book it

Halfway through Aimee Bender's An Invisible Sign Of My Own and just loving the quirkiness of the characters.

Here's the publisher's synopsis:

Mona Gray was ten when her father contracted a mysterious illness and she became a quitter, abandoning each of her talents just as pleasure became intense. The only thing she can’t stop doing is math: She knocks on wood, adds her steps, and multiplies people in the park against one another. When Mona begins teaching math to second-graders, she finds a ready audience. But the difficult and wonderful facts of life keep intruding. She finds herself drawn to the new science teacher, who has an unnerving way of seeing through her intricately built façade.

Read the first chapter here.

Unfortunately, the genius that is our national library, has only two copies of the book on this island.

And what's more, they're both at Sengkang.

Unwilling to make the agonising trip down to get my hands on the book, I used the library's great reservation service and picked up the copy resting in front of me now, from the Queenstown library, where I also got them to send Nigel Slater's Toast. Now that is an excellent easy-reading food book. Highly recommended, especially for readers of The Observer's Food Monthly.
He's got a new cookbook out Oct 3, The Kitchen Diaries: A Year In The Kitchen


Ah the Queenstown Library, with its screaming children downstairs running around from the kids section to the neighbouring adult's fiction section....
The aroma of brewing coffee wafts into the library from the always full cafe at the corner.
The magazine racks always devoid of magazines.
Climb the flight of stairs to the second floor where things are a little more hushed, except for the man standing at the entrance to the toilets talking on his mobile phone, probably thinking: See I'm not exactly at the library itself now, I'm at the toilets....
The library users who park their cars illegally outside the library, when there's free parking on Sundays at the covered carpark just a hop, skip and jump opposite the road.
Queenstown Library, where as a kid, I would make regular pilgrimmages with my mum and sister, borrowing stacks of books, making sure they're flipped to the front page to be stamped by the librarian and the card filled out. I always wanted to be able to do the stamping.
Then when secondary school came around, the library visits died.
And were only revived again a few years ago, when my love for reading was brought back to life, by my literature teacher in JC, who made me hear the music in words and stories.
Began buying books, only to realise I couldn't afford to buy everything I wanted to read.
So the library visits began again.

Queenstown library.
Despite everything, it still beats them all, even, or maybe especially, the spanking new glass monstrosity of a Central Library (where they stick the borrowers in the basement, where the sun don't shine).

Listening to Radiohead - Killer Cars