Moving!

This blog has served me well over the past few years. It has developed from a rather personal blog into a Singapore food one, and, since this year and my leave of absence from Singapore, it's been turned into a sort of book blog. It was quite appalling going over some of my earlier blog posts which were extremely ramble-y and whiny (oh please don't go look!), but I can't be bothered to go and delete them all. Instead, I would like to think that this blog has perhaps grown in some ways, as I have.

So I've decided to move my book blogging over to a whole new blog. I've always wanted to give Wordpress a go, as their cleaner and seemingly more user-friendly dashboard is more attractive than Blogger's. Plus they offer mobile versions of their blogs! This blog here will stay as it is, in memory of what used to be, but I'm hoping you'll join me over at http://olduvaireads.wordpress.com

Library Loot (10 November 2009)

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition by Stephen King
My intention was to read this for RIP IV and then it got borrowed out before I could get my hands on it. But here it is!

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death.

And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides -- or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abigail -- and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.

In 1978 Stephen King published The Stand, the novel that is now considered to be one of his finest works. But as it was first published, The Stand was incomplete, since more than 150,000 words had been cut from the original manuscript.

Now Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil has been restored to its entirety. The Stand : The Complete And Uncut Edition includes more than five hundred pages of material previously deleted, along with new material that King added as he reworked the manuscript for a new generation. It gives us new characters and endows familiar ones with new depths. It has a new beginning and a new ending. What emerges is a gripping work with the scope and moral comlexity of a true epic.

For hundreds of thousands of fans who read The Stand in its original version and wanted more, this new edition is Stephen King's gift. And those who are reading The Stand for the first time will discover a triumphant and eerily plausible work of the imagination that takes on the issues that will determine our survival.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Black Dossier by Alan Moore
Heading towards the graphic novel shelves, I was hoping to pick up the next installment of Jack of Fables or Y: The Last Man, and neither were in sight (it turns out that the second book in the Y series isn't available at my library, yet the books after that are... huh). So I picked up the Black Dossier. which seems to be a standalone book (so says Wikipedia).

England in the mid 1950s is not the same as it was. The powers that be have instituted...some changes. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen have been disbanded and disavowed, and the country is under the control of an iron-fisted regime. Now, after many years, the still youthful Mina Murray and a rejuvenated Allan Quatermain return and are in search of some answers. Answers that can only be found in a book buried deep in the vaults of their old headquarters, a book that holds the key to the hidden history of the League throughout the ages: The Black Dossier. As Allan and Mina delve into the details of their precursors, some dating back centuries, they must elude their dangerous pursuers who are Hell-bent on retrieving the lost manuscript... and ending the League once and for all.

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Readers who are entranced by the sweeping Anglo sagas of Masterpiece Theatre will devour Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks's historical drama. A bestseller in England, there's even a little high-toned erotica thrown into the mix to convince the doubtful. The book's hero, a 20-year-old Englishman named Stephen Wraysford, finds his true love on a trip to Amiens in 1910. Unfortunately, she's already married, the wife of a wealthy textile baron. Wrayford convinces her to leave a life of passionless comfort to be at his side, but things do not turn out according to plan. Wraysford is haunted by this doomed affair and carries it with him into the trenches of World War I. Birdsong derives most of its power from its descriptions of mud and blood, and Wraysford's attempt to retain a scrap of humanity while surrounded by it. There is a simultaneous description of his present-day granddaughter's quest to read his diaries, which is designed to give some sense of perspective; this device is only somewhat successful. Nevertheless, Birdsong is an unflinching war story that is bookended by romances and a rewarding read.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 edited by Dave Eggers

A brilliant collection, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 highlights a bold mix of fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, television writing, and more alternative comics than ever. Compiled by Dave Eggers and students from his San Francisco writing center, contributors include Judy Budnitz, Joe Sacco, Cat Bohannon, Kurt Vonnegut, Julia Sweeney, Haruki Murakami, The Onion, The Daily Show, This American Life, and George Packer

Nobody Said Not to Go: The Life, Loves, and Adventures of Emily Hahn by Ken Cuthbertson
Another one for the Women Unbound Challenge!

Known as "Mickey" to her friends, Emily Hahn traveled across the country dressed as a boy in the 1920s; ran away to the Belgian Congo as a Red Cross worker during the Great Depression; was the concubine of a Chinese poet in Shanghai in the 1930s; had an illegitimate child with the head of the British Secret Service in Hong Kong just before the outbreak of World War II; was involved in underground relief work in occupied Hong Kong; and moved back to the United States and became a pioneer in the fields of wildlife preservation and environmentalism before her death in 1997 at the age of ninety-two. A feminist trailblazer before the word existed, Hahn also wrote hundreds of articles and short stories for The New Yorker from 1925 to 1995, as well as fifty books in many genres. As Roger Angell wrote in her obituary in The New Yorker: "She was, in truth, something rare: a woman deeply, almost domestically, at home in the world. Driven by curiosity and energy, she went there and did that, and then wrote about it without fuss."

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai
The Guardian Book Club is reading The Inheritance of Loss and that pointed me to this first novel of hers.

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard—Desai’s dazzling debut novel—is a wryly hilarious and poignant story that simultaneously captures the vivid culture of the Indian subcontinent and the universal intricacies of human experience. Sampath Chawla was born in a time of drought into a family not quite like other families, in a town not quite like other towns. After years of failure at school, failure at work, of spending his days dreaming in tea stalls, it does not seem as if Sampath is going to amount to much—until one day he climbs a guava tree in search of peaceful contemplation and becomes unexpectedly famous as a holy man, sending his tiny town into turmoil. A syndicate of larcenous, alcoholic monkeys terrorize the pilgrims who cluster around Sampath’s tree, spies and profiteers descend on the town, and none of Desai’s outrageous characters goes unaffected as events spin increasingly out of control.

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? 
What did you borrow from your library this week?

See more Library Loot here. 

Reading on Sunday

On Sunday morning, I woke to an email from my library reminding me that quite a few books were due back within the next few days. Argh and aack! I had yet to start on two of them, and the third, the 1000+ J.G. Ballard collection, had some 400+ pages left to go!

With such impending doom looming above my head, I settled down to a day of reading (the husband was busy with work). I began with Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills and in a few hours, with some pineapple tarts and green tea fueling me through the read, I was done. I was quite moved by the book. And quite surprised that I read it in one sitting, without feeling the need to turn to something else more cheery (the main character is Etsuko, a Japanese woman whose daughter has committed suicide - this makes her reminisce about her life in Nagasaki when she was pregnant with Keiko). It is a quiet story, a little odd and unsettling, and leaves the reader with more questions than answers. But it was definitely worth reading. Especially if you remember (as I only just am doing so now) that this was Ishiguro's first novel.

To take a bit of a break from that, I moved on to the next Sandman installment, Season of Mists. I had an amazing time reading the previous book, Dream Country, which was more of a collection of four different stories (I especially liked A Midsummer's Night Dream) and was looking forward to Season of Mists, in which the Endless family comes together and Lucifer shuts Hell down.

That was followed by In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin, a set of interlinked stories set in Pakistan. The stories each focus on different characters that are connected to a feudal landowner family, such as a desperate poor servant, the young mistress, the powerful farm manager. Almost all of whom are incredibly brilliant manipulators.

I've been wondering how these stories would read on their own. I think this book works very well because of the connectivity among the stories, which allows the reader to explore this world further, giving greater depth to each story, the more you read them.

(You can read one of the stories from In Other Rooms, Other Wonders online at the New Yorker.)

I reckon that was a pretty productive reading Sunday. What did you read this weekend?



Currently reading:
The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine
Food and Loathing: A Life Measured Out in Calories by Betsy Lerner

On Stanza on the iPod Touch: Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Read: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is set on Earth, which has been largely abandoned as people emigrated to Mars after the end of WWT or World War Terminus. The Synthetic Freedom Fighter, a weapon of the war, was modified to become the "mobile donkey engine of the colonization program", and each emigrant received one. These androids are so sophisticated that it is difficult, almost impossible to tell between them and human beings. They were banned from Earth but some of them still make it there, fleeing from slavery.

Rick Dekard makes his living hunting down these rogue androids. But how do you know an android from a human? Empathy.

"Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnida."

The book explores what it means to be human. I found it quite fascinating that ownership of animals was one way the humans emphasized empathy. But as animals are also a symbol of social status, they are very expensive. Dekard himself owns an electric sheep, that is, until he can afford a real animal. To distinguish androids from humans, bounty hunters pose them questions involving animals while measuring involuntary eye movement and blushing. But the sophisticated androids often prove this incredibly difficult. The situation of 'chickenhead' Isidore further confounds this issue. He's human but has had brain damage, and as a result wouldn't necessarily have the typical human responses to these questions.

Like plenty of science fiction, the book can initially be a bit difficult to get into. But sometimes that's the fun of reading science fiction - figuring out the pieces of the puzzle that you're thrown into, often head first. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was my first Philip K. Dick book and it was quite an interesting read. I look forward to reading more of his works. Blade Runner is loosely based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I'm going to have to move that up my Netflix queue now.

This book is my third read for the Sci-Fi Challenge.
(Source: Library)

Click here to buy Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep from Amazon. I am an Amazon Associate.

Library Loot (4 November 2009)

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.


I'm still making my way through the 1000+ page collection of J.G. Ballard's stories, so this library loot is a little light, with half of it being graphic novels. And, oh no! The main library's going to be closed for renovations at the end of the month - expected completion of the renovation is April 2010! There is another branch nearby, but it is quite a small building, so I'm not quite sure how the collection from the main branch will fit there. Stay tuned for updates!

Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez
I think this might fit the Women Unbound Challenge (although it's not on my initial list).

Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born.

With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup.

Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. Through these and other stories, Rodriguez found the strength to leave her own unhealthy marriage and allow herself to love again, Afghan style.

With warmth and humor, Rodriguez details the lushness of a seemingly desolate region and reveals the magnificence behind the burqa. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom.

Stitches: A Memoir by David Small

One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot, the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told that he had throat cancer and was expected to die. Small, a prize-winning children’s author, re-creates a life story that might have been imagined by Kafka. Readers will be riveted by his journey from speechless victim, subjected to X-rays by his radiologist father and scolded by his withholding and tormented mother, to his decision to flee his home at sixteen with nothing more than dreams of becoming an artist. Recalling Running with Scissors with its ability to evoke the trauma of a childhood lost, Stitches will transform adolescent and adult readers alike with its deeply liberating vision.

The Scent of the Gods by Fiona Cheong
For the Women Unbound Challenge - a fiction pick.

This moving and at times highly lyrical first novel presents life in Singapore at its historical juncture of nationhood through the maturing of its protagonist, 11-year-old Su Yen, also known as Esha. An orphan who grew up with the extended family residing in what she calls her "Great-Grandfather's house," Su Yen emerges through personal loss and playful exploration a young woman still curious and sometimes bewildered by racial politics, ideological differences, sexual infatuation, familial/governmental control, and personal choice and freedom. The first book to represent life in Singapore in its full spectrum, it is highly recommended for any library with an interest in international or juvenile literature. - From Library Journal

Unmanned (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1) by Brian K Vaughan
The husband got a text message recommending this to me. So here it is!

In the summer of 2002, a plague of unknown origin destroyed every last sperm, fetus, and fully developed mammal with a Y chromosome--with the apparent exception of one young man and his male pet. This "gendercide" instantaneously exterminated 48% of the global population, or approximately 2.9 billion men.

Now, aided by the mysterious Agent 355, the last human male Yorick Brown must contend with dangerous extremists, a hoped-for reunion with a girlfriend on the other side of the globe, and the search for exactly why he's the only man to survive.

Season of Mists (Sandman, Book 4) by Neil Gaiman

In many ways, Season of Mists is the pinnacle of the Sandman experience. After a brief intermission of four short stories (collected as Dream Country) Gaiman continued the story of the Dream King that he began in the first two volumes. Here in volume 4, we find out about the rest of Dream's Endless family (Desire, Despair, Destiny, Delirium, Death, and a seventh missing sibling). We find out the story behind Nada, Dream's first love, whom we met only in passing during Dream's visit to hell in the first book. When Dream goes back to hell to resolve unfinished business with Nada, he finds her missing along with all of the other dead souls. The answer to this mystery lies in Lucifer's most uncharacteristic decision--a delicious surprise.

There is something grandiose about this story, in which each chapter ends with such suspense and drive to read the next. This book is best summed up by a toast taken from the second chapter: "To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Jim Pascoe

The Stone Gods by Jeannette Winterson
I'm going to add this to my SciFi challenge list.

On the airwaves, all the talk is of the new blue planet – pristine and habitable, like our own was 65 million years ago, before we took it to the edge of destruction. Off the air, Billie Crusoe and the renegade robo-sapian Spike are falling in love. Along with Captain Handsome and Pink, they’re assigned to colonize the new blue planet. But when a technical maneuver intended to make it inhabitable backfires, Billie and Spike’s flight to the future becomes a surprising return to the distant past –- "Everything is imprinted forever with what it once was." What will happen when their story combines with the world’s story? Will they –- and we –- ever find a safe landing place?

Playful, passionate, polemical, and frequently very funny, The Stone Gods will change forever the stories we tell about the earth, about love, and about stories themselves.

Food and Loathing: A Life Measured Out in Calories by Betsy Lerner
I've been following Lerner's blog and was quite pleased to see this book and realize that it fits into the Women Unbound Challenge too.

With warmth, wit, and not a trace of self-pity" (Entertainment Weekly), Betsy Lerner details her twenty-year struggle with depression and compulsive eating in Food and Loathing, a book that dares to expose the insidious nature of women's secret life with food.

"Alternating between hilarious and heartbreaking" (People), Food and Loathing gives voice to one of the last taboo subjects and greatest stigmas of our time: being overweight. Lerner's revelations on the cult of thinness -- from the dreaded weigh-in at junior high gym class to the effects of inhaling Pepperidge Farm Goldfish at Olympic speeds -- are universally resonant, as is her belief that this is one battle no one should fight alone.

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them?

See more Library Loot here.

Women Unbound Challenge

Eva from A Striped Armchair, Care from Care’s Online Book Club, and Aarti from Booklust are hosting this challenge dedicated to women.

The challenge runs from November 2009-November 2010 and participants are encouraged to read nonfiction and fiction books related to the rather broad idea of women’s studies. There are three levels that participants can target:

Philogynist: Read at least two books, including at least one non-fiction read
Bluestocking: Read at least five books, including at least two non-fiction reads
Suffragette: Read at least eight books, including at least three non-fiction reads

Initially I decided to go with the Bluestocking level and ran through my own TBR list for books that seem to fit. But after browsing some of the participants' blogs and checking out the books' availability in my library, I couldn't help adding more to my original list (and delaying my post in turn!) and realizing that I have plenty in my pool to go for the Suffragette level. Woohoo! Hopefully those on the list (especially the fiction picks) actually qualify for the challenge. In other words, my list is most likely to change.

My pool:
Fiction
The Female Man by Joanna Russ
Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
The Scent of the Gods by Fiona Cheong
Then She Found Me by Elinor Lipman
Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin
Evelina by Frances Burney
The Painter from Shanghai by Jennifer Cody Epstein
Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min
Bone by Fae Myenne Ng (Vasilly's list)



Non-fiction
Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures by Kyoko Mori
Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture by Katy Peiss
Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body by Courtney E. Martin
The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf
Hungry: A Mother and Daughter Fight Anorexia by Sheila and Lisa Himmel
Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over by Geraldine Brooks (from Eva's list)
When Heaven and Earth Changed Places by Le Ly Hayslip (from Eva's list)
Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog (Vasilly's list)
Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelous (Eva's list)

Added:

Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez

Food and Loathing: A Life Measured Out in Calories by Betsy Lerner

Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man by Dale Petersen

RIP IV Wrap-up

It was my first ever reading challenge so it will always be special! Plus it was such a fun way to read my way through my first fall here!


I ended up reading:
1. Affinity by Sarah Waters (completed 31 August 2009)
2. The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan (completed 8 September 2009)
3. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (completed 11 September 2009)
4. The Collector of Hearts by Joyce Carol Oates (completed 17 September 2009)
5. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (completed 28 September 2009).

And actually a couple more I never did review (*guilty look*):

Ghost in Love by Jonathon Carroll
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson

Thanks Carl for hosting this fun challenge!

Read: Love Begins in Winter

(Hmmm... for some reason, this review never got posted! And it is one of my favorite books of the year!)

The stories in Simon Van Booy’s second collection, Love Begins in Winter, are about ordinary people and their versions of love. Van Booy, who was born in London and grew up in Wales and Oxford and has lived in Paris, Athens and New York, sets his stories around the world. While the locations are wide-ranging and the characters have diverse backgrounds, they also share a similar streak: there is such sadness in them, and often they are on the verge of giving up. Ultimately, however, these are hopeful stories with a breathtaking, musical quality to them that they makes them hard to forget.

The first (and title) story brings together a man who collects stones and a woman who collects acorns. Both have been dealing with their own private grief for many years: "For ten years as professional cellist I have been raising the dead in concert halls across the world." They meet in Beverly Hills and somehow, instinctively, know each other intimately.

“The Missing Statues” is about the kindness of strangers. An American diplomat notices a missing statue in St. Peter’s Square and sobs as a passing priest comforts him. The void reminds him of a day when the kindness of a stranger – a gondolier, no less – made an awful day in Las Vegas better.

Walter, an Irish Gypsy, has a major crush on a Canadian orphan who has just moved to his town in “The Coming And Going Of Strangers.” He takes a basket of eggs to the house that she lives in, the very house that used to belong to the family of the girl whose life Walter’s father saved from the clutches of the sea many years ago. “The Coming And Going of Strangers” tells of love and friendship that can happen between strangers.

In “The City of Windy Trees,” George Franck, a man who has left his past behind and whose life “was nothing more than a light that would blink once in the history of the universe and then be forgotten,” is sent a photograph of a young girl - and his life stops. He doesn't leave his apartment for a week, then sets off for Sweden to find his future. It is a truly sweet and hopeful story about second chances.

In a collection of stories, it is inevitable that not every story will work for everyone. For this reader, the second story, “Tiger, Tiger,” seems out of place with the rest of the collection. This story focuses on how the relationship between a young woman and her boyfriend is changed after the divorce of his parents. The move from “Love Begins in Winter” to “Tiger, Tiger” is rather jarring and could cause some readers to put away the book, but the remaining stories continue in a similar direction as the first: they cocoon the reader in these exquisite worlds from which it takes immense willpower to leave. Love Begins in Winter, which won the 2009 Frank O’Connor award, is an exceptional read which will capture a reader’s heart.


Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com

Read in October 2009

I can't believe that we're heading into the last two months of the year already. Has it been ten months since I've been here? Where did all that time go? Oh right, I was doing some reading (of course, not reading like some other people have been reading. I've only just hit 200 books). Anyway, on this last day of October, I have no reading plans, as it's the husband's birthday and it's off to make a pandan cake! Happy birthday my love!

Fiction(17) 
The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels
Brooklyn - Coim Toibin
The Children of Men - PD James
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories - Robert Louis Stevenson
Something Borrowed - Emily Griffin
Red Sorghum - Mo Yan
The Ghost in Love - Jonathan Carroll
Love Begins in Winter - Simon van Booy
Beat the Reaper - Josh Bazell
How The Soldier Repairs the Gramophone - Sasa Stanisic
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett
Classics of the Macabre - Daphne Du Maurier
Shopgirl - Steve Martin
I Do Not Come To You By Chance - Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet - Reif Larsen
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick

Non-fiction (3)
The Story of My Life - Helen Keller
The Afterlife - Donald Antrim
The Best American Essays of the Century - Joyce Carol Oates (Ed)

Graphic Novels (6)
Sandman: The Doll's House - Neil Gaiman
Sandman: Dream Country Neil Gaiman
Ex Machina: The First Hundred Days - Brian K Vaughn
Serenity: Those Left Behind - Joss Whedon
Jack of Fables: The (Nearly) Great Escape - Bill Willingham  

Jack of Fables: Jack of Hearts - Bill Willingham 

Total: 26

Read: Classics of the Macabre by Daphne du Maurier

Oh why oh why did it take me so long to read Daphne du Maurier? I only picked up Rebecca earlier this year. I think I always had this fear that it would be like my experience of reading Wuthering Heights when I was a teenager (it was a gift and I felt that I needed to read it. I didn't like it. Mostly because I wasn't quite ready to read it. I think I ought to go pick up Wuthering Heights again. I might be more ready now!). And for some reason I'd always associated Rebecca with that experience. But I took the plunge and Rebecca was such a gorgeous, completely absorbing book.

And then, somehow, it took me several more months to pick up another du Maurier! And this one was surprising. And good. And a bit creepy. But very entertaining.

Included in this collection are Don't Look Now, The Apple Tree, The Blue Lenses, The Birds, The Apple Tree, The Alibi and Not After Midnight. My favorites were The Birds and Don't Look Now. I have yet to watch the film version of The Birds, and now am quite curious to see how it was done because it was not what I expected (random attacks by birds) but more like an all-out, highly organised war. Don't Look Now is set in Venice and follows a couple who are grieving over the death of their young child. They meet two elderly women, one of them is psychic and has a warning from their dead daughter.

I also loved the silly awkwardness of The Blue Lenses, in which a woman emerges from an operation to restore her sight and begins to see people for who they truly are. I think that du Maurier's writing really shone in The Apple Tree, for she managed to bring the creepiness out of an apple tree. An apple tree, creepy? Really? That's du Maurier!

Go read this collection, or any of her other collections of short stories! I know I'll be heading for the 'D' shelf on my next library visit.

Click here to buy Daphne du Maurier's Classics of the Macabre from Amazon. I am an Amazon Associate.

Read: Jack of Fables by Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham

I've been enjoying the Fables series but my reading has currently been stalled at the fourth book, March of the Wooden Soldiers, as the next installment, The Mean Seasons has apparently been forgotten by some library user - the online catalogue says it's been due back since mid-September!

So I gave another graphic novel a try. I picked up Ex Machina: First Hundred Days by Brian K. Vaughan, Tony Harris and Tom Feister. And I wasn't quite convinced that this was the graphic novel for me.

The husband (he's been reading Fables too) and I even hit the Barnes & Noble to see if they had a copy of The Mean Seasons. But no luck there either! And we ended up reading Serenity: Those Left Behind, which bridges the gap between the Firefly series and the Serenity film.

So when I hit the library this week, I picked up Jack of Fables, which stars Jack (of And The Beanstalk fame), and although I was initially doubtful (Jack isn't exactly my favorite of Fables characters), ended up enjoying the first two installments.

In The (Nearly) Great Escape, Jack is caught and imprisoned in a community where Fables go to be forgotten by the Mundies (or Mundanes, i.e. us). The best part of this was meeting fables that were not in the main Fables series, such as Humpty Dumpty, Mother Goose, and the Turtle and the Hare. Jack of Hearts had two different story arcs. In the first, Jack tells of his romp as Jack Frost. In the second, Jack heads to Las Vegas for some fun (and of course, gets into some trouble).

The thing about Jack is that this series doesn't have that whole entourage of great characters (Snow White! Rose Red! Bigby!) that the Fables series does. It's been a good ride so far, and I'm going to pick up more of the Jack books, but I'll be looking wistfully at the rest of the Fables books, waiting for Mean Seasons to be back in stock.

Buy these books from Amazon (I am an Amazon Associate)

Jack of Fables 1: The (Nearly) Great Escape

Jack of Fables Vol. 2: Jack of Hearts

Ex Machina: First Hundred Days

Serenity: Those Left Behind
Fables Vol. 5: The Mean Seasons

Read: Shopgirl by Steve Martin

Synopsis: Mirabelle is the "shopgirl" of the title, a young woman, beautiful in a wallflowerish kind of way, who works behind the glove counter at Neiman Marcus "selling things that nobody buys anymore..."

Slightly lost, slightly off-kilter, very shy, Mirabelle charms because of all that she is not: not glamorous, not aggressive, not self-aggrandizing. Still there is something about her that is irresistible.

Mirabelle captures the attention of Ray Porter, a wealthy businessman almost twice her age. As they tentatively embark on a relationship, they both struggle to decipher the language of love -- with consequences that are both comic and heartbreaking.

In most cases, books are so much better than their film versions. This one, I reckon, is the exception to that rule.

I quite enjoyed the movie, although maybe it was because of the presence of Jason Schwartzman and the cameo by Sun Kil Moon/Red House Painters principal Mark Kozelek. So I was expecting to enjoy the book. And it was... well, I'd recommend you watch the movie instead.

The book had some awkward phrasings and uncomfortable moments. Here's one I both chuckled and cringed over: "Her nipples are the color of bubble gum, and the silicone makes them resilient enough to chew like bubble gum". Erm, eew... yet haha, who would've thought of writing that?

That was rather unfortunate, as Martin does seem quite perceptive about relationships, especially the initial stages of courtship - between Mirabelle and the smooth, gentlemanly Ray, as well as Mirabelle and the very offbeat, unsavvy Jeremy.

Yet it's those awkward moments that continue to stick in my mind, like that gum you have to scrape off your shoe with a stick.

Shopgirl: A Novella
Click here to buy from Amazon (I am an Amazon Associate)

Library Loot (21 October 2009)

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.


I managed to stick (somewhat) to my list today (yay!), except for the impulse borrows of the J.G. Ballard collection and the Jack of Fables collection (once again, I'm still waiting on my next installment of Fables to be returned to the library by some errant borrower).
(Note: The links are to Amazon. I am an Amazon Associate)

A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro 
Need to read more Ishiguro!

The story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. In a story where past and present confuse, she relives scenes of Japan's devastation in the wake of World War II.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick (SciFi Challenge)
Blade Runner's on the Netflix queue

San Francisco lies under a cloud of radioactive dust. People live in half-deserted apartment buildings, and keep electric animals as pets because so many real animals have died. Most people emigrate to Mars - unless they have a job to do on Earth. Like Rick Deckard - android killer for the police and owner of an electric sheep. This week he has to find, identify, and kill six androids which have escaped from Mars. They're machines, but they look and sound and think like humans - clever, dangerous humans. They will be hard to kill. The film Blade Runner was based on this famous novel.

The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard - J. G. Ballard
Woohoo! I've been wanting to read this one!

Never before published in its entirety in America, with many stories new to American readers, The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard is a monumental achievement by one of our greatest literary geniuses. Featuring such classics as “Prima Belladonna,” “The Drowned Giant,” and “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race,” the book evokes Poe and Kafka, Borges and Bradbury in its astonishing ability to render psychosis and modern paranoia in phantasmagorical detail on the printed page.

Jack of Fables 1: The (Nearly) Great Escape - Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham

Stepping out of Bill Willingham's acclaimed Vertigo series Fables, the charming and insufferable Jack of Tales is the center of attention once again, this time in his very own ongoing title. In this first collection, Jack is thrown into a prison-like "retirement" community for wayward Fables, where he discovers a sinister plot to eliminate all traces of magic from the Mundane World.

Written by Willingham and Matthew Sturges, The (Nearly) Great Escape features art by Tony Akins and Andrew Pepoy as well as painted covers by James Jean and a special sketchbook section by Akins.

Jack of Fables Vol. 2: Jack of Hearts - Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham

In this volume collecting issues #6-11, Jack reveals the secret of his former relationship with the illustrious Snow Queen — when he took her powers and became known as Jack Frost. And in present times, he lands in Las Vegas and meets his lovely new bride, a directionless heiress. Could it possibly be "happily ever after" at last?

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders - Daniyal Mueenuddin
Recently shortlisted for the National Book Awards

Passing from the mannered drawing rooms of Pakistan’s cities to the harsh mud villages beyond, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s linked stories describe the interwoven lives of an aging feudal landowner, his servants and managers, and his extended family, industrialists who have lost touch with the land. In the spirit of Joyce’s Dubliners and Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches, these stories comprehensively illuminate a world, describing members of parliament and farm workers, Islamabad society girls and desperate servant women. A hard-driven politician at the height of his powers falls critically ill and seeks to perpetuate his legacy; a girl from a declining Lahori family becomes a wealthy relative’s mistress, thinking there will be no cost; an electrician confronts a violent assailant in order to protect his most valuable possession; a maidservant who advances herself through sexual favors unexpectedly falls in love.

Together the stories in In Other Rooms, Other Wonders make up a vivid portrait of feudal Pakistan, describing the advantages and constraints of social station, the dissolution of old ways, and the shock of change. Refined, sensuous, by turn humorous, elegiac, and tragic, Mueenuddin evokes the complexities of the Pakistani feudal order as it is undermined and transformed.

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? 

See more Library Loot here.

What I Read Last Week (19 October 2009)

Red Sorghum: A Novel of China - Mo Yan (source: library) 

A challenging but entirely fulfilling and compelling read of a village fighting against the Japanese invasion of China. But it is more than a gory war story, this is the tale of a family and how it became one.

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell (source: Goodreads first reads giveaway)
How I adored this book! Why did it take me so long to read it (it's been on my shelves since... March?) It was such a fun read. But also quite quite disturbing (don't read it before you have to enter a hospital!). But yes, do go read this one, especially, I reckon, if you like Scrubs. 


A Town Like Alice- Nevil Shute (source: library)
I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did. Perhaps it was the familiar territory - a large part of the book was set in Malaysia during the Second World War and the Japanese Occupation. And that it was a sort of long-distance romance of a different kind between two very strong, very brave characters. 


Ex Machina: First Hundred Days - Brian K. Vaughan, Tony Harris, Tom Feister (source: library) 
The weird thing about this graphic novel is that I liked every character except the main one. Ex Machina is quite a different take on the superhero style, being more real-life (he's the Mayor of New York and his power is the ability to talk to/command machines). I'm not sure if I will continue with the series. But that's mostly because my library doesn't have the other books in the series!


Currently reading:
The Uncommon Reader: A Novella - Alan Bennett
In a Summer Season - Elizabeth Taylor
The Best American Essays of the Century - Joyce Carol Oates (editor)

Friday Finds (17 October 2009)

Here's what I added to my list of books I'd like to read this week.

My Abandonment by Peter Rock (via Three Guys One Book)

A thirteen-year-old girl and her father live in Forest Park, the enormous nature preserve in Portland, Oregon. There they inhabit an elaborate cave shelter, bathe in a nearby creek, store perishables at the water’s edge, use a makeshift septic system, tend a garden, even keep a library of sorts. Once a week, they go to the city to buy groceries and otherwise merge with the civilized world. But one small mistake allows a backcountry jogger to discover them, which derails their entire existence, ultimately provoking a deeper flight.
Inspired by a true story and told through the startlingly sincere voice of a young narrator, Caroline, Peter Rock's My Abandonment is a riveting journey into life at the margins, and a mesmerizing tale of survival and hope.

The She-Devil in the Mirror by Horacio Castellanos Moya (via The Mookse and The Gripes)

Salvadorean society is shocked by the gruesome murder of a young upper-class woman, and no one more so than her best friend Laura. In her first-person solo narration, Laura rattles on and on about her disbelief and horror at the evils all around her—but who’s that in the mirror? Laura Rivera can’t believe what has happened. Her best friend has been killed in cold blood in the living room of her home, in front of her two young daughters! Nobody knows who pulled the trigger, but Laura will not rest easy until she finds out. Her dizzying, delirious, hilarious, and blood-curdling one-sided dialogue carries the reader on a rough and tumble ride through the social, political, economic, and sexual chaos of post-civil war San Salvador. A detective story of pulse-quickening suspense, The She-Devil in the Mirror is also a sober reminder that justice and truth are more often than not illusive. Castellanos Moya’s relentless, obsessive narrator—female, rich, paranoid, wonderfully perceptive, and, in the end, fabulously unreliable—paints with frivolous profundity a society in a state of collapse.

Bleak History by John Shirley (via The OLM Blog)

As far as Gabriel Bleak is concerned, talking to the dead is just another way of making a living. It gives him the competitive edge to survive as a bounty hunter, or "skip tracer," in the psychic minefield known as New York City. Unfortunately, his gift also makes him a prime target. A top-secret division of Homeland Security has been monitoring the recent emergence of human supernaturals, with Gabriel Bleak being the strongest on record. If they control Gabriel, they'll gain access to the Hidden -- the entity-based energy field that connects all life on Earth. But Gabriel's got other ideas. With a growing underground movement called the Shadow Community -- and an uneasy alliance of spirits, elementals, and other beings -- Gabriel's about to face the greatest demonic uprising since the Dark Ages. But this time, history is not going to repeat itself. This time, the future is Bleak. Gabriel Bleak.

Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books (via The Elegant Variation)

What does a library say about the mind of its owner? How do books map the intellectual interests, curiosities, tastes, and personalities of their readers? What does the collecting of books have in common with the practice of architecture? Unpacking My Library provides an intimate look at the personal libraries of fourteen of the world’s leading architects, alongside conversations about the significance of books to their careers and lives.

Photographs of bookshelves—displaying well-loved and rare volumes, eclectic organizational schemes, and the individual touches that make a bookshelf one’s own—provide an evocative glimpse of their owner’s personal life. Each architect also presents a reading list of top ten influential titles, from architectural history to theory to fiction and nonfiction, that serves as a personal philosophy of literature and history, and advice on what every young architect, scholar, and lover of architecture should read.

An inspiring cross-section of notable libraries, this beautiful book celebrates the arts of reading and collecting.

Library Loot (14 October 2009)

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

I wanted to make the trek to the library yesterday, but the big storm hit and it rained and rained all day. Everyone probably had the same library withdrawal - the carpark was pretty full and I was actually No. 4 in the check-out queue for once (I've never had more than one person ahead of me before).

The Best American Essays of the Century - Joyce Carol Oates (editor)
Sounds like a good collection!

This singular collection is nothing less than a political, spiritual, and intensely personal record of America"s tumultuous modern age, as experienced by our foremost critics, commentators, activists, and artists. Joyce Carol Oates has collected a group of works that are both intimate and important, essays that move from personal experience to larger significance without severing the connection between speaker and audience.
From Ernest Hemingway covering bullfights in Pamplona to Martin Luther King, Jr."s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," these essays fit, in the words of Joyce Carol Oates, "into a kind of mobile mosaic suggest[ing] where we've come from, and who we are, and where we are going."
Among those whose work is included are Mark Twain, John Muir,
T. S. Eliot, Richard Wright, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Tom Wolfe, Susan Sontag, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Joan Didion, Cynthia Ozick, Saul Bellow, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward Hoagland, and Annie Dillard. 

A Town Like Alice- Nevil Shute
I kept thinking that I've read this before, but apparently not!

A Town Like Alice tells of a young woman who miraculously survived a Japanese "death march" in World War II, and of an Australian soldier, also a prisoner of war, who offered to help her--even at the cost of his life...

The Uncommon Reader: A Novella - Alan Bennett

From one of England's most celebrated writers, the author of the award-winning The History Boys, a funny and superbly observed novella about the Queen of England and the subversive power of reading


When her corgis stray into a mobile library parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen feels duty-bound to borrow a book. Discovering the joy of reading widely (from J. R. Ackerley, Jean Genet, and Ivy Compton-Burnett to the classics) and intelligently, she finds that her view of the world changes dramatically. Abetted in her newfound obsession by Norman, a young man from the royal kitchens, the Queen comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with the routines of her role as monarch. Her new passion for reading initially alarms the palace staff and soon leads to surprising and very funny consequences for the country at large.

Daphne du Maurier's Classics of the Macabre - Daphne du Maurier
I've only ever read one other du Maurier (Rebecca) and am looking forward to reading more. 

This sumptuous volume celebrates the 80th birthday of one of the best-known and most-loved storytellers in the English language today, Daphne du Maurier.
Here are six masterpieces of the imagination, illustrated in glowing color by prize-winning artist, Michael Foreman.
Don't Look Now, a classic story of the macabre, opens the collection, followed by The Apple Tree, The Blue Lenses, The Birds, The Alibi and Not After Midnight.
These dramatic and compelling stories, together with their stunning illustrations, make a perfect gift to be treasured for a lifetime.

The Afterlife: A Memoir - Donald Antrim

In the winter of 2000, shortly after his mother's death, Donald Antrim began writing about his family. In pieces that appeared in The New Yorker and were anthologized in Best American Essays, Antrim explored his intense and complicated relationships with his mother, Louanne, an artist, teacher, and ferociously destabilizing alcoholic; his gentle grandfather, who lived in the mountains of North Carolina and who always hoped to save his daughter from herself; and his father, who married his mother twice.

The Afterlife is an elliptical, sometimes tender, sometimes blackly hilarious portrait of a family--faulty, cracked, enraging--and of a man struggling to learn the nature of his origins.

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet - Reif Larsen
A bit hesitant about picking this up, but we'll see how it goes.  

When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T.S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal — if you consider mapping family dinner table conversation normal — is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins, taking T.S. from his family ranch just north of Divide, Montana, to the museum’s hallowed halls.


T.S. sets out alone, leaving before dawn with a plan to hop a freight train and hobo east. Once aboard, his adventures step into high gear and he meticulously maps, charts, and illustrates his exploits, documenting mythical wormholes in the Midwest, the urban phenomenon of “rims,” and the pleasures of McDonald’s, among other things. We come to see the world through T.S.’s eyes and in his thorough investigation of the outside world he also reveals himself.


As he travels away from the ranch and his family we learn how the journey also brings him closer to home. A secret family history found within his luggage tells the story of T.S.’s ancestors and their long-ago passage west, offering profound insight into the family he left behind and his role within it. As T.S. reads he discovers the sometimes shadowy boundary between fact and fiction and realizes that, for all his analytical rigor, the world around him is a mystery.


All that he has learned is tested when he arrives at the capital to claim his prize and is welcomed into science’s inner circle. For all its shine, fame seems more highly valued than ideas in this new world and friends are hard to find.


T.S.’s trip begins at the Copper Top Ranch and the last known place he stands is Washington, D.C., but his journey’s movement is far harder to track: How do you map the delicate lessons learned about family and self? How do you depict how it feels to first venture out on your own? Is there a definitive way to communicate the ebbs and tides of heartbreak, loss, loneliness, love? These are the questions that strike at the core of this very special debut.

Ex Machina: First Hundred Days - Brian K. Vaughan, Tony Harris, Tom Feister
With my next installment of Fables still loitering around some other borrower's house, I had to get my graphic novel fix with something new. Sounds interesting!

Spin City and The West Wing meet Batman in this gripping and satirical superhero graphic novel by the acclaimed writer of Y - The Last Man, Brian K. Vaughan. After a close encounter with alien technology, civil engineer Mitchell Hundred finds he can interface with technology of every kind. He sets himself up as erstwhile superhero, The Machine, but after doing more harm than good, Hundred ends up as mayor of New York! Now he has to contend with controversial artwork, a recalcitrant police chief and a series of strange murders that could bring the city to its knees! The first in an all-new series from Titan, Ex Machina: The First Hundred Days is brimming with political intrigue, civic chaos and superheroic shenanigans!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them?

See more Library Loot here.

What I Read Last Week

I finished reading:
The Children of Men by P.D. James (review) (source: library)

The Sandman Vol. 2: The Doll's House by Neil Gaiman (source: library)
The Sandman Library 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman (source: library)
The Sandman series does get better. I especially enjoyed volume 3, which was a bit different from the first two books, as it is a series of four short stories.

The Ghost in Love by Jonathan Carroll (source: library)
Hmm...not exactly what I was expecting. But still, it was completely enjoyable, and incredibly imaginative.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson (source: library)
Ok so I didn't quite finish all the 'Other Stories' as the book was due back at the library, but I did manage to read most of the stories, including the title one. And that really surprised me - it was far more psychological than I'd thought.

I'm currently reading:
Red Sorghum: A Novel of China by Mo Yan (source: library)
Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell (source: Goodreads first reads giveaway)

Read: The Children of Men by PD James

"Earlier this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-three years, two months and twelve days."

And with this whopper of an opening sentence, PD James kicks the reader into this dystopian future. It takes a moment to sink in. The "last human being to be born on earth"? Whatever does that mean?

It all began in the Year Omega, or 1995, where "overnight, it seemed, teh human race had lost its power to breed. The discovery in July 1994 that even the frozen sperm stored for experiment and artificial insemination had lost its potency was a peculiar horror casting over Omega the pall of superstitious awe, of witchcraft, of divine intervention. The old gods reappeared, terrible in their power". In England, under the rule of the Warden, the elderly are encouraged to commit suicide, criminals are exiled to an island prison where visitors and communication with the outside world are forbidden.

Oxford historian Theodore Faron, the cousin and former adviser of the Warden, is approached by a woman named Julian, for help advocating her group's causes, which includes stopping compulsory sperm testing and the group suicides of the elderly. Theo's meeting with the Warden and his council doesn't quite work out but working with the dissidents (especially Julian) relights Theo's fire. Then something unexpected happens that has the group (and Theo) fleeing to Wales.

PD James is very masterful at the quiet kind of shock. She introduces vignettes of what life is like in this future, such as when Theo comes across a woman pushing a pram with a doll nestled inside: "The glossy irises, unnaturally large, bluer than those of any human eye, a gleaming azure, seemed to fix on him their unseeing stare which yet horrible suggested a dormant intelligence, alien and monstrous. The eyelashes, dark brown, lay like spiders on the delicately tinted porcelain cheeks and an adult abundance of yellow crimped hair sprung from beneath the close-fitting lace-trimmed bonnet."

It is a quiet book, it isn't all up and in your face. Initially, it stuns as the reader learns about its no-offspring world. But the pace slows down as the character of Theo is carved out. He isn't the most compelling of characters and that can take a lot of steam out of the book. However, I'm glad I stuck with it, as The Children of Men is incredibly thought-provoking and intriguing. Many of these fears are relevant today and this future that James created is just so sad and so unbearable.

(Source of book: My library)

Reading, I think, should be kept independent of the regular school exercises. Children should be encouraged to read for the pure delight of it. The attitude of the child toward his books should be that of unconscious receptivity. The great works of the imagination ought to become a part of his life, as they were once of the very substance of the men who wrote them. It is true, the more sensitive and imaginative the mind is that received the thought-pictures and images of literature, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced.

Anne Sullivan Macy (Helen Keller's teacher) in

The Story of My Life: The Restored Classic, Complete and Unabridged, Centennial Edition

Links for 8 October 2009

Want to read 500 books in a year? Both Eyes Book Blog shows you how. And I am truly in awe.

"But at the same time, the paradox is that every book we write is a lottery ticket: the strange alchemy that turns a well-written book into a well-written runaway commercial success on the level of Fugitive Pieces or The Lovely Bones—in other words, a book with sales numbers on a scale that might possibly allow a writer to quit a day job—is somewhat mysterious. It might happen to anyone."

 Emily St John Mandel on writers' day jobs

Need more books to add to your already lengthy TBR list? The Millions lays out the longlist of titles nominated by its “Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far)” panel.