamita: Sevak’s Great Love, in Armenian]
Hovik Charkhchyan
Paruyr Sevak’s lover and muse, Sulamita’s influence extends far, but her name is largely unknown.
What Shushan Karapetian is reading

Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language
Eva Hoffman
A meditation on the relationship between language and culture through disruptions (adolescence, exile, assimilation) and translations of all kinds (culture, language, oneself).

Bilingual: Life and Reality
François Grosjean
Myth debunking, reader-friendly, entertaining discussion of the many facets of life with multiple languages. Useful for bilinguals, parents, teachers, program administrators, and the curious.

Reflections on Armenian Identity in History and Historiography
Houri Berberian and T. Daryaee (editors)
An eclectic collection spanning a period of some three thousand years on identity, history, and historiography… again.
What Silva Sevlian is reading

Kill the Messenger: The Media’s Role in the Fate of the World
Maria Armoudian
A historical look into how the media shapes our ideals/ideas about human life.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir
Haruki Murakami
A runner’s obsession and a writer’s obsession intersect.

Portraits of Hope: Armenians in the Contemporary World
Huberta von Voss
Cultural essays that read like obituaries for the living.
What Syuzanna Petrosyan is reading

Midnight at the Pera Palace
Charles King
The story of a decaying seaside hotel in Istanbul that tells the history of a chaotic and ever-changing city.

Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible
Peter Pomerantsev
A look into the intertwined world of Russian media, propaganda, and government, and how they shape the world around us.

The Warmth of Other Suns, The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
Isabel Wilkerson
A peek into diasporas, migrations, communities – the mass journey of southern Blacks to northern and western cities of America told through the words of those who made the trek.
What Gegham Mughnetsyan is reading
What Lilit Keshishyan is reading

Bluebeard
Kurt Vonnegut
Fictional autobiography of first-generation Armenian American painter Rabo Karabekian.

From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa
Sebouh Aslanian
Fascinating study of the emergence and growth of the global trade network operated by Armenian silk merchants.

Representations of the Intellectual
Edward Said
Edward Said explores what it means to be an intellectual in the 20th century.