PLEASE provide me with feedback on my cake project...  What did you like?  What didn't you like?  What might I do differently next time?  How do you feel about me baking my final project for our literature course?

Also, see my blog for more on the cake project

Notes for an Evolving Systems conversation related to Chance: Its meaning and significance
Paul Grobstein
20 April 2010

(on line forum at /exchange/evolsys/chance10)

The place I would like to get to and why ...

"In 1984 Muhsin Mahdi, a professor of Arabic literature at Harvard University, published a scholarly edition of the Nights which “will shape the course of subsequent scholarship on the Arabic text.” He based his edition on Galland, introduced corrections from eight other mss."

My copy of Arabian Nights was translated by Hussain Haddawy, who used Muhsin Mahdi's text.

 In Arabian Nights, I read "Prologue," "The Story of the Merchant and the Genius," and "The Story of the First Old Man and of the Hind," and I read them on ELF.  

 I read the Thousand and One Nights tales from the ELF site, and the tales that I chose were The Story of the Merchant and the Genius, The Story of the Greek King and the Physician Douban, and The Enchanted Horse. I decided to skip around because I wanted to get a sense of some of the early, middle, and later stories, but when I have time I would like to read all of them, and in order. Some stories lead into other stories, and these stories are part of the secondary story which is a part of the Thousand and One Nights main story. So I feel like, to get the full effect and being able to understand the main underlying story, you need to read all of the stories in order.

Because I love reading in bed, I bought a paperback copy of Arabian Nights at Barnes and Noble.  I thought that this text was especially appropriate to read in bed before sleeping.  I was with the king and the younger sister, a fellow listener.  The stories distracted me to the point of losing sleep or oversleeping the next morning.  The interlaced serial nature of the text was incredibly addictive.  I found myself craving another tale and another tale after that.  A like bites of a cake, each forkful delicious...