Stealing Books

Found on Yahoo! Odd News

Great news! They're stealing our books!

Mon Oct 15, 10:44 AM ET

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The Frankfurt Book Fair has an indicator to help publishers gauge public interest in the new offerings presented at the annual exhibition -- the unofficial "most stolen book" index.

Bild am Sonntag and Germany's ZDF television have come up with lists of titles most stolen from 15 leading German publishers' stands set up in the Frankfurt trade fair grounds.

"The most-stolen books are usually the most-sold later on," Claudia Hanssen of the Goldmann Verlag publishing house told Bild am Sonntag newspaper, which published a list of the 10 most stolen German-language books this year.

"They're the popular ones and are most likely to end up on the best-seller lists," Hanssen added.

The German translation of Nobel Peace prizewinner Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," outlining the dangers of global warming, featured among the mainly German titles on the list.

More than 100,000 people attended the book fair, which ended Sunday. There were 7,448 exhibitions where publishers from 108 countries presented some 400,000 different books, videos and other products.

Coffee with Red

I'm currently reading Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, and its giving me a severe coffee craving.

The book is hardly about coffee, but there's so much coffee dripped all over the story. You can almost smell that wonderful aroma from the bits and pieces of coffee-text.

Relieving it has just upped my craving. I'm off to make myself another cup of coffee.

Read (past tense)

Recently I reviewed my credit card statements, to get a feel of my spending patterns. No surprises that entries like MPH, Borders and Kinokuniya regularly crop up. But do I really read all the books I greedily buy?

Ha.. that's why I keep lists. I like ticking things off. Let's do a quick one on recent buys.

29 April [100%]
READ The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood
READ The File on H Ismail Kadare
READ She'll Take It Mary Carter

2 June [100%]
READ More Work for the Undertaker Margery Allingham
READ The Color Purple Alice Walker

27 June [42%]
TBR To The Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
TBR The Trial Franz Kafka
READ The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark
TBR Going Sane Adam Phillips
TBR Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
READ The Outsider Albert Camus
READ A Clockwok Orange Anthony Burgess

8 July [100%]
READ Testing Kate Whitney Gaskell
READ Marley & Me John Grogan

12 July [100%]
READ In The Country of Men Hisham Matar
READ Special Topics in Calamity Physics Marisha Pessl
READ Confessions of an Air Hostess Marisa Mackle

2 Aug [55%]
TBR The Man Who Was Thursday G. K. Chesterson
READ King Solomon's Mines H. Rider Haggard
TBR The Lost World Arthur Conan Doyle
READ The Sky is Crazy Yvonne Lee
READ The Accidental Tourist Anne Tyler
TBR My Name is Red Orhan Pamuk
TBR The Story of My Life Helen Keller
TBR Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands Jorge Amado
READ The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Agatha Christie
READ Memoirs Are Made of These Swan Adamson
READ Lost For Words Lorelai Mathias

MORAL : Don't buy books in bulk, especially at sales.

Proselytizing

Excerpt from Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red

I was told that scoundrels and rebels were gathering in coffeehouses and proselytizing until dawn

pros·e·ly·tize
1. To induce someone to convert to one's own religious faith.
2. To induce someone to join one's own political party or to espouse one's doctrine.

Writing Togo

I like reading. A lot.

Way back then, I liked to write too. Somehow I ended up writing codes instead, and that love for writing got lost somewhere.

Now the itch is back.

I've been reading some books about words, about people who write, about living the writing life, and the prospect of writing suddenly seemed so interesting again. [What books? Floozy Little Black Dresses! Lost in Words by Lorelei Mathias and Memoirs are made of This by Swan Adamson. Also Marisha Pessl's Special Topics of Calamity Physics - this beautifully composed book can inspire just about anything.]

I'm going to try writing again. The easiest way to write and be published is - do it yourself with a blog! Haha. The easiest things to write about - those dear to your heart.

So I've started a little project on that little tyrant I'm keeping. The site might be liberally strewn with photos but I'm hoping to pen some stuff to brush up on my writing. And one fine day make a book out of it and be a bestseller and make millions (like John Grogan, author of Marley & Me). Ha, dreams.

Some things I've written:
Scrunchie
Howling Togo

Do visit Togo the Tyrant's site at http://togothedog.blogspot.com

Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes

Hahahahaha.
Here's a book with a very attractive title.

Calamity Physics, Ended

Finally! Finished! All 669 wonderful pages of it!

I begun reading this around Juy 24th, see this post. It's been a long read partly because it's very thick (duh), but mostly because it's so beautifully written I keep re-reading sentences and passages.





















The words are so beautifully composed, some strains of it made me want to weep with joy. (Think I'm exaggerating? Read it and let me know ;)

This is one of the few books I felt sad to finish reading. I wish there were more of it. Boo hoo.

Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics - highly recommended.

Recent Library Additions

Recent additions to my library (and my to-be-read list!)

Gifts from my brother - 2 Little Black Dress books
Pick Me Up by Zoe Rice
I Take This Man by Valerie Frankel




















Gifts from Mr.Gila's parents - 2 Amy Tans
Saving Fish From Drowning
The Bonesetter's Daughter



















Both gifts were not gift-wrapped, since there's no surprises what the gifts were. Both parties called me up beforehand to check if I already had the titles before buying. Haha.

Book Availibility at MPH

Did you know..

... that you can check for book availability in MPH stores by contacting them at 03- 2938 3818 or 03- 7726 9003, or via email at customerservice@mph.com.my .

They're very helpful. Good way to check which stores carry the specific title you're looking for. With zillions of stores in the Klang Valley, this certainly helps.

Browse a HarperCollins

Coolness. HarperCollins let's you put their book on your site. Your readers can then browse the book for a peek inside.

A simple copy & paste is all that it takes. Here's an example, this book caught my eye from their 'Most Viewed' list.