Today's Buy: 12 July 07

@ MPH Subang Parade

Two bookstore strikes in a week! My wallet is protesting loudly but I'm pretending not to hear.

In The Country of Men
Hisham Matar
RM35.50

I've seen this previously in the big version, and was tempted by the back cover blurb. This book is the nice small size I prefer. I've never read anything remotely Libyan before, am looking forward to reading this.





Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Marisha Pessl
RM35.50

Aha. This book looks yummy, and the title just gets your attention. I've read that the book is good, but its massive girth (it's 669 pages thick) has made me balk at getting it before.

This time around I saw this on the cover : ' "Made me stay up all night reading. I loved this book" - Audrey Niffenegger'. Since her book made me stay up all night, I'm trusting Audrey on this one.

Confessions of an Air Hostess
Marisa Mackle
RM19.90

Yet another Little Black Dress. I'm done with the one I bought previously, so on the next!

On Hari Kunzru's sentences

Teddy has a post on Hari Kunzru, and I dropped a comment that I found his novel (Hari, not Teddy) Trasmission overdoses you with too much wit. I feel that maybe Transmission overwhelms with its clever sentences, I find myself both marveling the words and choking on the mouthfuls of them.

Here's a line from Tranmission:

Transmistted across the vastness of space, Jennifer Johanssen's voice sounded calming and competent, a moisturizing balm formulated to take away the pain and soreness of the words it uttered.

And another one:

Occasionally, in the face of some violently patterned piece of knitwear, he would try to introduce the possibility that his baggage allowance would be very small, or suggest that California might not be as could as she thought.

And yet another one:

At least once a visit she would mention that her husband Bryan was having business difficulties, the subtext being that this was the only reason she would demean herself by pandering to their personal needs.

I find his sentences too much of a mouthful. Salman Rushdie's works are also full of dandy words and long long sentences with many commas, but his sounds poetic - almost as if there's sitar music accompanying the words. Hari Kunzru's words has a tune of a bad rock band, it gives me a headache.

Times the Bookshop Voucher.

I got an early birthday prezzie from Times The Bookshop. A very very early one, but I'm not complaining!

It's an RM3 voucher and 20% discount valid for the birthday month. Unfortunately it does not clearly say if the discount is valid on one item or the whole purchase.

Pince-nez

In Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, one of its many varied character is Koroviev, an ex-choirmaster who wears a check jacket & a broken pince-nez. I was half-way through this twisted book before I had to look up what exactly a pince-nez is. My imaginary Koroviev's image was hazy, I had to complete him.

This is a pince-nez.



Wiki says:

Pince-nez (IPA: [pɛ̃s ˈneː]) are a style of spectacles, popular in the nineteenth century, which are supported without earpieces, by pinching the bridge of the nose. The name comes from the French for "pinch nose."

See full wiki listing here.

Library I Like

Droooooooooooooooooooool.



More wonderful photos here.

Today's Buy: 8 July 07

@ MPH Summit USJ

Testing Kate
Whitney Gaskell
RM 19.90

Marley & Me
John Grogan
RM 32.90

I went into MPH looking for Tinling Choong's FireWife. And I found it. And I gasped at the RM70 price tag for a small hardcover. And I don't prefer hardcover. So...



Marley & Me has been on my radar for awhile (actually Mr. Gila's radar, but we're slowly morphing into each other so my radar inherited this). Marley is the writer's neurotic dog who invades/enriches his family's life. This story should be an interesting read. I've always balked at getting the hardcover version available everywhere, so when I saw this in paperback I had to have it. As a nice gift for Mr. Gila, of course.

Since I didn't get FireWIfe, I consoled myself with yet another Little Black Dress - Whitney Gaskell's Testing Kate. The cover is yummy yummy yummy. Another one to add to my overloaded bookshelf.

Top 5 Books I Recommend

Rob Fleming and his colleagues at his record store (of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity) pass their time making "top-five" lists of everything - best elvis song, all time record, best side b hit, etc etc.

They do it so much you can't help being influenced, so here's my Top 5 Books I Spout When Someone Ask Me To Recommend A Book*:

1) The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger
2) Life of Pi Yann Martell
3) The World According To Garp John Irving
4) Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami
5) I, Poolan Devi (autobiography)

What are yours? Recommend me some!

*All these are titles from my library, so I can recommend and lend them the title. I think these are good books to get non-avid readers interest going, and are also great books for avid-readers to appreciate.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

A Review

Title : A Clockwork Orange
Author: Anthony Burgess
Price : RM10 @ Big Bookshop Sale


I found A Clockwork Orange a challenging read. Firstly because of my slight allergy to the science fiction genre, and second because of the narration was peppered with nadsat speak.

Take for example this chapter from the first page of the book:

Our pockets were full of deng, so there was no real need from the point of view of crasting any more pretty polly to tolchock some old veck in an ally and viddy him swim in his blood while we counted the takings and divided by four, nor to do the ultra-violent on some shivering starry grey-haired ptitsa in a shop and go smecking off with the till’s guts. But, as they say, money isn’t everything.

The slang words are understandable taken in context, but you have to be alert to take in their meanings. Scan-reading is out of the question, so I had to read the book almost word for word.

A Clockwork Orange is about Alex, a teenage boy who seems to have the worst traits of the modern youth culture. He goes around with his ‘droogs’ smashing, spoiling, looting, raping, pillaging and oops … he did a murder too.

Whilst serving his jail sentence for the murder, Alex gets picked for a radical new program to ‘reform’ criminals. The reform program is interesting, and so is its success (or failure?).



Read the book to find out.
And be alarmed. Be very alarmed.

501 Must Reads : Science Fiction

To that person who came here with the search words "501 must read books science fiction", here's the list for you.

1) The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Noel Adams
2) Hothouse Brian Aldiss
3) Brain Wave Poul Anderson
4) I, Robot Isaac Asimov
5) The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood
6) The Crystal World J. G. Ballard
7) The Demolished Man Alfred Bester
8) Who Goes There John W. Campbell
9) The Invention of Morel Adolfo Bioy Casares
10) Planet of the Apes Pierre Boulle

11) The Martian Chronicles Ray Bradbury
12) The Sheep Look Up John Brunner
13) A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
14) Erewhon Samuel Butler
15) Cosmicomics Italo Calvino
16) 2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke
17) A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder James De Mille
18) The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch Philip K. Dick
19) To Your Scattered Bodies Go Philip Jose Farmer
20) Neuromancer William Gibson

21) Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein
22) Dune Frank Herbert
23) Brave New World Aldous Huxley
24) Two Planets Kurd Lasswitz
25) Left Hand of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin
26) Solaris Stanislaw Lem
27) Shikasta Doris Lessing
28) Stepford Wives Ira Levin
29) Out of the Silent Planet C. S. Lewis
30) I am Legend Richard Matheson

31) Dwellers in Mirage Abraham Merritt
32) A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter Miller
33) Ringworld Larry Niven
34) Time Traders Andre Norton
35) Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
36) The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket Edgar Allan Poe
37) The Inverted World Christopher Priest
38) The Green Child Herbert Read
39) The Laxian Key Robert Sheckley
40) City Clifford D. Simak

41) Donovan's Brain Curt Siodmak
42) Lest Darkness Fall L. Sprague De Camp
43) Last and First Men Olaf Stapledon
44) More Than Human Theodore Sturgeon
45) Slan A. E. Van Vogt
46) A Journey to the Centre of the Earth Jules Verne
47) Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade Kurt Vonnegurt
48) The Island of Doctor Moreau H. G. Wells
49) Islandia Austin Tappan Wright
50) The Day of the Triffids John Wyndham

Cheers.

Why is Teddy reading?

One recurring question from the previous post:

Why is Teddy reading?
Because he wants to :D.

Teddy was reading as a participant of the Monthly Readings series organized by Sharon Bakar. Readings is an event aimed to showcase local writers and encourage new writing talents. The series is a monthly event and Teddy was reading for the June 2007 installment of it.

What happens is participants go up and read out passages of their writing : prose, poetry or both. Participants are writers lined up beforehand, so yes you may go and watch and no you don’t have to be a writer to attend. You don’t even need to be artsy-fartsy inclined. The event is held at the art gallery Seksan in Bangsar, which explains the work of art in the background.

This is my first time attending a local literary event (although I’ve been meaning to attend one since last year! Procrastinator!). It was interesting. Let’s go through my observation of the readers.

David Byck – I liked his reading style. Nice. But the story was a bit of a bore, not something I will rave about. But oh! His reading was bea-u-tiful.

Teddy – HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. And I’ve read the work he’s reading too. If I didn’t have to keep my hand steady for the video I might have been rolling on the floor clutching my sides. See video here.

Gary Ooi – I actually have no other opinion other than it being nice.

Liyana – Terrific prose and poetry, terrific delivery. I’m in love with this goth-ish chick.

Andre – This is the one read I did not enjoy. Andre has a heavy accent and rolls his ‘rrr’s while reading. I discovered then that my internal reading voice has an accent just like mine and this ‘rrr’s accent threw me off balance and I stopped listening. I tried tuning in now and then but his subject matter of pain and suffering and subjection (it was the “moaning and groaning”, as opposed to “let’s do something about this”, tone) turned me right off again.

Sharon – Her reading is very calm, but the strength of her works is staggering. Her first prose about her mother’s illness gave me goosebumps (yes it was that good). I have a line of another of her stories stuck in my head – “You did not hear the ‘if’ in my sentence”. I like, I like it very very much.

So, are you coming to the next one? Look out for announcements for the upcoming ones from Sharon.

Related:
See Sharon’s write-up here.
See Teddy’s write up here.
See Ash’s photos here.
See Sufian’s photos here.