Late Evening of A Few Sitting - Whatever that Means..

It's been a long while now that I've been able to finish a book in one sitting.

With Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time",  I've managed to do so in three.

Admittedly the book is not that beefy in pages, though it is in content.

The dry, Brit humor present early on somewhat petered off towards the end - which was positive and, well, happy enough - but it had enough to keep me hooked to the end.

Even got to the part about the advertisement on Malaysia at the Tube Stations / Network. 

Since the book was written in 2003, it was still Malaysia Truly Asia.

I've mentioned that the book is beefy in content: it is.

I'm especially drawn to the portions about how the mind works to interpret characters, situations, events and everything else.

The skewed, autistic mindset and logic-based reasoning from main character Christopher makes things so easy when we know full well that isn't the case.

Would I go for a second, third and subsequent read of this as I do some firm favorites? I don't know. Give it time to rest a bit.

As the night was still relatively young when I finished Curious Incident, I started also on Superman Unchained.

(Of course there would a comic thrown in...)

What drew me to this trade paperback was Jim Lee's art and yup, while it all looked so damn familiar, I can't say that I didn't enjoy flipping through the pages.

I'm never a fan of Superman as I think his motivations are suspect, but the storyline itself was quite entertaining since Bats and Wonder Women were in it as well.

Like we Malaysian always say: "Boleh la.."

Contrasting colours.

Until the next few-sitting reads come along, let's continue to enthralled by the shenanigans of 1eMDeeB.

Ciao.
 

Combo

How do you decide the books to buy?

The cover? The title? The review? The author? A combination, perhaps?

For most, I think it would be a mixed combo: perhaps author and review.

I was browsing Borders for Henry Mintzberg's Strategy Safari today, failing any headway that I made haste to the fiction racks instead.

Who am I kidding: I haven't even read David Owen's Creative People Must Be Stopped which I bought a few weeks back.

Anyway, I made way to authors with the W surname and there it was: Sarah Winman's A Year of Marvelous Ways.

Having read Star's review on the book, my curiousity was piqued and (TQVM Borders for NOT plastic wrapping the novels) I flipped through the pages.

The writing was in fact enchanting.

They were poetic and yet flowing; and even though it wasn't something which would hook me to read cover to end in one sitting, I toyed with the idea of buying it.

The I saw the price: at RM69.90, A Year of Marvelous Ways was easily double the typical Stephen King's crap horror vintages which I would not hesitate to fork money out notwithstanding the literary critics review.

Was it the dreaded exchange rate at work? Will the comics be similarly jaw drooping expensive in the very near future?

Is reading going to be a snobbish, elite activity?

I dread.

Make Mine Marvel No More

The more I reminiscence, the more I realized that the mid 1980s were the best years of my comic reading life.

Kaleon Rahan’s recent review of the Punisher: Circle of Blood triggered this jaunt along the memory lane to the time when John Byrne was a hot item and Chris Claremont could do no wrong.

I had subscription orders to mainly the Uncanny X-Men, Alpha Flight and Fantastic Four; copies of which were sent to me all rolled up.

It helped that the exchange back then were something like RM2++ per USD1, so every issue is pretty cheap.

Though for a secondary school student, they’re still a dent to the pocket money.

So I did exactly what any self-respected comic nerd (my better’s half’s description of me) would do: I started a comic book club.

Can’t recall exactly how much was the, urm, membership fee, but business was fairly good.

Usually they are hooked on the X-Men, with FF and Alpha Flight more technical that students care to be.

FF in a scientific kind of tech while Alpha Flight the mythic sort of tech (fans of both will catch my drift).

The days of RM2++ to a US Dollar is long gone and with it, gone also the days when even this once-student who earned the most nominal of pocket money could afford to be eager beaver on a monthly basis for the next installment of the X-Men, FF and Alpha Flight.

Now, my orders in Amazon is on perpetual cart status without checking out as the price in Ringgit is just plain horrendous.

Looks like it will be a while more for my Akira series to get its number 2. 

PS:

The rate is now RM4.1++ to USD1. Ouch. 

But Que Sera Sera for our good old gomen.

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!

Talking Pixs

In between “work”, I’ve been revisiting old issues of Marvel’s Avengers, covers and reading the storyline synopsis.

Somewhere in my memory banks, there are off on recollections of plotlines and intermittent appearances (cameo?) of non-traditional characters including Starfox and Thanos (to name but two).

I know I can easily Google the keywords for possible hits, but, heck, the (online) flipping through of each issue is way more fun.

(Of course, it would be even better if I actually had the physical copies in mint / near mint condition TQVM!)

Anyway, re-reading the old issues reminded me again why I fell in love with the (old days) Japanese Manga, especially Kazuo Koike’s Lone Wolf and Cub and Kasuhiro Otomo’s Akira & Domu.

Typical of Americans (apologies for the crude generalization, but it is true’s isn’t it?), their comics are talky.

They yak and yak.

The villains, for example, will often explain at great lengths whatever nefarious scheme to conquer the world / destroy the Avengers / carry of Mantis / rule the universe etc etc.

Or they’ll try to wear down each other with words before fights: “I will pummel thee with my bone-crushing, boulder smashing, steel bending fists of death!!!” against “Bah!! I have withstood the death dealing / worlds’ destroying / armada wrecking rays of XXXXX that you puny fists will be less than nothing!!!”

Something like that.

Like I said, great fun. Corny but fun.

The aforementioned Japanese works though worked differently as the story flows almost seamless with the words complementing instead of telling the tale.

I was literally dumbstruck when I picked up my first ever copy of Koure Okami (Lone Wolf & Cub), reveling in the simplicity of its storytelling.

Before that (remember I was still quite  teen then, ya), I didn’t realized that you could actually gets the pictures to tell the story.

Of course, the modern day Avengers have curbed (not totally, though) most of these, urm, flair.

And, yes, they are still great fun.

What the Sam Hill?!

Morality policing in Malaysia has certainly gone lopsidedly loony.

Who would have imagined a mere staff of Borders charged before the Syariah High Court for “distributing by way of selling the book entitled, Allah, Liberty and Love (The Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom”).

WTH???!

Technically, the charge could well be valid since Nik Raina Nik Abdul Aziz was the Mid Valley outlet’s store manager, but logically, neither the books by Irshad Manji nor the outlet, Borders, are hers to start with.

Nik Raina faces a RM3,000 fine or a maximum of two years' jail or both under Section 13(1) of the Syariah Criminal Offences Act (Federal Territories) 1997, if convicted.

Am really not sure how the charge is worded but going by the Star’s phrasing of “distributing by way of selling”; it seems to be one of strict liability. Legal eagles would definitely be able to explain this to all us layman.

A store manager, huh?

Didn’t have the balls to go after the real owner, is it? Borders, according to the Star, belong to Berjaya Books Sdn Bhd.

Look at the penalty for God’s sake and tell me if it’s just?

A bookstore staff…

Did she have like total control over the outlet? Over the procurement of all books?

How many books do Borders have in stock?

The one at the Curve in Damansara seems to have like a billion books from the most innocent My First ABC to the horrendously explicit Brian Azzarello’s 100 Bullets series (to cite an example).

But of course, the latter isn’t something that is "deemed to be against the Islamic Law (Hukum Syarak)" even if it does feature gratuitous sex and violence every other issue.

Is Nik Raina’s charging to set an example? Couldn’t she be just slapped with a mere warning to take the books out within a certain period - her convictions on the book’s contents and the banning act notwithstanding?

How in heaven’s name are Muslims supposed to show that Islam is the perfect Addin when you have something so logically, chronically unjust?

What others see is the authorities picking on the easiest of targets to make an example of.

Someone like Nik Raina. 

Bookend Decree

I issued a “decree” yesterday to my eldest daughter: She is to read at least one book a month followed through with a report on it.

One book in 30 days should be a cinch; to a bookworm it would be nothing, but the actual challenge would be in the report on whatever it is that she has read.

I told her that the report would have to alternate between English and Bahasa Melayu, and that she could have her pick on the books she wants to read as long as they are not comic books and school text books.

Her language skills needs sharpening, but what I am more worried of is in her somewhat urm, fear, of expanding her thoughts beyond what she thinks her teachers (perhaps even her parents) would deemed as correct.

Thus, when she was asked to write about a particularly funny experience with her loved ones, it was quite the chore for her.

Of course, she is only entering her first few days in Standard Four, but there are obvious barriers that need removing.

Her younger sister will also be doing the same minus the report so I’ve bought two glitzy coloured notebooks as their “Books-read Diary”.

I’m keen to see how things progresses from this little experiment to perk up my children’s creative juices.

All the same, I realized that I, too, have not read a good book for quite a long while now. Not even a good comic book so much so that I cannot recall the last which created a lasting.

The last two which did perk me up was a thick book on Islam by an Indonesian writer who I have since forgotten (discovered this at the spankingly new Shah Alam public library only to later found out that that it was a “reference only” copy) and Reza Aslan’s “Tiada Tuhan Melainkan Allah”.

This was the translated version of “No God but God” first published in 2005, but I was hooked after reading the first few (tens, in fact) pages when I chanced upon it at Times Bookstore near my workplace weeks ago.

Alas, the sole copy was sold off when I wanted to purchase it a few days later but there it was on the shelves during lunch today.

And so it sits inside a plastic bag next to my piles for in, pending and out files waiting to be read later tonight, something which I can’t wait to do.

I am wondering now if there was anything similar which had perked my daughters’ “reading buds” which they mentioned to me and my better half which we – in the haste of chasing after life – had conveniently or inadvertently let slip by without realizing its importance.

Words spoken but left unsaid. Really should start listening to them.

And, yes, the year started with a bang (three in fact, which is no laughing matter when you think of the seriousness in intentions) for Malaysia with Anwar Ibrahim off the hook for alleged sodomy.

The seemingly surprise verdict? Sure seems to me like a poker player dealing his good hands way too early, just like the whole Sept 16 debacle the last time for the PKR man. He will never learn, will he? Sigh…