On Reading aka With Apologies to Stephen King (again!)

I have this habit of re-reading books I really love countless number of times, and apparently this “behavior” seemed weird to others.

If by chance you are ever in my humble home’s humble makeshift library, these books are recognized by their “kusam” (Malay for “in shreds” or something thereabouts) look.

Some notable titles include Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight returns, Leon Uris Mila 18, Robert J Shea’s Shike and Jonathan Lynn Antony Jay’s Yes Minister.

There are others, of course, but the above are those that pops easily to mind.

Of late, the pressures work and family has disallowed me this favoured pastime, but off and on, I’ll still slip short reads of often well-remembered paragraphs and pages.

The titles are in particular order of preference really, but if pushed, I would place Yes Minister top ranked followed by Dark Knight Returns a close second.

Both Mila 18 and Shike is part historical part fiction; that is if you buy into the authors’ depiction of events as plotted out in the two titles.

Note the oddity of the pseudo-academic On Writing: A Memoir amongst fictions.

On Writing is very fiction-like in its readability, even the ‘teaching” parts.

The book is actually part biography but it is a still “a page turner”, as blurbs on novels usually put it.

Writers have very distinctively styles that mark them out and thus not easy to replicate.

King puts it as life and people experience; providing examples of dialogues from other authors for comparison.

He talks about passive sentences:” They were unceremoniously ushered out of the hotel room” as opposed to “the Hotel kicked them out”. (MY example)

It is something I’m fully guilty of in my own writings which according to King, originates from timidity.

In writing. Imagine that.

Anyway, I read this following article in the New York Times which provides for some good illustrations in a different kind of writing attitude: pomposity.

Writing: “The proliferation of normalizations in a discursive formation may be an indication of a tendency towards pomposity and abstraction as opposed to “Writers who overload their sentences with normalizations tend to sound pompous and abstract.

I have to reiterate of being guilty of similar offences in my own pieces.

Pompous, eh?

Dark Knight, nuff said!

Jumping Juvenile Jellyfish

Action Comics #1, June 1938, available in an online auction today for about US$126,000.

Once upon a time, I would have harbored thoughts of buying such a gem, but those days are long gone.

Those who read comics (those published in the US and the UK) fervently would recall the nasty period in the early 1990s when publishers shamelessly hyped up their lineups with variant covers.

Remember Jim Lee’s X-Men, issue Numero Uno: five variant covers. Sold 8 million copies.

This was also the period when speculators came in droves into comicsdom, snapping up these so-called special issues – they are forever issuing 1st issues with one publisher even coming up with a number 0 issue.

A sort of flashback continuity kinda thing.

I remember my trips to the Mind Shop in KL Plaza all those years ago to collect my monthly share of issues during the pander the speculator era.

Issues would come with swanky variants covers and Wolverine (always a fan favorite) would make guests appearances in all sorts of not so popular titles.

The little runt with the pop out adamantium claws was Marvel’s sales killing machine back then.

I so hated those speculators during that particular period as they would hog all the so-called “collector’s item” issues in the hope of making a quick (US126,000?) killing at selling it second hand in mint condition.

Mint condition means that it is not read and is still in the plastic wrapping it came in.

To me, it was a major waste to hog something, and in so doing, deprive others who wants to do so, just so that you can profit.

Speculators are the scum of the earth were my thoughts back then.

The debacle of the US subprime mortgage and fancy schmancy financial derivatives and the likes similarly involved speculators and look what they did to the global economy.

Scum of the earth is perhaps still correct when it comes to speculators and their cahoots.

The little runt that is Logan