AwesomeBlogs.com points out that Victoria Beckham has been quoted as saying, "I haven't read a book in my life." Do people like that actually exist?!

How anyone can go through life without reading a single book is beyond me. If you're illiterate or have a reading disability, that's a different matter, but why would anyone who can read choose not to do so? Even the blind read, and would give a lot to be able to see the words printed in black type across the page - words that hold mysteries and have the power to transport their reader to extraordinary worlds and divergent universes.

It has never ceased to amaze me that such a meagre sum of letters — only 26 — can come together in so many strange and wonderful incarnations, each incarnation holding a wealth of meaning. When I glimpse a printed page for the first time, whether it is a newspaper, magazine, book, brochure, pamphlet, poster, or even just the back of a cereal box, I'm filled with anticipation and an inescapable longing to know what is contained in those words, standing out in relief for all the world to see. It is as if the words on the page are welcoming me, holding out their arms, eager to share their secrets and mysteries with me.

If one can have a love affair with an inanimate object, moreso with one that is intangible, then I have a love affair with words. I find it incomprehensible that others can pass them by and remain impervious to their lure, blind to the wonder and insensible to the delights that can be unleashed by the simple act of reading.

Remember when I asked, Who can explain grammar anyway?"

It was a rhetorical question. However, apparently William Safire can. I am in love with his book, How Not To Write. Not only does Safire explain grammar, he does so with tongue firmly in cheek. I never believed a book on grammar could be so entertaining; if, prior to this, you'd told me I would chuckle over rules of grammar, I would have thought you soft in the head.

It's not just Safire's humour that draws me, however. It's his — at times — almost poetic turn of phrase. His description of the semicolon as "a form of punctuation that makes a full stop but continues to dribble" caused me to tumble head over heels in love.

Unlike the period, which decisively separates complete thoughts, or the comma, which gently separates phrases, the semicolon is the Cleopatra of punctuation marks; she separates and connects at the same time, making hungry where most she satisfies.

How could I resist? It would have taken a harder heart than mine to remain impervious.

People say you must first read in order to be able to write. That's long been a belief I share.

Look at all the great writers: every single one was a voracious reader. Perhaps reading sows seeds in the imagination, perhaps it teaches us the wonder of paying attention to the images we see in our heads, perhaps it gives us the words to use to describe those ever-changing pictures. Whatever it does, one thing is clear: reading supports writing.

But I have, I feel, wasted ten years of my life reading 'trash'. As a friend once said, for a bibliophile, I've read all the wrong books.

The truth is that trash is easier to read. Undemanding and comforting in its very predictability, trash doesn't demand intense concentration or a focussed mind. It neither stimulates thought nor requires chewing and digesting.

So I am a lazy reader. I read only to be entertained, and, in some ways, to escape. I do not want to engage my faculties any deeper than the very minimum required for mindless enjoyment.

Somehow, in my mind, my reading habits have come to be associated with lax morals. As an aspiring writer, I am ashamed of my lax morals, evidenced by my choice of dubious reading matter. I am convinced my actions have adversely affected my reputation and standing within the writing community. I believe I will never be a good writer because I have not read good books.

I was hanging around Kinokuniya again. Is it possible to marry a bookstore? —Lainie

I only wish! lol

In Asimov's introduction to his book, Robot Visions, he explains how he began writing stories about robots, and how he came up with the three laws of robotics when he was only twenty-one.

Those laws, as it turned out (and as I could not possibly have forseen), proved to be the most famous, the most frequently quoted and the most influential sentences I ever wrote.

"My goodness, he was only twenty-one when he wrote those three rules. I'm twenty-eight and you're twenty-four. What have we done with our lives?!" I exclaimed to my brother, feeling that the world is unfair.

"Okay, what we have to do is come up with three laws of something," he responded. Glancing at the bookshelves facing us, he continued, "Let's make a Law of Bookshelves. Bookshelves must stand up. They must not fall down. And they must have books."

He paused. "Now all we have to do is write a series of books based on these three laws, and we'll be famous."

"So if bookshelves don't have books, they aren't bookshelves?"

"Ah! That's a good question. If you put shoes on a bookshelf, does it become a shoe rack?"

I once read somewhere that you can tell a lot about a person from the books on his bookshelf. In my case, that might be a fallacy. I always tell people that I buy a lot of books, but whether I actually read them is a different matter!

Eclectic interests mean I own a wide selection of books, and I always mean to read them "someday" but have yet to get down to doing it. I'm comforted by the thought that they are there, waiting for me, available should I ever want to grab one of them and snuggle up in a comfy armchair. One day, I tell myself, one day I will have the time and the luxury to read all I want, and I won't even have to go looking... all I'll have to do is reach out to the nearest bookshelf. Yeah!

In a way, I'm a hoarder. I feel guilty about not having read most of my books (I estimate that about 80% of my 'collection' remains unread), but I also like to think about it as building my private library. I dream about the day I'll own my own house, and plan to designate one room just to hold all my books. I'll have floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookcases built in against the walls, catalogue all my books and arrange them according to genre and authors' names. Whee!

I really should start cataloguing them already, because nowadays I occasionally find myself buying double copies of the same book. Since I haven't read most of my books, often I forget which books I do have. At least the fact that I accidentally buy double copies shows that my tastes are quite consistent.

I've never liked fictional works written in first person. Autobiographies of necessity have to be in first person, but to my mind, there's no excuse for fiction to follow suit!

When I read a book, see, I want the story. I want to be able to imagine and picture the scene, the atmosphere, the thoughts & emotions of the characters. I don't want to get into the narrator's mind! That gives me a one-sided view of things. I don't want to only hear what ONE person is thinking, feeling, speculating, worrying, anticipating. I want to have a bird's-eye view, so to speak.

This is a personal eccentricity -- but a strong one. So strong that if I flip through a book and discover it has been written in first person, I'm immediately turned off. That book would have to either be very interesting, or written in diary form (think: Bridget Jones' Diary) in order to lure me in.

• Children who have many books in their home do better in test scores than other children.
• Children whose parents read to them nearly every day do not do better in test scores compared to other children.

But conventional wisdom, Levitt asserts, is often wrong. In fact, he arrived at the above-mentioned conclusions after studying data collected by the US Department of Education in a project called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS). The project tracked the academic progress of more than 20,000 children from kindergarten till the fifth grade (generally from the time they were five till they reached the age of 10). Subjects were chosen from across the country to represent an accurate cross-section of American schoolchildren.

Let's start with the positive correlation: books in the home equal higher test scores. Most people would look at this correlation and infer an obvious cause-and-effect relationship. To wit: a little boy named Isaiah has a lot of books at home; Isaiah does beautifully on his reading test at school; this must be because his mother or father regularly reads to him. But Isaiah's friend Emily, who also has a lot of books in her home, practically never touches them. She would rather dress up her Bratz or watch cartoons. And Emily tests just as well as Isaiah. Meanwhile, Isaiah and Emily's friend Ricky doesn't have any books at home. But Ricky goes to the library every day with his mother; Ricky is a reading fiend. And yet he does worse on his school tests than either Emily or Isaiah.

What are we to make of this? If reading books doen't have an impact on early childhood test scores, could it be that the books' mere physical presence in the house makes the children smarter? Do books perform some kind of magical osmosis on a child's brain?

It's a conundrum, isn't it? But Levitt loves solving conondrums.

He reminds us, firstly, that "the data doesn't say that the books in the house cause the high test scores; it says only that the two are correlated".

Then he talks about interpreting the correlation. You see, IQ is apparently strongly hereditary (I hadn't known that), and Levitt offers a theory...

Most parents who buy a lot of children's books tend to be smart and well-educated to begin with. (And they pass on their smarts and their work ethic to their kids.) Or perhaps they care a great deal about education, and about their children in general. (Which means they create an environment that encourages and rewards learning.) Such parents may believe that every children's book is a talisman that leads to unfettered intelligence. But they are probably wrong. A book is in fact less a cause of intelligence than an indicator.

But my question is, wouldn't a parent who read to his child every day also be concerned about his child and probably care a great deal about the child's education? Unless you were to further theorise that poorly-educated parents who work long hours at demanding jobs to bring home the bacon probably do not have the wherewithal to purchase books, even though they may still make the effort to read to their children.

So then it becomes purely an IQ thing and environment apparently doesn't make as much of a difference as we might think. Because among the other conclusions he drew from his study, Levitt also found that children of well-educated parents usually did better in school, but coming from a broken family or single-parent family did not noticeably affect test scores; neither did watching television frequently.

"Despite the conventional wisdom, watching television apparently does not turn a child's brain to mush," wrote Levitt's co-author, rather dryly.

Fascinating, no?

Is there such a thing as a book-buying gene? A friend went to the Payless Books stock clearance sale and found "nothing to buy", emerging with a single book. I went and came out with 28 books!

"What did you buy?" she asked. That's a good question. I'm not too sure, myself.

I feel guilty every time I buy fiction, because fiction is pure pleasure; I'm sure I'd made an interesting case study for a psychologist somewhere. The thing is, I have a nagging feeling that if one were going to spend good money on books, one should buy useful books, and not books that are sheer indulgence. At least, that's the way I was raised.

"Why buy fiction when, once you've read the book, it'll just sit on the shelf?" my father's voice still rings in my head, clear and fresh after more than a decade. "You should buy books that you will find yourself turning to again and again, books you'll use for reference."

My parents did not read much fiction until recent years, when my father began to patronise the local library and my mother discovered John Grisham, among other lesser-known authors. They have never understood why one would desire to re-read a book, when the story is already familiar and the ending no longer a mystery.

"If you read your textbooks like you do your storybooks, you'd be straight-A students," my very disgruntled mother used to castigate my brother and I. Sure, we were always above average, placed in the top class at school, but we weren't at the top of the top, and to our parents, that was unforgivable. Because they just knew that if we'd made the extra bit of effort, we could've been there. But Jin & I weren't interested in being at the top for the sake of it; the boundaries of our world stretched beyond academics.

I was convinced there was more to life than studies and scoring A's; a silent rebel, I said nothing -- but my brother, always more rash and outspoken, told my mother baldly: "These things are of no cosmic consequence."

Not that it got her off our backs, but I left home soon after, and began amassing my collection. The amount of books I own horrifies my poor mother, prompting her continual attempts to persuade me to refrain from buying any more. Alas, her efforts are in vain!

I am trying very hard not to go to the Times Bookshop warehouse sale. Heeeeeeeellp!!!

It is the most annoying thing, remembering that I have read something somewhere but not quite knowing where. Makes me wish all books carried a built-in "Search" function. "Find this!" I'd command, and the requisite passage would pop up, as if by magic.

You know you have been spending too much time on the Internet and on the computer when this happens. Why, even Microsoft Word allows you to "Find", and that is a wonderful tool indeed, cutting through the tedious process of scrolling through the entire document to pinpoint the phrase you want. And on the Internet, of course there is Google.

As a whole I definitely like what I term "real" books much more than I do ebooks; there's something about holding a book in your hands and thumbing through the pages that reading words on a screen simply cannot duplicate. There's a sense of significance and permanence about the printed word which is missing from the displayed word(!), perhaps because the latter is not nearly as tangible.

However, when it comes to looking for a certain phrase or passage... I really do wish it would be possible to incorporate a search engine into every book!

I keep holding books in my hands and telling myself that I won't die if I don't have these books, but my strategy isn't working. Obviously needs refining. Aversion therapy, perhaps?

I went to the Big Bookshop sale twice, in a magnificent example of what we locals like to call cari pasal, best translated as 'looking for trouble'. The first time was not my fault. A friend wanted to go, but didn't know how to get there. The least I could do as a friend was give her a ride there, right? Right??

The second time, okay, I admit that was all my own doing. I'd just gotten off work, had nowhere to go, no one to see, and this bright idea popped into my head out of nowhere: "Hey, Atria isn't too far away from here!" -- Atria being the place where the book sale is taking place, of course. So off to Atria I went!

I spent a fortune. The first time, I was extremely restrained (no trace of sarcasm here) and walked away with only eighty bucks' worth of books. The second time... can we not talk about the second time? We can't? Okay, I spent RM244. *faints*

Talking about book sales... how could I skip the Payless Books warehouse sale? I tried very, very hard to stay away... but I was invited to a Christmas party in Subang one evening, and the sale was -- yes, you guessed it -- in Subang. What could be easier than to set out from home a little earlier and "drop by" the sale venue "on the way"? Good thing I only spent about fifty bucks there. *phew*

Total new books = 35. Mind you, I don't read a lot. I just buy a lot of books!

It was during the Payless Books warehouse sale that I realised I don't generally read much fiction, apart from romance novels. I peruse the synopsis on the back cover or the jacket flap and think, "Boring," or "Sounds too involved", and then put the book back down.

It's interesting because I grew up reading fairy tales and Enid Blyton stories, and later graduated to the Secret Seven, Five Find-Outers, Famous Five, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators. For years, my reading material consisted exclusively of fiction (school textbooks don't count).

As a teen, I turned to reading autobiographies and biographies, especially those of Christian men & women. The library in my church -- Sitiawan Wesley -- was well-stocked, and I read of George Whitfield, Hudson Taylor, Fanny Crosby, Stormie Omartian (way before her books on prayer became famous)... and a lot of other people whom I can't remember now.

In recent years, I've mainly been digging into romance novels. Like I once wrote, I've wasted ten years of my life reading 'trash'. Probably because I read mainly to be entertained and to escape, and romance novels are perfect for that purpose. There is a lot of realism in what we like to categories as 'general fiction', and I don't like too much realism bursting my bubble. For instance, I'd never even dream of reading Tash Aw's bestseller!

Unusual plots intrigue me, which is why I savoured Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife so deeply; her book is very different from the run-of-the-mill novels we get nowadays. (Which reminds me, I must get it back from The Snark so I can reread it.) I also liked Bridget Jones' Diary -- partly, I admit, because Bridget's talent for getting into awkward and embarrassing situations reminded me of myself! Still, one book like that is enough. It's new the first time, but gets old fast.

I keep telling myself I must read more widely and I intend to, which is why I buy so many books. But they remain stacked upon my bedroom floor, as yet unread.

When I flip through the pages of a book, and the writing doesn't captivate me, as far as I'm concerned the novel is not worth reading. That's why I'm reluctant to buy books online -- you don't have the luxury of sampling the writing. A lot of times I find mundane dialogue, nothing that grips me, nothing that says, "You have to read this!"

And sometimes I will buy a book just for one line, one paragraph, one passage. Like this one:

God must have looked at man
and then decided
he could do a better
                        bigger job
make something really beautiful
and so before he stopped to rest
he made an elephant.

(Love's Been Good To Me, by Rod McKuen -- one of my finds at the Payless Books warehouse sale)

Finally managed to get hold of one of Dorothy L. Sayers' books, which, as far as I know, aren't stocked in local bookstores. Found it in Payless Books, that wonderful place which I gravitate to every chance I get.

Lord Peter Wimsey was rather a disappointment. Having heard so much about the aristocratic detective, I expected him to be debonair and suave like James Bond, decisive and in command like Hercule Poirot (minus the aggravating sense of self-importance), but he isn't. He's intelligent but talks like a... a... fop, and doesn't seem to take anything very seriously.

In this book, Strong Poison, he proposes marriage to a lady. There are hints aplenty that he is deeply attracted to her and has fallen for her pretty hard, yet when she asks him why he wants to marry her, what does he say? "Why? Oh, well -- I thought you'd be rather an attractive person to marry. That's all. I mean, I sort of took a fancy to you. I can't tell you why. There's no rule about it, you know."

Maybe that's the way they talked in 1930 (when the book was first published), emotionless and casual. I don't know. But you see he just isn't the smooth character I thought he would be. He doesn't even seem to know what he's doing most of the time!

There was not much mystery as to who committed the crime; half-way through, I'd guessed the identity of the murderer. The only question was how the fellow had managed it. Good murder mysteries will lead you up several garden paths and keep you guessing till the end, which is why I like Agatha Christie so much, despite finding Poirot extremely annoying.

I own several of Martha Grimes' books but have yet to read any, so can't comment on her Richard Jury; likewise, have not read any of Sue Grafton's work, so am not acquainted with Kinsey Millhone. Sherlock Holmes is good but the reader is never given the chance to see what he sees, so despite it being "elementary" we are continually obliged to wait for his explanation before we can understand how he unravelled the crime. That makes Conan Doyle's works very unlike mysteries and more like stories, albeit with a criminal bent. Because, as in all other stories, we simply wait for the events to unfold, as recounted by Sherlock Holmes (or usually Watson, the narrator).

My favourite fictional detective has to be the lawyer Perry Mason, who flies by the seat of his pants and is always getting into tight spots because he takes on his clients without having any idea how he's going to prove their innocence. There's a great deal of humour in Erle Stanley Gardner's writing; the books are also fun because of Mason's on-going rivalry with the assistant district attorney, who hates his guts and is always trying to trip him up. Unfortunately, like that of Sayers', Gardner's books aren't carried by local bookstores either. Frustrating.

Was hanging out in Times Bookshop today and now I want these books. Arrrggh arrrggh arrrggh! Why did I go there? Why? Why? WHY?!?!?!

1. Are Men Necessary? by Maureen Dowd
2. Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent
3. Beyond Words by John Humphreys
4. The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
5. The Life of Language by Sol Steinmetz & Barbara Ann Kipfer

Fortunately, I walked out of the bookstore having made only one purchase: an ultra-compact diary. I needed something very small and slim (about the size of a man's wallet) to fit into the very small bags I like to tote around. Getting a diary is part of my resolution to be more organised and stop double-booking myself for appointments on the same day at the same time but different places. (Once I even managed to triple-book myself! *bangs forehead on wall*)

Believe me, walking out without having made any bookish purchases wasn't an act of self-control on my part; it was an act of broke-ness. Yes, I am broke because my paycheque hasn't cleared yet. For some reason, my bank decided to impose a seven-day float on a house cheque, one issued from an account in the same branch that houses my own account! I'm going to call the bank up tomorrow and raise holy hell, I am.

Tonight, I am feeling melancholic for various reasons. Tomorrow, the feeling will have passed.

One shouldn't blog when melancholic, but well... with only three regular readers, I figured it wouldn't be all that embarrassing.

As a teenager, I used to write melancholic letters to friends at 2am in the morning and then re-read the letters the next morning with a sense of horror. The light of day made the words leap out of the page in all their melodramatic, overly emotional, depressive glory.

Unsurprisingly, most of the time those letters ended up unsent.

I still have some of them. They're very diary-like and are the only records I have of what was going on in my heart and mind at that stage of life. I never was one to keep journals or diaries because I figured, what was the point? Nobody would read them! Why write to yourself?

Even now, I don't keep a diary. I write occasional letters to my future husband, infrequent letters to God, and I journal when I read the Bible (I write down my thoughts about the Bible passage and then write down a prayer which is born out of those thoughts). But I don't keep a diary. My personal blog is the closest thing that I have to one.

When I read this post of Alexandra's, I sorely regretted not having kept a diary. On the other hand, I never did talk to myself like that, so maybe my diary entries wouldn't have been half as interesting!

Sometime back I bought The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists. Here's Jean Cocteau -- French novelist, poet, dramatist, artist and filmmaker -- on August 16, 1953:

If you are reading this diary after my death, you are probably wondering why the paragraphs inexplicably jump from one subject to the next. It is because I am gossiping to myself here; between any two paragraphs I may receive a visit which changes my ideas and orients them in an unexpected direction. Moreover, I advise those who edit these diaries to cut what I jot down for reference and the repetitions which occur, because I don't remember if I've already described the things I've described.

Now that's what I call planning ahead!

It's February already. There goes my resolution to read a book a month :(

I suppose I won't beat myself up about it, since I haven't even had time to read my textbooks. In university, we measure time by weeks; we're supposed to have 14 weeks of class this semester. It finally dawned on me that we're already in week 7 -- half the semester's gone. I thought the saying was time flies, not time disappears!

The ideal time for reading, according to Irene Kiew (that would be moi), is first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I like waking up by degrees, and picking up a book suits me perfectly. By the time I've read 20 pages, my brain has gotten itself up from 0% to 20% capacity and I feel more ready to face the world.

Unfortunately, when at 0% capacity, my brain is not exactly in the condition to follow complex characters and unpredictable plots. I need to read something light and undemanding, especially since I start off squinting at the page with one half-open eye. I used to read romance novels (don't need much brainpower for those), but recently I purchased some back issues of the Popular Science and Discover magazines. I think they're the perfect early-morning reads. One article, and I'm ready to go.

Women's mags have never held much allure for me. They're always the same: fashion pieces that no one with any sense of taste would wear outside the house, or inside it for that matter; 5 most essential items of make-up a girl can't do without; how to tell if your boyfriend is cheating on you with your best friend; 10 ways to achieve a more spectacular orgasm; a quick quiz to determine whether you're obsessive-compulsive. Boring.

But science mags -- they're fascinating. I'm interested in how things work, why people do the things they do, what inspired inventors to come up with the gadgets they created. Trivia delights me, although I seldom remember any. I read it and think, "This is cool," but it doesn't stick in my brain, so I can't use that knowledge to impress anybody. Oh well... easy come, easy go.

Last night I was reading a book and so only slept at 5am. I have this innate inability to put a book down as long as it's unfinished. This applies only to fiction, which explains why I haven't finished Mere Christianity... or What's So Amazing About Grace?... or Bird by Bird -- not to mention all my textbooks, too.

Staying up late to read is one of those things I do and then later kick myself for doing. I don't know why I never learn, it's just that it always seems a good idea to continue reading since I don't feel very sleepy, but then in the morning I realise that it wasn't a good idea after all. I am a night person and am not kindly disposed to mornings, but on days like this it becomes 10 times worse and I am prepared to declare to the world that I hate mornings.

The antipathy runs so deep that... I love my housemates, they are the most wonderful people in the world, but even for them it's all I can do to grunt unintelligibly when we meet in the kitchen before rushing off to shower and get ready for work. Hey, at least I've acknowledged their presence. I'm sooooo not inclined to conversation in the mornings.

Sometime last week the government (specifically, the Internal Security Ministry) released the titles of 37 banned books. This is not new; they do this from time to time, announcing, "These are the books you're not supposed to read." I suppose they haven't heard that prohibiting somebody from doing something inevitably creates an instant curiosity and desire in that person to do that very thing.

What's fascinating, however, is that the books banned all contain information, stories or discussion on the Muslim faith. Dr Alex Tang has the original news article:

He [Secretary of the Publications and Quranic Texts Control Division Che Din Yusoh] said the prohibition order was imposed on the publications because their contents and text on Islam twisted facts and true Islamic teachings or contained elements that misled the faithful and humiliated the prophets. "These publications can cause confusion and apprehension among Muslims and eventually jeopardise public order," he added.

Irene, the government doesn't want anyone to read about other brands of Islam other than the government-sanctioned -- and therefore "true" -- version of Islam.

Too many versions of one religion makes people think (the government calls this state of mind "confused"). And when people start thinking, the government is put into danger.

It's kinda worrying when a government starts saying, "You must believe what I tell you to believe, and nothing else." And since the government is advocating Islam Hadhari (Civilisational Islam), which, according to the Prime Minister is supposed to "promote tolerance and understanding, moderation and peace, and freedom and justice for all" and "abhors inequities, oppression, extremism and violence", then why do we still have people waving keris (traditional Malay daggers) at political events and threatening to run amok among the non-Malays?

As a non-Malay and non-Muslim, I can't help but conclude that either:

1. the brainwashing -- *ahem*, I mean, educating -- is not working despite efforts to only let them read the "right" books, or
2. Islam Hadhari doesn't actually espouse all those wonderful-sounding ideals. Meaning that all that talk is just camouflage, you know.

Finally got The Time Traveller's Wife back from The Snark. It's been with him for, what... two years? Maybe three.

See, some of us bloggers used to turn up at "book swap meets" to borrow books from each other -- and lend out our own. When the meets died a premature death, some of my books were still floating around in other bloggers' hands. The Time Traveller's Wife was one of them.

I wanted it back because I wanted to reread it. The latest Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock movie, The Lake House, reminded me strongly of this book because both stories are built around the concept of people communicating through time.

The movie, at least, is much more straightforward and easy to follow than the book. I was trying to explain the book's storyline to my housemate last night when I realised that the main idea doesn't sound all that difficult to grasp: it's about a guy, Henry, who has a genetic disorder that causes him to suddenly beam out of his own time into the past or future, and then beam back. He can't control it, and he never knows where he's going to end up or in which year he's going to end up each time this happens.

However, it's the love story that makes things complicated; as the back cover of the book states, "This is the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry who met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty." That doesn't even give you a hint of how mind-boggling things are going to get.

As I said to my housemate, imagine that my future self, the 32-year-old self, beams back into time and meets you when you are 16. Then I beam back. In "real life", you meet me when you are 18 and I am 22. But while you already know me -- because you have met my 32-year-old self -- I don't know you. It's my future self who knows you, and I haven't lived till that point yet. Geddit?

Meanwhile, I am still time travelling all over the place. So, when I was 25, I travelled back in time and met you when you were 19. This means that at 19, when you have already met the actual me in "real life" and are hanging out with me, you also meet the future me, which means you see two versions of me simultaneously.

Then I reach the age of 32 (and you are 28), and as per incident #1 above, I beam back in time, meeting your 16-year-old self, then beam back -- and suddenly I have this memory of you which I didn't have before, but which you have always had, since you've lived through it. I tell you, it really messes with your head, okay.

I seriously don't know how the author managed to keep track of the timeline, because trying to keep the ages and dates straight completely boggled my mind. But that's what I like about the book. I like that it keeps me on my toes and makes me pay attention to what's been happening in order to make sense of the story.

Because the whole thing is woven around the tale of the love Clare and Henry have for each other, it becomes more than just a fantastic, difficult-to-believe time-travel story. One could read a story like that and emerge mildly entertained. But this story is all about emotions: fear, doubt, caring, patience, sacrifice, frustration, helplessness, despair, joy, and hope. It will not allow the reader to remain uninvolved. It's poignant and unusual and very rare.

I can't understand anyone going to KLCC at five-freakin'-A.M. to queue up for a free anything, even if it is a book. I have this on-going love affair with books, and if they were people I'd be considered a promiscuous slut based on the number of books I own, but seriously? Even I don't think any book can possibly be worth that much sacrifice.

And so we come to the aptly-named "Harry Potter mania".

Obviously, I'm not a fan, which doesn't say much since I still haven't read The Lord of the Rings, which has been dubbed the greatest book of the millennium. Considering this horrific omission, plus the fact that I read way too many romance novels for my own good, you could say I might not exactly have the best taste in reading material. I admit it. You don't raise your eyebrows at my Nora Robertses and Stephanie Laurenses, and I won't raise my eyebrows at your JK Rowlingses. Deal?

What I really don't understand, though, is the rabid fear of spoilers. This isn't a whodunit, which has readers journeying along with the protagonists to the climax, where the mystery is solved and the criminal's identity is finally revealed. Secrecy is vital to that sort of book, because trying to figure out the mystery is 90% of the fun. It's not as fun once you know who did it.

But stories like Harry Potter are written to be read and reread, tens and hundreds of times, over and over again. Stories like these never lose their magic, and despite already knowing the ending -- indeed, despite being able to recite lines of dialogue directly from the text -- there's still something deeply satisfying about rereading these books, picking out details which we hadn't previously noticed, journeying once again with the characters, laughing at all the funny bits. Knowing the ending doesn't detract from the story.

Maybe it's just me. I rarely worry about spoilers; you can tell me the entire plot of a movie and that wouldn't cause me to enjoy it any less. I'd rather be prepared for what is to come, so I can look foward to it. Anyway, even if you were to find out that Harry dies (and I'm not saying that he did!), that wouldn't tell you how he died or why he died. I'd be burning with curiosity to find out the how and why, the circumstances and what had led to them, rather than be upset because I knew he was going to die.

I've been trying to write about this book for at least two weeks, but I still don't know what to say. It's a fascinating read -- the only problem is, I don't know how to explain exactly why it's fascinating.

Part of the fascination stems from the glimpses of a man's world through the eyes of a woman. It kinda brings home the fact that men and women are so different -- we see things differently, we react to situations differently, we relate to each other differently. For instance, Vincent says women don't understand male friendships because we're so used to talking about how we feel and demonstrating our emotions, and we assume that because guys don't do this, the same depth of feeling or connecting isn't there. But she discovered that it is there, "and when you're inside it, it's as if you're suddenly hearing sounds that only dogs can hear."

Another source of fascination came from Vincent's disguise. You see, in order to write this book, she lived as a man for 1½ years. It's interesting to note what goes into making up a man, and how she managed to pull it off. It's even more interesting to discover that after a time, even when she left off the disguise and didn't bind her chest to flatten her breasts, nobody questioned her male identity. How could people be that unobservant?

They saw what I wanted them to see, at least at first, while I still had control over the image. Then later they saw what they expected to see and what I had become without knowing it: the mind-set of Ned.

However, immersing herself in the mind-set of Ned, truly becoming Ned, took its toll. Trying to make herself think, react, and see herself as a man severely injured her sense of self, to the point where she suffered a nervous breakdown. Being very much a woman and yet taking on the mindset of a man was like "holding two mutually exclusive ideas in my mind while trying to juggle and ride a bicycle at the same time," she writes.

And this is, I think, the most fascinating thing of all: discovering how gender is "wired" in us. It's part of us, something we don't even think about, something that comes as naturally as breathing. Even though Vincent managed to take on the mentality of a man and adopt the behavior & mannerisms of a man, it didn't change the fact that she was a woman, wired to behave, think, and react as a woman. Trying to make herself otherwise damaged her. That is truly something to think about.

I've been dying to finish this book so that I could write about it. Oh, I'm quite sure there's no law prohibiting me from writing about a book when I'm only half-way through it; but this is a collection of 10 short stories, and I wanted to be able to say that I'd read all of them before giving my comments. Especially since my housemate read the book first and told me, "All his stories are weird."

And yes, most of his stories leave the reader with what I call a WTF? feeling. Like, What was that all about? You start reading a story, you think, Aha, it's going somewhere! and then it seems to curl in on itself and end abruptly, and you have no idea what on earth just happened.

This book apparently got lots of rave reviews (three are printed on the back cover and two more on the first page), so maybe my housemate and I are just not literary-minded enough. I always claimed I couldn't be a good poet because all the best poets seem to be incomprehensible and I can't write incomprehensible poetry. Now I find I might have to apply that to short stories, too.

Nevertheless, there's a great deal of insight in the way Redhill describes his characters, the dilemmas they face, and the emotions they wrestle with. A certain element of dark humour constantly lurks behind his words.

She'd always believed that the ones you loved had a reflection that resided in yourself, and that this kept you safe from losing track of the way they would change. And yet she knew this was not true anymore with Andy; that mirror had bent away from a real reflection some time ago, and what she had of him was not who he was. Trying to love him with the information she had was like trying to grasp something underwater without correcting for the refraction. These days, her hand was closing on nothing.
--Long Division

It's almost as if Redhill paints a caricature of each main character; all of them seem a little neurotic, but always in a different way -- an exaggeration of our own tendency to magnify small things, let our imagination run away with us, persuade ourselves to see only what we want to see. He's pretty merciless in his portrayal of humanity, never giving his characters a chance to pretend that they are better than they are. For example, in the story Cold, Louis asks Paul, "Why did you come with me?" Paul says he came because Louis had asked him to come. Louis replies, "You came to help. I make you feel good about yourself, don't I? I'm your country bumpkin." It made me think -- yes, helping others does make me feel good about myself. Are my motives always as altruistic as I make them out to be? Are anybody's?

I suppose, as with any other book, the stories I prefer are those that resonate with me: Long Division, with Catherine struggling to understand her gifted son; Cold, with Janine struggling for romance and adventure in her life; The Victim, Who Cannot Be Named, with Peter struggling to come to terms with his daughter's choice; A Lark, with Bergman struggling with the knowledge of what he has done. Each story is written with heavy emphasis on one character's point of view, his thoughts, ideas, emotions, fears, and questions all laid out for the reader to see. Makes me wonder how the stories would look like if written from one of the other characters' perspective instead.

I've been amazingly restrained the whole of this year -- the part that has passed, anyhow. I haven't gone to any of the warehouse book sales, including the Pay Less Books sale that was on this weekend.

This doesn't mean I haven't been buying books, though. I haunt the 1Utama Shopping Centre Pay Less Books outlet incessantly, and yesterday I bought three books from there.

In fact, I'll confess I was weak and foolish and did something I'd never thought I'd do: I deliberately bought copies of books I already have.

The thing is, I did so want to reread them, but they're back in my hometown, and I have no idea when my next trip there will be. Ever since my parents moved to Sabah at the end of 2005, I haven't had much occasion to go home. Visiting the folks is a given, but everything -- my books, old mementos, photographs, letters from teenage pen-pals, high school essays -- all that is back in Sititawan, as far away from Sabah as you can imagine.

Anyway, I consoled myself with the fact that each book only cost RM8, and that I only purchased the first three books in the series, not the entire eight. Eight would have been rather too much, methinks. My conscience (not to mention my wallet) couldn't have stood it.

So I spent the whole of today doing nothing but reading. That's the perfect way to spend a Sunday, if you ask me: curled up on the couch, making the reacquaintance of Anne of Green Gables. It was like being embraced by an old friend, one I had loved a great deal in my girlish youth.

There's something about the Anne of Green Gables books that is so... so... good. Not good in a gripping story kind of way, but good as in wholesome. Reading them renews my sense of optimism. It's difficult to remain cynical in the face of such goodness.

Little Women is just the same. Both tales are built on the same kind of noble ideals. They're really very moral books, yet the two authors -- LM Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott -- succeeded in making their stories moral without being preachy. That's quite an achievement.

The 'little women' (Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy) and Anne all strive to be good, kind, and true... they want to be good, for good's own sake, because that is a worthy goal in itself. In today's world I think that's rather rare; personally, I often want to be good just so that I don't get into trouble, y'know? To escape punishment. Or if not, to look good in front of other people. I'm powerfully motivated by self-interest and so, I'd dare to say, is almost everyone else.

Reading these stories makes me want to be a better person. It makes me want to reach for noble ideals and dream great dreams. It gives me the feeling that I could change the world by being true to myself and living for something above my own wants and desires. It reminds me that every person is precious and special and unique. It causes me to view others with compassion and kindness.

Very, very wholesome. There's simply no other word for those books.

I don't remember my parents encouraging me to read. In fact, I distinctly remember them trying to discourage me from reading.

Because I read too much. And would get so engrossed in my books that I'd forget there were things such as house chores and school homework. (Not that I needed much excuse to forget those!)

So my mom was always confiscating my books. My parents would bring my brother and I to the public library to borrow books, then upon reaching home, the books would promptly disappear. "You do your work first, then you can have them," was the common refrain throughout my growing-up years.

Interestingly, I don't recall my parents trying to influence or guide our reading choices, apart from the time when my mom denounced Mills & Boon romance novels as "trash". Other than that, they never told us, "You shouldn't read that" or "You should read this".

It's interesting because my parents themselves read very different kinds of things. At dinnertime, my dad would always finish first and leave the dining table to sit on the sofa, reading the newspaper. After dinner, when my brother and I sat in the study room doing our school homework, he'd join us, reading his medical journals or business magazines. As for my mom, when not busy ironing clothes, cooking, or doing other "mom stuff", she'd usually either be reading the Bible or Christian books she'd borrowed from the church library. They obviously had their own preferred reading material, but neither ever said that one was "better" than the other.

Now that I think about it, my family is fairly bookish, isn't it? I seriously never noticed because... I mean... that's just how things are in my family. I knew we were kinda weird because the television was rarely on in our house (my dad called tv the "idiot box"), but it never struck me that my parents read almost all the time.

I wonder whether reading can possibly be in the genes?

At the moment there is no book I want as much as The Art of Punctuation by Noah Lukeman, and to my chagrin it is nowhere to be found in this cosmopolitan city, never mind the entire country. I only saw it once, but I happened to be going through one of my regular "No, you cannot afford another book right now" periods. Then Mr twwt2001 promised to gift it to me for my birthday, but more than a month has gone by and alas, he cannot find the book anywhere.

This is enough to make anyone bawl.

I know my friend the Icy Queen Goddess is horrified at the thought of anyone wanting to read a book on punctuation, of all things, but really, it all depends on how the book is written. Besides, I'm dorky enough to be fascinated by the names of the various symbols. Did you know, for example, that curly brackets -- { and } -- are called braces? And angle brackets -- ‹ and › -- are called chevrons? What do you mean, nobody else is curious about this kind of stuff?

Mind you, it's dangerous to dwell too much on punctuation and like matters. You might end up over-identifying with one of the punctuation marks. Because you see, I am the human personification of the dash. In me, it comes to life.
 

You are the dash.



There's no denying that you have a certain flair. You don't mind being around others, especially your little brother, the hyphen, but you rarely emerge except when needed. You respond well to those who know how to treat you, but have only contempt for those who don't -- you tend to embarass them every chance you get. Your only enemy is the colon -- he will sometimes try to move in on your turf.
Which Punctuation Mark Are You?

Some movie adaptations are so amazing, they make you want to read the book. Or at least, they make you curious about the book, which is close enough.

This afternoon I exited the cinema after seeing Stardust in 1Utama and made a beeline for MPH Bookstore. You see, I remembered Eyeris -- a huge Neil Gaiman fan -- saying that it wouldn't matter whether you were to read the book first or watch the movie first: he said the book wouldn't spoil the movie, neither would the movie spoil the book. I took that to mean that the book would only enhance the movie experience, and that since I liked the movie, I'd probably love the book.

Guess what? I scoured the Fantasy Section and couldn't find the book. In fact, the shelves seemed devoid of anything with Gaiman's name. The only thing I could find was an anthology he had co-edited with someone called Ed Kramer -- The Sandman: Book of Dreams. Way to go, MPH.

Which reminds me... when Lynnee and I went to see Hairspray at The Summit USJ, we were so awed by the music that we went looking for the soundtrack CD as soon as we got out of the cinema. Enquiring at MPH, we were told that not only did they not have it; the person who attended to us said the soundtrack wasn't out yet, but a few days later Lynnee found the CD at Tower Records.

Sounds like somebody in MPH is asleep on the job, if you ask me.

Talking about being asleep on the job... I couldn't believe my eyes when I spied CS Lewis's The Four Loves in the Fantasy Section. Okay, maybe his Space Trilogy is excusable, although it really belongs in the Science Fiction section, but The Four Loves?!? Hello? That's not even FICTION, for crying out loud!

I also found Georgette Heyer's Footsteps in the Dark, Penhallow and The Unfinished Clue shelved in the Romance Section. Yes, Heyer was well-known for her Regency period romances, but she was also well-known as an author of detective fiction. Somebody in MPH really is asleep on the job... do they not even know what kind of books they are purchasing?

Remember the book I wanted so much, way back in August? I saw it at Big Bookshop yesterday. Going for RM12.

I couldn't believe my eyes!

Of course I grabbed it. It was the last paperback left. The hard cover version was going for RM19.

And what, you might ask, was I doing in Big Bookshop? Err... ah... um...

I've been such a good girl; I even stayed away from the Payless Books warehouse sale last weekend (granted, I was having exams, but did you really think a puny thing like exams could possibly stop me from going to a book sale?!). Yet today I found myself walking into Big Bookshop's warehouse-like outlet in Atria Shopping Centre. Uh-oh.  *cue ominous music*

The good thing is, I only had RM50 in my wallet and was fully cognisant of my stomach's needs -- that is, I still had to buy dinner for myself. And I have been living a plastic-less life since 2003.  *chants: Say no to credit cards!*  So I knew I couldn't splurge, no matter how much I might long to do so. Nothing like economic realities to make a book lover toe the line.

Well, I grabbed Meg Rosoff's Just In Case, like I said earlier, and also picked up Martina Devlin's The Hollow Heart. The latter is a story of the author's experiences with IVF and her longing to conceive. I've always wanted to have children and took for granted the fact that I would eventually meet someone, get married, and have a family with him. At 29, I'm starting to accept the fact that I might never marry, which is okay... but the desire to have a child is something that's inborn, not manufactured, and I'm curious as to how Devlin dealt with it -- ultimately, not only were her attempts at IVF unsuccessful, her marriage also crumbled and fell apart under the strain. Talk about blow upon blow.

Of course, as my father said, "You don't need to have a husband in order to have children," but I can't see myself bringing up a child alone. For one thing, I'd have to be seriously financially secure in order to do so, otherwise I'd be spending all my time trying to provide for him (or her) and end up not having much time to spend with the little one. Parents in dual-income families are already facing the same dilemma; how much worse would it be if one were a single parent?

Anyway, to get back to the point, I walked out of Big Bookstore with those two books. Yes, just two! I'm so proud of myself!  *beams*

"What? You're done? How can you be done? I haven't even covered the other side yet!" I exclaimed to Lynnee and Erna.

Yep, we were at the Penguin & Pearson warehouse sale yesterday, where I was systematically going down row upon row of books. So as not to miss anything, you know. What to do, I'm kiasu (afraid of losing out). Not to mention a bit OCD at times.

But the place was so hot and stuffy, and my feet were killing me -- I was wearing high-heels because I'd had a meeting in the office that morning -- so in the end I gave up and didn't canvass the entire left portion of the place at all.

Still, I ended up with far more books than I could afford to buy. "I'm only bringing RM100, so I can't spend too much," I'd laughingly told friends. Who knew that, even with that wide a margin, it would be so frustrating?

After much weeding out, I ended up with these:

• Saki because I've wanted a collection of his stories for ages;
• 1984 because it's one of those books I know I should read, but haven't, although of course I know the rough gist of the story;
• In Silence: Why We Pray because prayer is still very much a mystery to me -- our contemporary culture is more au fait with the "God, please bless me, help me to be successful and give us good weather for tomorrow's picnic" type of prayers;
• Poirot In The Orient because it was 3 stories for RM12 and Agatha Christie is a genius;
• So Many Books because it incorporated this quote from Socrates: "If books don't encourage us to live life to the fullest, they are dead";
• Call Me Elizabeth because it's a story of a mother who became an escort to put food on the table for her children; and
• The Gift of Stones, Fascination, Innocent Eréndira and Children Playing Before A Statue Of Hercules because they're short story collections, which are easier for light reading -- plus Gabriel García Márquez is a well-known literary name (more well-known to me than the other three, anyway).

 
The ones that got away:

• Eyeris and Suanie both mentioned seeing Stardust but I couldn't find it, much to my disappointment;
• Erna bought a collection of John Donne's poetry but there was only one copy left  *sobs*;
• Left behind the two Bridget Jones' Diary books because I was over quota, and though they're entertaining it won't kill me not to have them, even if I did kinda identify with Bridget;
• Was contemplating collecting Ian Fleming's works but decided that can wait (what I really want are books by Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint. Anybody???);
• Gave up Poems & Readings For Funerals because, well, in the balance, I'd rather buy something that makes me happy;
• Discarded Miguel Street by VS Naipaul on Erna's recommendation: "Naipul no need lah. Very hard to read." I thought the premise of the book was fascinating though;
• Placed Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass back on the pile... I do like his poetry, but figured I'd give priority to prose instead.

 
Now to read them all! I haven't even read those I got from the last book sale...

Did you know that Louisa May Alcott did not like Huckleberry Finn? In fact, she disliked it so much that she reportedly was instrumental in getting the committee of the Concord Public Library (in the state of Massachusetts) to ban the book from their library.

Basis for the ban? The book's "tawdry subject matter" -- after all, it was a story about a black slave and the son of an alcoholic -- and "the coarse, ignorant language in which it was narrated" -- because it was written in the vernacular, the sort of dialect a young, uneducated boy would use. [source]

The story goes that Twain, upon learning of this ban, proceeded to take out advertisements in newspapers across the country, saying, "My latest book, Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, has been banned in the state of Massachusetts FOR ALL OF ITS DIRTY INCIDENTS." Sales of the book, which had been slow, picked up overnight.

I'm rather sceptical about this advertisement business, though, because I've only been able to find one reference to it, from Elliot Engel in A Dab Of Dickens & A Touch Of Twain. Makes for a good story, but needs more verification.

Nevertheless, I found this little tidbit interesting. Perhaps because it makes Alcott less of a one-dimensional name printed of the cover of a book and brings out her human-ness. But also because I wouldn't have expected her to dislike or criticise the work of another well-loved author. I mean, you'd think she'd recognise good writing when she saw it, considering the fact that she herself wrote so well. But nooooo--!

Moreover, it's astonishing (to me, at least) that she felt so strongly about the book that she even approached the board of the public library to get it banned. Obviously, the book aroused some fierce emotions in her, so fierce that she wasn't content simply to criticise it or write angry letters to the author. She had to Do Something.

Come to think of it, I didn't even know that Alcott and Twain were from the same time period, let alone that they knew of each other. I always somehow think of authors as autonomous entities who churn out books... not as real people who might interact with one another! Especially when their books are as unrelated as Little Women and Huckleberry Finn!

I grew up reading Reader's Digest. When I got my hands on the latest issue, I'd always flip to the funnies first -- Laughter, the Best Medicine, Life's Like That, All in a Day's Work, and Humor in Uniform. Much like how, when presented with a newspaper, I always flip to the comics first. I just like things that make me laugh, y'know?

The cool thing about the Reader's Digest was -- and still is -- all the little anecdotes scattered through it. After reading the funnies, I'd flip through page by page, looking for the other funnies. Then I'd read Quotable Quotes and Points to Ponder. After that I'd go through the articles, winding things up with Drama in Real Life just before finishing with the longest one, the Book Section.

I normally do have a system, even if I look like I don't!

Today's Reader's Digest somehow just isn't the same. It's not as funny or as heartwarming and insightful as before; it's also thinner, and seems to have less content. When I was in my mid-teens, my parents stopped subscribing to it for that very reason, and Dad began subscribing to National Geographic instead. I didn't always read the National Geographic articles, but I was fascinated by their gorgeous pictures.

There are very few things from your childhood that you can go back to and find still as captivating as before, but the Reader's Digest seems to be one of them. I'm re-reading some of the old issues and laughing just as much at the jokes as I used to. Luckily I don't have a very good memory, so I don't have that "I think I've heard that joke before" feeling to spoil my fun!

      Two children were bragging about their intelligence. "When I was eight months old, I could walk," said one. 
      "You call that intelligent?" responded the second child. "When I was that old, I let them carry me."
--Laughter, the Best Medicine, Reader's Digest (September 1994)