Trichotillomania

From the article Are You Normal Or Nuts, Reader's Digest Aug 07:

Why do I twirl my hair with one finger whenever I read? I never do this except when I'm reading.
Just be glad you don't have trichotillomania, the impulse to pull out your hair in clumps - from your head, eyebrows and other fuzzy body parts. Your behaviour is just a quirk, not harmful and probably quite helpful. Chances are you developed your bookish hair twirling as a body language clue to people around you. What does your finger in your locks say? It says, "Leave me alone! I'm reading."

What are they saying? That trichotillomaniacs are NUTS? Cuckoo?
Cis...

Cigarette Packet Books

Coolness. Books designed to resemble cigaratte packs.




Tankbooks official site here.

501 Must Reads : Memoirs

Although I read more modern fiction than any other genre, my favourite is actually Autobiographies. I like reading other people lives - it either inspires you, or makes you thank your lucky stars you have the kind of life you have. (I love inspiring ones better, of course).

Here's the Memoirs reading list from 501 Must-Read Books. I've only read a few from the recommendations so far, each one of which was a brilliant read. Memoirs are not as readily available as fiction title - Kino is a safer bet than MPH on these.

1) * Paula Isabel Allende
2) Journal Intime Henri-Frederic Amiel
3) Aubrey's Brief Lives John Aubrey
4) Confessions Augustine
5) Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter Simone de Beauvoir
6) My Left Foot Christy Brown
7) The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini Benvenuto Cellini
8) The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus Cyril Connolly
9) * Boy: Tales of Childhood Roald Dahl
10) * My Family and Other Animals George Durell

11) An Angel at My Table Janet Frame
12) * The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank
13) Journals 1889-1949 Andre Paul Guillaume Gide
14) Poetry and Truth: From My Own Life Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
15) Father and son: A Study of Two Temperaments Edmund Gosse
16) Ways of Escape Grahame Greene
17) Black Like Me John Howard Griffin
18) 84, Charing Cross Road Helene Hanff
19) Pentimento Lilian Hellman
20) Childhood, Youth and Exile Alexander Herzen

21) The Diary of Alice James Alice James
22) Memories, Dreams, Reflections Carl Gustav Jung
23) Diaries 1919-23 Franz Kafka
24) The Story of My Life Helen Keller
25) The Book of Margery Kempe Margery Kempe
26) I Will Bear Witness Victor Klemperer
27) In the Castle of My Skin George Lamming
28) A Grief Observed C. S. Lewis
29) The Towers of Trebizond Rose Macaulay
30) Journal of Katherine Mansfield Katherine Mansfield

31) The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton
32) The Pursuit of Love Nancy Mitford
33) Borrowed Time Paul Monette
34) My Place Saly Morgan
35) Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited Vladimir Nabakov
36) * Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books Azar Nafisi
37) Memoirs Pablo Neruda
38) Potrait of a Marriage Nigel Nicolson
39) Running in the Family Michael Ondaatje
40) Down and Out in Paris and London George Orwell

41) Autobiography of a Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda
42) Diary Samuel Pepys
43) Letters Pliny the Younger
44) Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau
45) Words Jean-Paul Sartre
46) Journal of a Solitude May Sarton
47) Walden Henry David Thoreau
48) De Profundis Oscar Wilde
49) Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Jeanette Winterson
50) Autobiographies William Butler Yeats

* read

Harry Potter and the Under Eye

This is my eye.
This is my eye with Harry Potter non-stop reading eyeshadow.



Thanks Kenny for lending me your copy of Deathly Hallows.

MPH Members' Merdeka Sale

Look what came in the mail yesterday.



The postcard says:

MPH Members' Merdeka Sale, 1 - 5 August 2007

• 15% discount on all books and 10% discount on CDs, cassettes, stationery, cards & gifts
• 20% discount on all M014 and M028 titles

Yippie. Good time to go look for goat husbandry books for Daddy.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Some time back I blogged about a purchase I made, influenced by the blurb on the cover. I got Marisha Pesshl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics because of the blurb that said:

‘Made me stay up all night reading. I loved this book’ Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveller’s Wife

Now The Time Traveller’s Wife made me stay up all night, so I’m trusting this blurb. And it’s true! Special Topics in Calamity Physics is fantastic! (And I’ve just started it, only at pg 47 of 669, and already I’m frothing at the mouth!)

I’m not staying up reading, though. The prose is so beautiful I’m savoring it in tiny chunks. I love the style of writing – clever use of words and sayings, complete with annotations (the narrator’s dad is a professor, hence the influence) and Big Caps on Highlighted Phrases. Quirky!

There are big words and literary references throughout the book, but the words are arranged so well they sing a beautiful aria. Despite the big words the prose does not tax you nor insult your intellect (unlike Hari Kunzru’s prose. Read my rant here).

Here’s an excerpt of the prose I’m raving about.

         Dad picked up women the way certain wool pants can’t help but pick up lint. For years I had a nickname for them, though I feel a bit guilty using it now: June Bugs (see “Figeater Beetle”, Ordinary Insects, Vol. 24).
         There was Mona Letrovski, the actress from Chicago with wide-set eyes and dark hair on her arms who liked to shout “Gareth, you’re a fool”, with her back to him, Dad’s cue to run over to her, turn her around, and see the Look of Bitter Longing on her face. Only Dad never turned her around to see the Bitter Longing. Instead, he stared at her back as if it were an abstract painting. Then he went into the kitchen for a glass of bourbon. There was Connie Madison Parker, whose perfume hung in the air like a battered piñata. There was Zula Pierce of Okush, New Mexico, a black woman who was taller than he was, so whenever Dad kissed her she had to bend down as if peeking through a peephole to see who was ringing her bell. She started out calling me “Blue, honey”, which, like her relationship with Dad, slowly began to erode, becoming “Bluehoney” and then “Blueoney”, ultimately ending with “Baloney”. (“Baloney had it in for me from the very beginning!” she screamed.)
         Dad’s romances can last anywhere between a platypus egg incubation (19-21 days) and a squirrel pregnancy (24-45 days). I admit sometimes I hated them, especially the ones teeming with Ladies’ Tips, How-tos and Ways to Improve, the ones like Connie Madison Parker, who muscled her way into my bathroom and chastised me for hiding my merchandise (see “Molluscs”, Encyclopedia of Living Things, 4th ed.).

I like!

Sum of Harry Potter

Have you been following the Harry Potter local retail saga over the weekend? Here's a good recap of the whole thing.

All the Harry Potter (Malaysian-Related) News

I've read the Wikipedia page on the latest Harry Potter book, that's enough for me at the moment (I know who dies!). Now I'll wait for all seven books in a nice paperback edition set, then get them and restart reading from book 1 onwards. My bookshelf does not yet have any Harry Potters in it - I've been shamelessly reading off other people :).

The Harry Potter Retail Circus

There is a copious absent of Harry Potterism on this blog, mainly because I’m not salivating for the final installment and can live with someone telling me who died before reading it. Already too much Potterism everywhere as July 21st approaches, me thinks.

But now I’m so excited I just have to have a say! Four major bookstore chains (MPH, Times, Popular and Harris) will not sell the latest book, in protest of hypermarkets selling them at RM69.90, as opposed to the retail price of RM109.90.

You can read on all the furor in the links below, both from major newspapers and local literati blogs. The bookstores are crying foul, the hypermarkets are feebly defending, while the publisher is serving up excuses. What a circus!

I think the problem could be just oversight. The hypermarkets are at war with each other, and I’m guessing that when one got the info that the other is selling it as x price, they follow suit as a marketing strategy. In the rush to quash the competitor they both forgot the bookstores – the ones who invested manpower and money in planning and promotion for the last few months. Nor did they value the Harry Potter mania – a book sale is just a money transaction, no care about the anticipation, no consideration about the enormity of what this book represents to die-hard fans.

I think the hypermarkets are to blame. The last Harry Potter book unveiling was suppose to be a magical event, a culmination of all that waiting and hyperventilating. Now here it’s turned into an ugly war – not a price war, but an ethics war.

And I think that the people who should be most ashamed are those other bookstores (no need names) that did not join these four brave ones taking a stand.

Read TheStar's main page news here.
Read NST's news item here.
Read bibliobibuli's take here.
Read eric forbes' take here.

Drama in MPH MidValley

Something interesting happened yesterday at MPH MidValley.

I was just outside mph’s entrance with a bunch of friends, lounging waiting for another to show up. Suddenly this guy yelled “WHAT? OK COME BLA BLA BLA”. We all turned to watch this ample (ok, fat. faaaat) office attired guy huffing and puffing his way back into the store, escorted by an mph guard and an mph personnel.

Drama! I like! Of course we followed into the store, in the true spirit of Malaysian kepoh-ness. The ample guy was making a scene. He whipped out his phone and started yelling to someone about being detained in mph and having to be somewhere important ‘right now’ and the High Commission calling him to go there or something like that. He had an audience of browsers peeping from the safety of shelves, and frankly he looked silly.

We were all wondering what happened, but with no facts let’s do the next best Malaysian sport – speculate. My guess would be he was doing something illegal. Book-lifting? Book-defacing? His body language was guilty as hell.

1: He was shrieking. Not yelling like an angry customer, but shrieking like a cornered dog.
2: He name dropped High Commission, etc etc. Err…
3: He looked the part – flustered and out of control.

Anyway we didn’t get to observe much. The management astutely shooed him into the office and dealt with him behind closed doors.

See, bookshops can be so fun!

Philip K. Dick Book Covers

Author Philip K. Dick has a gallery of book covers of all his works, in all editions. So cool! The gallery also includes covers of translated editions. See his gallery here.

Here's a few choice covers of his book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (what an eye-catching title).