Addicted

I was a bit early for my lunch with a friend at Bugis Junction so I took a slow walk through the mall, noticing several men in the perfume section buying last-minute Valentine's Day gifts. The store was abuzz with life, despite it being a Tuesday early afternoon. Couples gazed adoringly into each others' eyes over $22 VDay set lunches, young couples strolled hand in hand, the girl often cradling a small bouquet of roses swathed in a multitude of crepe paper used to make the bouquet look larger than it really is. A good number of people were doused in pink. One girl even wore a pink tube top (with the most hideously dead-looking faux fur trim on the top), carried a pink bag and had a thick layer of pink eyeshadow. I had to quickly walk away before I upchucked my lunch.
Even more strange I find is that friends wish me Happy VDay, like its new year or something. One of them explained that it's a day for friends to express friendship as well.
I'll say it back, just don't expect me to actually wish you first!
I'm a VDay cynic.
I'd like to be the antiCupid, shooting my black arrows at those love bubbles above adoring couples' heads.


Anyway, new haul:

1. Oliver Sacks - Seeing Voices: A Journey Into The World Of The Deaf
(Wanting to read some nonfiction, I was trying to find his other book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, which wasn't available at the library.)

2. Rudolph Chelminski - The perfectionist : Life and Death in Haute Cuisine (which DSD recommended)

3. Johanna Sinisalo - Troll: A Love Story (Translated from Finnish, this book is a recommendation off Powell's)

4. Nathanael West - Miss Lonelyhearts, and The Day Of The Locust
(West died a few years after writing these two books, then virtually unknown. Today they are considered American classics)

I was also tempted to get several cookbooks but decided that lugging them around until I got to work would be too much of a pain.

And so I did it again. Added more books to my (Too Many) To Be Read pile. I should actually write up a (TM)TBR list so that I can live up to reality and admit I have a problem.

Now playing: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Let Me Know

Reading 2005

December 2005
Rick Moody - The Black Veil
Joan Didion - Where I Was From
John Irving - Until I Find You
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go
William S Burroughs - Junky
Charlotte Moore - George And Sam
ZZ Packer - Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Siri Hustevdt - What I Loved
Paul Auster - Timbuktu
Stephen Chbosky - Perks Of Being A Wallflower

November 2005
Ruth Reichl Comfort Me With Apples
Richard Perez The Losers Club
Truman Capote In Cold Blood
James Villas Stalking The Green Fairy
Nick Hornby Polysyllabic Spree
William Trevor A Bit On The Side
Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray
Bret Easton Ellis American Psycho October 2005
Jonathan Safran Foer Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
James Villas Between Bites
Anthony Bourdain A Cook's Tour
Iris Murdoch The Bell
Jonathan Safran Foer Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Andrew Sean Greer The Confessions of Max Tivoli
Mimi Sheraton Eating My Words
Salman Rushdie Step Across This Line

September 2005
Elizabeth Kostova The Historian
8 J J Connolly Layer Cake
Ruth Reichl Garlic and Sapphires 9
Ruth Reichl Tender At The Bone 8.5
Nigel Slater Toast 9
Aimee Bender An Invisible Sign Of My Own 8.5
Shoba Narayan Monsoon Diary 9
Sandra Tsing Loh u/c

August 2005
Courtney Febbroriello Wife of the Chef 8
Jonathan Coe The Rotters' Club 8.5
Douglas Coupland Eleanor Rigby 8
Nigel Slater Real Fast Food 8
Maile Meloy Liars and Saints 9
Nell Freudenberger Lucky Girls 8.5
Laura Hillenbrand Seabiscuit 9.5
Betty Fussell My Kitchen Wars 6

July 2005
Henry Sutton Flying 8.5
Alice Munro Runaway 7.5
Jonathan Lethem Fortress of Solitude 8
Michael Crichton Travels
Colm Toibin The Master June 2005
Graham Greene The Quiet American 9
Gao Xingjian Buying A Fishing Rod For My Grandfather 8
Martin Amis Experience: A Memoir 7.5
Cormac McCarthy The Orchard Keeper NA
Julie Orringer How to Breathe Underwater 9
Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim 7.5
William Trevor The Story of Lucy Gault 9
Barney Hoskyns The Sound And The Fury 8
Michael Crichton Travels 7.5
Colm Toibin The Master 8.5 May 2005
Bret Easton Ellis The Rules Of Attraction 8
Ethan Hawke Ash Wednesday 7.5
Martin Amis Visiting Mrs Nabokov 8.5
Consuelo de Saint-Exupery The Tale Of The Rose 8
Andrea Levy Small Island 8.5

April 2005
Elizabeth Young Pandora's Handbag: Adventures in the Book World 8
Jonathan Safran Foer Everything Is Illuminated 7.5
David Sedaris Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim 8.5
Dave Eggers You Shall Know Our Velocity 9
Toby Young How To Lose Friends & Alienate People 8
Julia Alvarez Something To Declare 7.5
Philip Roth Ghost Writer 7.5
David Foster Wallace The Broom of the System 7

March 2005
Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex 7.5
Leif Enger Peace Like a River 8
Amy Tan The Opposite of Fate 7.5
Augusten Burroughs Dry: A Memoir 8.5
Chuck Palahaniuk Stranger Than Fiction 8
Jim Carroll White Apples 8.5

February 2005
Steven Sherrill The Minotaur takes a Cigarette Break 8.5
Hanif Kureishi Buddha of Suburbia
Halldor Laxness Independent People u/c
Azar Nafisi Reading Lolita in Tehran 9
Pete Hamill Forever 4.5
Don Delillo White Noise 8.5

January 2005
Eric Schlossel Fast Food Nation 8.5
Joyce Carol Oates Beasts 8
Ethan Canin The Palace Thief 7.5
Philip Roth Portnoy's Complaint 8
Chang-Rae Lee Native Speaker
Jim Crace Arcadia 8
Audrey Niffenegger Time Traveler's Wife 9.5
Geoff Dyer Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It 7.5
Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 7

Toast by Nigel Slater

Just got started on this book.

Am already captured by this second paragraph of the first chapter.

It is impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you. People's failings, even major ones such as when they make you wear short trousers to school, fall into insignificance as your teeth break through the rough, toasted crust and sink into the doughy cushion of white bread underneath. Once the warm, salty butter has hit your tongue, you are smitten. Putty in their hands.

Flying by Henry Sutton

I picked up this book on a whim, while browsing
at Orchard Library last week.

I'd never heard of it, nor of Sutton, but the
cover attracted (how horribly superficial),
although it was a simple one, of one of the wings
of a plane.

Gave a cursory glance at the back blurb and read
the first few pages which described someone's
nervousness about flying - the vibration in the
seat, the 'seemingly electrically charged
buzzing, hearing the rising whine of the engines,
a sound that suddenly seems to be pouring through
her'.

All so familiar to any passenger I suppose. Then
I read on to learn that she's not just another
passenger but part of the cabin crew. And that's
what hooked me.

I've never harboured any desire to join cabin
crew, I know quite a few people who are or were
air stewardesses and I envy the way they jetset
across the world, one day Manchester, Cairo the
next. But it was quite an interesting read to see
what cabin crew, albeit fictional ones, think of
when they're at work.

That it's interesting to think of how your
colleagues, that is, those working the same
plane, will change every flight you make (besides
the up and down flight that is). So you can't be
too sure who you're going to work with, and if
you can work with them.

One of the crew loves to stare out of the
emergency exit window, another steals the salt
and pepper shakers that are used in First class.
The pilot likely has a prostrate problem and the
first officer reckons he can only make it with
women when in uniform, cos otherwise he looks
fifteen.

And it seems, everyone thinks of sex. I hadnt'
really noticed, but the back blurb starts out
that way: What do people always want? Sex. And
more sex. Cabin crew go after each other, flight
crew wants in too.

I can hardly tell if there is any truth to this
book but it made for an interesting read. While
the blurb and theme of the book makes it sound
like chicklit - ooh airhostesses flirting with
pilots! and more! - it's really more than just
animal instinct. The characters are well-balanced
and quite engrossing. And Sutton's either really
had flying experience or did a lot of research,
for it sounds all pretty damn legit to me.

When it comes to books, I tend to rate them upon
ten, this one would get an 8!

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

might be time i started this up again

Pick a song, any song

So I picked up Nick Hornby's 31 Songs as a gift for a friend. But decided that since I wasn't gonna give it away just yet, I'd read it first.

Hornby's somewhat famous for his hits About A Boy and High Fidelity, which were turned into pretty successful films, and many people I know are serious fans of High Fidelity, them music freaks.

Anyway, 31 songs is another book for the music freak I figure. Hornby's written an anthology of sorts about yep you guessed it, 31 songs.

There is a nice mixture, from the modern to the classic. Like he writes of how Nelly Furtado's I'm Like A Bird is ... well actually he doesn't really describe the song but rather how there are certain songs you just have to play over and over again. Which is very true. I do that too often and always wondered why. So Hornby provides an answer of sorts or at least Dave Eggers does: "we have to 'solve' them."

which i suppose is true. to understand a song better, to 'get it' and maybe even to figure out some elusive lyrics.

But it's a pretty darn good read and I love the way he drifts off onto other things. it's not a song/album review but a personal account of why these songs matter to him and that's what's fascinating. It's a little like Will Self (see below) and his restaurant reviews really. To me, that is writing but of course you'll never find that in most newspapers/magazines in Singapore.

feeding frenzy

Will Self is a bit of controversial journalist as journalists come. He was the restaurant critic for The Observer for 2 years in the 1990s and wrote for several other British papers like The Independent. Self's also an author.

Apparently he got fired from The Observer after admitting to have taken heroin while onboard then-Prime Minister John Major's plane while covering the campaign.'

More info on Will Self and his exploits can be found Here

What I am concerned with though is his book Feeding Frenzy. While not really a proper book, it is instead a collection of his articles writing for the various magazines and dailies. It's chock-full of restaurant reviews, book reviews, art exhibition commentaries and so on. It's just bursting at the seams really.

I was a little confused at how to go about reading it cos there wasn't a listing of the various reviews and it doesn't really seem to follow any order so I decided to just flip around and read whatever caught my eye. And I like his restaurant reviews. They are delightfully irreverent, sometimes barely commenting on the food until right at the end. Although I'm sure some people will (and probably have) comment that he is terribly self-indulgent and a bit wacky. But that's what Self admits -- that he is eccentric. And that's what's important really. Admitting that you are. ha

anyway i did a quick search on amazon.com but the book is not to be found there. I suppose it's seriously a Brit thing...

desired

Martin Amis' Yellow Dog
Amy Tan's The Opposite Of Fate
Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake
Charles Baxter's SAul And Patsy
Paul Auster's The Book Of Illusions
Dave Egger's You Shall Know Our Velocity
JM Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello
DBC PIerre's Vernon God Little
Salman Rushdie's Step Across This Line

Books read in 2003

The year is coming to a close (unfortunately!!) and here's the list of books i've read this year. For some reason, my list only starts in February and for the life of me I can't remember why that's so! Some, like the Bridget Jones series, were read for a second time.

Looking through the list I realise it's a more varied listing than in previous years. There are more non-fiction books, more Asian writers (mostly thanks to the pile of books a colleague lent me, some good some bad!). It was also the year I picked up a book, attracted solely by the cover and found a genius of a writer within! But then of course the world already knew of him as Jose Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998.

Some of the memorable books are (this list doesn't include read-agains):
Mario Vargas Llosa - The Feast Of The Goat
John Steinbeck's East Of Eden
Iris Murdoch's The Sea The Sea
Jose Saramago's Blindness
Gerard Jones' Killing Monsters
Katherine Graham's A Personal History
Phillip Hensher's The Mulberry Empire
Yan Geling's Lost Daughter Of Happiness
Jasper Fforde's Lost In A Good Book

My goal for next year: to read more, to read more variedly and to also include notes! (I can barely remember the plot of many of the books read this year) And also to write more in this bookbound blog.

It's strange to write down my reading goals, ocme to think of it. But I like to take my reading seriously. There are so many many books out there that I've yet to lay my hands on and my list of To Be Reads keeps growing and growing!


THE LIST (in case you're wondering, it's a total of 52 ie a book a week)
Author and Title
John Cheever - Stories of John Cheever
Mary Ann Taylor Hall - Come And Go Molly Snow
John Irving - The Fourth Hand
Peter Carey - True History of the Kelly Gang
Joanne Harris - Blackberry Wine
Dennis Mcfarland - The Music Room
Mario Vagas Llosa - The Feast of the Goat
H. G. Wellls - The Invisible Man
James Nagel et al - Hemmingway in Love and War
Franz Kafka - The Trial
William Styron - Sophie's Choice
Somerset Maugham - Far Eastern Tales
E. Annie Proloux - The Shipping News
Emma Forrest - Thin Skin
Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway
Helen Fielding - Bridget Jones' Diary
Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Helen Fielding - Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Nigel Slater - Real Good Food
Stephen Carter - The Emperor of Ocean's Park
Katherine Graham- Personal History
Jasper Fforde - Lost In A Good Book
Jose Saramango- Blindness
Iris Murdoch - The Sea, The Sea
Alberto Manguel- A History Of Reading
Bill Bryson - Down Under
Fay Weldon - The Bulgari Connection
John Irving - My Movie Business
John Steinbeck - East Of Eden
Suzanne Keyes - The Camera My Mother Gave Me
Ann Packer - The Dive From Clausen's Pier
Robert S McNamara - In Retrospect
Jose Saramango - The Cave
Mineko Iwasaki - Geisha of Gion
Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
May-Lee Chai, Winberg Chai - Girl From Purple Mountain
Andrei Codrescu - The Dog With A Chip In His Neck
Margaret Atwood - Oryx And Crake
Tim Winton - Dirt Music
Gerard Jones - Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes and Make-Believe Violence
Betty S mith - A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
Liza Dalby - Tale of Murasaki
Martin Scorsese - Scorsese on Scorsese
Haruki Murakami - After The Quake
Jon McGregor - If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things
Philip Roth - Letting Go
Yan Geling - Lost Daughter of Happiness
Alice Sebold - The Lovely Bones
Ahdaf Soueif - Map Of Love
Loida Maritza Perez - Geographies Of Home
Phillip Hensher - The Mulberry Empire

The Boston Globe's top picks

The Village Voice's best of 2003

The Sydney Morning Herald's list of best books of 2003.

The Boston Globe's best books

The New York Times' list

Lost daughter of happiness

I've heard of this book, well the title at least, for quite a while now but never was interested enough to pick it up.

I dont know what made me pick it up at the library last week but i'm glad i did. it was a good read.

kinda expected it to be the usual ''in my days' type of chinese novel. which i am frankly very sick of. but it wasn't . it was interestingly abt a chinese prostitute in san francisco in the 1860s.

i'm terrible at writing book reviews. mostly cos it seems like work. u know what i mean?

i like to read, i really do and reading something and writing a review after that kinda puts me off the book.

so all i want to say about this book is that it was a good read. i liked it. there.

Libraries

I am a big fan of libraries - after all, where else can u read books for free?

And I do want to applaud the National Library Board for extending their reach. I mean, libraries in shopping malls? That's a brilliant idea!

However, I do have something to complain about.

Just how is it that the library will only stock certain books in certain libraries?
And in some cases, a library will only have one copy of a book?

I'm not talking of some obscure book here. Take for example Monica Ali's Brick Lane. It's been much hyped-up and was a nominee for the Man Booker Prize, one of the biggest book prizes in the world. And yet, there is only one book that resides in the Bukit Batok library (which happens to be the library I frequent the most)

I do recall searching for a book via the online catalogue and realising that I would have to go to either Sengkang, Geylang or some other similarly far library.

Heck I'd rather just buy the book!

Which actually leads me on to another thing: the Word Shop has disappeared from Marina Square!!!

No More Cheap Books!

Sigh, i fondly recall the day I purchased The Eyre Affair from them at less than ten dollars. So what if it was a little bent? At that price, who cares?

I enjoyed searching the shelves, finding a name I recognised. It's where I picked up books by Salman Rushdie, Kate Greenville and Alice Hoffman for that same low low price.

Now where do i get books at those prices?

booklist

The Guardian has a list of the top 100 novels of all time. Not everyone agrees with them I'm sure.
how many have you read? Find out here

My count's 22. but then i can't remember whether i've read a few of them. i guess then i can't count them if i can't remember them!!

if nobody speaks

of remarkable things

isn't that a gorgeous title? I think i'd heard of it somewher else before and it caught my eye at the library.

I'm just starting on it but I do like the way he opens the book. With sound. To further illustrate what i mean here's a sentence from the second paragraph of the book.

'The low soothing hum of air-conditioners, fanning out the heat and the smells of shops and cafes and offices across the city, winding up and winding down, long breaths layered upon each other, a lullaby hum for tired streets.'

He's quite poetic but loses me a little at times as he does write about a whole lot of things that are going on. I do like the bits where he's more of an observer looking down on the various goings-on in the street below and writing about them.

Then he switches to a first-person narrative and stupid me, thought it was a guy. Turns out to be a girl. Maybe i was just sleepy when i was reading that. (!)

bout time

I figured it's about time I posted something to this blog, this poor neglected blog.

So let me tell you what I've been reading. All about it.

In the morning I get up and read the newspapers -- the Straits Times (skimming thru really cos i already know what's in the papers the night before), Streats and Today. On Wednesdays I also do a quick flip of the computer times.

I have been trying to catch up with the Newsweek subscription. I've just started with this week's issue so not too bad. Should be able to get that through before the next one comes.

The one that's lagging behind is The Atlantic -- the new issue has been sitting on my footstool (ok, it's a box) for about a week and i still haven't finished the previous one!

Dont get me wrong, it's a great magazine. last month's copy had a great story on shipping. I know, shipping! It's not the most exciting thing in the world but it was well-written and personalised so it was a good read.

I also read: The New York Times online, The Guardian unlimited, the BBC news online at work. Those are the three I rely on most. Occasionally I will see what ChannelNewsAsia has on their website, to make sure we are as updated as they are!

do the shawshank

Reading Different Seasons for the umpteenth time. It's Stephen King's most brilliant book. A collection of 4 novella (they're really too long to be called short stories so i think novella is the right word? but please correct me if i'm wrong)

My favourite of the four is the Shawshank Redemption. It's a well-crafted story, narrated by Red, who's Shawshank's get-man. He gets whatever the inmates want, except for weapons. And that's how he befriends Andy Dufresne, in jail for allegedly killing his wife and her lover. Andy asks for a rock hammer, a tiny thing beloved by rock collectors. he later asks for a poster of Rita Hayworth, and we find out in the end just how important that poster was to him.

terrible summary i know, but it's the hand, the hand!!

Also picked up Tim Winton's Dirt Music from the library. Will see how that goes after I'm done with the magazines (NG Traveler and Book)

I've decided that before I die i would like to visit Portland, Oregon. And why? that's the home of Powells. It's supposed to be an excellent (and huge bookstore).
I like their website and their newsletter even more. Very quirky newsletter which always includes a short on Fup. Store cat.

and that line: 'Just one serving of today's edition provides 100% of the recommended daily allowance of news from Portland, Oregon.'

cheery

atwoodian

am abt half way thru margaret atwood's latest boo - courtesy o me sis who bought it 4 me bday pressie. Oryx And Crake is its name - havent heard muchgood abt it tho so bit apprehensive but quite like it. i guess it cld b called sci-fi somewat. it's set in the future n has a lot 2 do with cloning n stuff.

short post. hand still hurts

something different from the bbc

weird questions

same ole story

a colleague recently loaned me a whole stack of books. written by various asian writers.

the one i'm reading now is The Girl From Purple Mountain by May-lee Chai and Winberg Chai

it's your typical chinese-american exploration of family ancestry and in turn, learning more about oneself tale.

similar perhaps to the most famous of all chinese-american authors, amy tan.

but barely half as entertaining, and that's saying a lot as i'm not a fan of tan. (couldn't resist)

anyway, the thing is this family actually has a pretty interesting history. one of the ancestors (the grandma i think) was one of the few women to attend a university (at that time and in china too!) and she also got a masters in something in the US.

but the way the story is told is mighty confusing.

there is an explanation in the introduction. that the story is told from both may-lee and her father winberg's points of view. but these points of view do tend to jump a little here and there like in one chapter which is told mostly by winberg and at the end, there seems to be an anecdote tacked on, by may-lee.

the story is mostly of winberg's mother (may-lee's grandma) and their journey across the seas to the US.

the story on the whole is interesting, but badly written.

i just feel like it's the selling of your soul, the marketing of your family history, milking it for all its worth. but no use lah. i've never heard of the book!

Reading online

Here's a great link to free books. might get tiring, after all, who's got the patience to read a whole book on the computer?

But here it is anyway, Bibliomania