the kraken machinist

[Machinist: you asked for kraken, you get kraken 🙂 ]

This is the cover of one of the books I’m currently reading: The Kraken Wakes. It’s one of those books that draw you in the more you read. The suspense builds up with every page and sometimes the things mentioned are interesting enough to warrant a pause and a trip to the computer for further research i.e. the Mary Celeste and more Tennyson poems.

Another book I’m reading is Start Late, Finish Rich by David Bach. NY recommended it to me and we had a blast during a long lunch at Delicious thinking of grandiose schemes to make a shitload of money and retire before we’re 40. The book’s a fun read and full of common sense but I do wish there’s more books for our local financial setup. I’m tired of reading about 401Ks.

Nini, looks like we can add another money mad friend to our midst 😉 

televisi

I dunno what kind of random surfing that enabled Dali to find this scary little article about Anomalocaris, but we had an interesting chat via MSN on how we’d shit our pants if we ever came face to face with one. Then I remembered that I had a book on Burgess Shale called Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould bought a couple months ago from Betterworld Books. Flipped through the index until I found the relevant monster chapter and scanned it for Dali. Click here if you too want to be a geek of prehistoric monsters. [I’m currently reading a 1950s sci-fi book by John Wyndham called The Kraken Wakes. You can bet that one of these days  I’ll have a nightmare on kraken-y, square-jawed sea monsters and go nuts the next time I go swimming at night.]

On to more nerdiness: I had a fantastic time at the KL Alternative Book Fair (KLAB) last weekend. Met some very nice people and chatted about books in general. I related some of the conversations I had to MC and he almost crashed the car laughing. He just doesn’t understand 😦

“So what are you reading? Do you like Maeve Binchy? She’s brilliant kan?”
“Oh, I love her too! What am I reading? It’s a book on dinosaurs. Specifically, the extinction during the Cretaceous. Exciting stuff!”

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“Eh come and say hello on the forum lah! Have you put up your library yet?”
“It’s on Librarything.com. OKlah, I say hello online tonight. Hehe.”

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I also offloaded some books I didn’t like and got myself a free one by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Not her best though. It had all the promise of being a great book: magic, Atlantis, the occult… but nah. I was disappointed. I was very tempted to get one or two books from the Bookcrossings people but it didn’t feel right. I think what they’re doing is great but I can’t bear to let go of most of my books. Sharing/lending is fine but I’d want them back and IMHO, that made it unfair for me to pinjam any of theirs.

Although confronted with a gazillion choices, I managed to restrain myself and only bought 1 secondhand book. Just as I was paying for it, a guy comes rushing up and asks if there was another one by the same author. He was a foreigner and I didn’t hear understand him very well but I gathered that a) it was a very good book, b) she was his favourite author, and c) it wasn’t in Kino. I was about to offer the book to him when it popped into my head that hey, this book must be freaking good for him to be making such a fuss. So I continued paying for it and wished him luck. Haha. Karma is soooo gonna bite me on the ass one day. MC asked why I didn’t offer to share the book with him after I read it so we could be nerd-lovers. Now why didn’t I think of that? I’m getting old. And kedekut 😀

his hair was the colour of lemons

Last night I finished reading an incredible book. It took me a couple weeks to finish as I was distracted many many times by new Judith McNaught acquisitions (hehe *blush*). Maybe because it was one of those books you fall in love with the more you read and would like to draw out the inevitable end, maybe by the realisation early on that the ending was going to be shattering.

I must admit that the first couple pages of Markus Zusak’s ‘The Book Thief‘ wasn’t that great. I found it a bit confusing at first. Who was the bloody narrator? What were all those paragraphs in bold? Little by little though the characters were drawn out and you wished you knew someone like Liesel and Hans and that Rudy reminded you of your first boyfriend. I think this is the first book I’ve read about the Holocaust that shows what happened to ordinary Germans. Yes, ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas‘ was also about Germans in WWII but it was about a privileged little boy whose parents were in the upper echelons of Nazi society and where Hitler himself came to dinner. ‘The Book Thief’ is so much different: you feel Mr. Steiner’s anger and disbelief when government officials come to take Rudy away to be part of an elite school for Aryan children, you sense the town’s sorrow when Mr. Hubermann and Mr. Steiner get drafted as punishment for being ‘Jew lovers’.

Here’s a great review by John Green of the NYT.

I cried buckets at the ending. I cried so hard that Atti woke up and came to nuzzle my neck and lick my tears. It started slow but ‘The Book Thief’ has already clawed it’s way up to the top of my 2008 booklist.

anytime you want me

I bought these Japanese chocolate snacks at Isetan during lunch. They’re for MC to cheer him up.

I’m having a hard time not opening them and eating them myself. What he doesn’t know, he won’t miss right? Haha.

Pocky pocky.

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2 book reviews caught my eye today. One, Anne Rice’s second installment of the Christ the Lord series, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, and the second, May Pang’s Instamatic Karma.

I bought the first Christ the Lord book, Out of Egypt, some time ago but haven’t started on it yet. Maybe this’ll spur me on and move me from my recent food and fantasy phase. Reading about toxins in salmon and other fish helps you make educated food choices, but boy does it take the enjoyment out of eating sometimes.

The last couple of paragraphs in the May Pang article choked me up:

“When John hung up the phone,” she writes, “he looked wistfully out the window. I could almost see him replaying the entire Beatles experience.” Ms. Pang then photographed him signing just beneath the clearly legible signatures of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Richard Starkey (Mr. Starr’s real name), the shutter clicking between the “h” and “n” of his first name.

She went on:

“Everybody changes,” she said. “With John things changed on a daily basis. It’s a question of time. Five years earlier was not the same situation. In 1974 he had just seen everyone. The friendship was still there. They were brothers. There was no animosity. And even though they all felt they had to break up to get to the next level of their musical careers, John had started this band that changed the world. It changed pop culture. It changed how we live and how we dress. And he knew that. So when he sat down to sign, he knew that this was it. His was the last signature. As he had started the group, he was the one to end it.”

The end of an era.

jam tarts & milk

The lights, fans and AC have been installed. I have grave doubts over the light fixture we bought for the main bedroom but Stinky insists it’s fine. Hmm… time will tell. It was thrilling flipping switches and seeing things work. For the longest time there was no visible improvement to the place.

I finally bought myself The Joy of Cooking, something I wanted for a long time. I can’t wait to get started on some of the recipes. I decided not to get an oven (yet). My mom assures me the newfangled pot the folks are getting me for a housewarming present works like an oven. I really hope so. Then again if the pot doesn’t live up to its promises, I have a valid excuse to get an oven and remodel the kitchen. Built-in microwaves and ovens have always been a dream of mine. Haha.

The war between Stinky and I over which posters to get framed and hanged is still going on. He thinks all his Cassavetes posters deserve the honour, I say hah! to that. In retaliation he says the In the Mood for Love poster I love (soundtrack, not movie) is too cheesy. Ah well, we all know I’ll win in the end, but it’s entertaining to see him get all riled up over his poster collection.

I’ve decided to go on the hike tomorrow morning. God help me.