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Reading for Pleasure...my list...and yours?
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First posting...a deflowering of sort...so what is in my head right now? Yes, let's restrict to books... I have thousands of them, so where to start...start with what I'm currently reading may be... but I am a very untidy reader, what I mean is... I read many books and mags at the same time and in the end it takes a mighty long time to finish one...most times I start with one, pick another and leave the first, pick the third and leave half read the second and so on ...I read everywhere, in the toilet, in bed (alone, before and after sex), weekends, weekdays, on planes trains automobiles, in the middle of traffic jams, at red lights. The most recent book that I finished was last week ...on Jeffrey Dahmer the serial killer...not a terribly good book and I can't even remember the author now without going back and check the book which I'm too lazy to do... , and now I'm starting the memoir by his father Lionel Dahmer. And I'm also currently reading a biography of JD Salinger...another poor book by unknown author ... JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye was one of my favorite books during my student days..., and a memoir by Martin Amis...now here is someone who can really write... it's like he's making love in words...and Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos....Ah...Vonnegut, one of my favorite American writers...reminds me of Mark Twain but Vonnegut's humour and wit is even better in my opinion!..And Adrian Mole the Capuchino years by Sue Townshend,...a light humurous book with gentle British sense of humour... and Satan In Goray by Isaac Basheevis Singer and "Heavy Water" a collection of short stories by Martin Amis....and The Travel of Ibn Jubyr ...a very interesting travelogue by one Moorish Muslim from Spain to Mecca in the fifteenth century...oh hey actually my last book that I completed was a few days back ...Imaginary girlfriend by John Irving... a memoir of sort... John Irving's books are always a page turner... always very intense...I always feel very tired reading his books...The World According to Garp, hotel New Hampshire, and all the rest...good while it last but...very ephimeral...just like eating candy floss...ah that reminds me... several weeks back I finished another american book... a thin satirical take on modern art by Tom Wolf called "the painted word"...and by the way there's something about Vonnegut in John Irving's Imaginary girlfriend... He used to go to Vonnegut's house and he considered Vonnegut as a mentor of sort...I went to Indianapolis once (the hometown of vonnegut) but I did not meet him of course... He's dead now...I think.... |
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hem...welcome, Green...ur posting reminded me of fellow forummers...
In my case...I usually read romance, so i won't bore others with that part...
and novels..I love to read them...but dun have the time now...since I like
to participate in this forum...and one more thing..if I read novels..I couldn't stop
until I reach the end...so I have to find time for that...just like right now..I got some free time for a few months...but sadly..no reading materials...need to find some soon...been reading too much mags only....
The last book I've read was A child called It...b4 that some free books...stuffs like Earnest Hemingway and so on...b4 this I usually got em from library or stuffs I've to read for my studies..like 6 novels for a semester or a century of poems...
so not so many leisure readings...only during holidays...some like the 'biasa' common ones like Shogun, Gone With The Wind...n usually I like to read anthologies..so that I can put the stuffs down not like novels...I remember reading Isaac Asimov...Agatha Christie...Stephen King...if my recollection are put...
remember reading gifts from my sis..The Blind Fury...my bro...Virginia Andrews' collection of novels he got from Australia...
mere collection only...maybe I should go to some bookstores next month...suddenly feeling lacking in my readings...hemm...
ok...enough jabbering...how so boooooringgggggggggg...:malu:
[ Last edited by seribulan on 3-12-2004 at 01:01 PM ] |
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hmm...
i m always fascinated by how nicely arranged alphabets could describe worlds...
cant keep my eyes of whatever i could read.. but still.. i m not proud of it...
talking 'bout books.. this yr i noticed that my mood changed from romance to mystery...homicide things... ( influenced of toooooooo much CSI and ALIAS )
last week i borrowed this " BLACK NOTICE" - Patricia Cornwell... i think i'm in love with her now... so... i m looking fwd to dig more on her.. |
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Dear Lintahbulan...sorry seribulan and gorgonz;
If you love words you'll be well rewarded by reading those writers who make it their business to play with words like they handle lovers... writers like Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Gunther Grass are some of the really good writers that I found very playful with words... some of their writings are hard going for some but if you really want to read "real books" these are the guys I suggest you try.. some others I found very good are Elias Canetti ( eg Auto da Fe), and Allan Hollinghurst (this year's booker prize winner)...Grass, Marquez & Canneti are of course nobel prize winners ....I found nobel prize wiinners very2 boring in general but these few I mentioned are by no mean so...another extremely good nobel prize winner is of course Isaac Bisheevis singer... This gentle fellow was of course a Jew and if you want to know about old Jewish culture (especially yiddish) he's the guy....
I once saw his interview on BBC and he was really a nice fellow... someone that I like to be my grandfather..he's dead now of course.... |
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Originally posted by Greenbottle3 at 4/12/04 01:52 AM:
Dear Lintahbulan...sorry seribulan and gorgonz;
If you love words you'll be well rewarded by reading those writers who make it their business to play with words like they handle lovers... writer ...
 now..who's tittering....:no:
HEM...Tq 4 de suggestion...how about naming titles...if u r free, that is...or just any book by them is good??
tq again all the same...:tq:keep em coming... |
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RasaCinta This user has been deleted
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reading 4 pleasure.. my lists..
Tara Road - MAEVE BINCHY
Middlemarch - GEORGE ELIOT
used to read em when i babysit
it's like reading soap opera..;)
dis one.. sort of a family book
Four 'Katy' books: what Katy did, what katy did at school, what Katy did next and Clover - SUSAN COOLIDGE
these are world-famous classic stories actually..
i guess Susan Coolidge is among the likes of Alcott and Mark Twain..
reading romance has been my cup of tea....
so i pick Connie Brockway..one of her best is called My Scottish Summer
sometimes i read [FBI] thrillers too..
great reads must be frm Catherine Coulter.
i adore n respect south african writers..
such as Mark Behr - The smell of apples
n Andre Brink - An instant in the wind
[ Last edited by RasaCinta on 13-3-2005 at 10:42 PM ] |
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Reading for pleasure eh? My favourite writer currently are John Grisham (just bought King of Tort yesterday at MPH One Utama), Dan Brown (Da vinci code and angel & demon), Sophie Kinsella (i wonder when is the cheaper version of shoppaholic and sister will come out. The RM 66 one is a bit big to be carried around). I've read all series of Dave Pelzer (wow...fantastic books. It can help to boost self-motivation), Faisal Tehrani (a different style of malay writing) and few others which I just picked up from the shelves if the summary at the back of the book sounds interesting. |
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tq 4 de link...I put it at the best-seller list thread 4 safe-keeping...
well to name the authors I studied but would be good for pleasure readings...
hope I got the spelling right...
Chinua Achebe
Charles Dicken
The Bronte's sisters
Louisa Mary Alcott
Catherine Lim
Shirley Lim
Gopal Baratham
Edgar Allan Poe
Mark Twain
non-lit...not in the canon...Sydney sheldon, Harold robbins, Frederick Forsyth..rasanya...
those were my elder Siblings...I like the Carpetbaggers...Stiletto...Day of
the Jackay...read during my school days... |
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RasaCinta This user has been deleted
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i got one of allan edgar poes...as long as i can remember.. - a love story.
sis seri...can u name the titles which u want to recommend.. |
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Poe??? more to short stories...
Black cat or
The House of Usher...
Chinua...Things fall apart... |
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Originally posted by gorgonz at 3-12-2004 08:14 PM:
hmm...
i m always fascinated by how nicely arranged alphabets could describe worlds...
cant keep my eyes of whatever i could read.. but still.. i m not proud of it...
talking 'bout books.. ...
Patricia Conwell ....
jgn sangkut2 sebb citenyer kebanyakkan bersambung
Fly dah baca few books ... menarik ...
lebih kurang cam CSI .... |
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Originally posted by fly_in_d_sky at 12-12-2004 05:01 PM:
Patricia Conwell ....
jgn sangkut2 sebb citenyer kebanyakkan bersambung
Fly dah baca few books ... menarik ...
lebih kurang cam CSI .... ...
hmmm  tak de jumpa dah kat library nin... sedis sungguh...
plus PC yg ada catalog system tu pun dah k.o.
but good news... jumpa yg lg best...
THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW ... skrg tengah baca.. |
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Just finished CAT'S CRADLE by Kurt Vonnegut on the plane coming back home yesterday. Well, actually a rereading since I read it for the first time a very long while back...during my university days...but it still strikes me as a very darkly relevant book for today...a very funny black comedy of a grotesque family, eccentric despot ,good men doing bad things and Bokonism...a new religion based on nonsense but no worse than any great religions which are based on "harmless lies"...Someone mentioned Voltaire in the same sentence as him (Mr Vonnegut) and I could't agree more....
Here's a little snippet from the chapter "Why American are Hated"
*********
Claire Minton's letter to the Times was published during the worst of the era of Senator McCarthy, and her husband was fired twelve hours after the letter was printed.
"What was so awful about the letter?" I asked.
"The highest form of treason," said Minton, "is to say that Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever they do.Claire tried to make the point that American foreign policy should recognize hate rather than imagine love."
"I guess Americans are hated a lot of places."
***********
And this was written in 1962!!
And hey, I was wrong after all ( and I tend to err many times in my life ) about Kurt Vonnegut being dead ... seems like he's still alive and well all of his 81 yrs...still living in Indiana.... May be someday when I visit my office HQ which is in Indianapolis I should pay him a visit...I hope he's still alive by then...
And how do I know he's alive??
I had a couple of hrs to kill in Singapore Airport and this great airport has free internet access located at several places and you can surf whatever (may be not porn but I did not try to confirm this) for free at 15 minutes a go. And you can log back in and have another 15 minutes....and so on... just be sure you don't have anybody waiting in line and you can go on forever...
So as I say...I did a bit of surfing and hit Mr Vonnegut and what did I get? A small article that was published in May this year...and here it is ....tell me what you think....
Published on Wednesday, May 12, 2004 by In These Times
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/cold_turkey
Cold Turkey
By Kurt Vonnegut
May 10, 2004
Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America抯 becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
-------------------------
When you get to my age, if you get to my age, which is 81, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, what life is all about. I have seven kids, four of them adopted.
Many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.
I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: 揊ather, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is. |
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Continue from above....
Cold Turkey
Kurt Vonnegut
And what did the great British historian Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794 A.D., have to say about the human record so far? He said, 揌istory is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. |
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Ooo hey;
Thanks for the link...that RuhayatX guy can write pretty well...I perked up a bit when he mentioned PAS (negatively)...but with this sad sad sad Tsunami disaster I'm not up to discussing politics... it's too depressing and I've steered away from "local politic" forum for the same reason...and not least because those active in that forum especially umno supporters seems to have a collective IQ of a retarded monkey...no use expanding energy with these guys....
Back to books...
It's now 5 minutes to midnight and new year 2005...and it's appropriate that I end 2004 and start 2005 thinking about books... books to read for pleasure...so what's the very last book that I read in 2004?
Well last night before I went to sleep I was reading an old GRANTA issue focussing on India, about Kashmir during the mid 90s when the beautiful Kashmir became a mess due to the fighting with India....It was a depressing read... nodded off before finishing it...and just before that, night before last I was reading an even more depressing story in the same issue about Bombay...this time about the aftermath of the destruction of the Babri Mosque and how the Shiv Sena thugs rampaging and burning muslims in Bombay....
Oh hey...as I'm writing this it's now past mid night so...happy new year to you all.....and it's appropriate that I'm writing about GRANTA to usher in the new year. this is to me one of the best english literary quarterly that I've come across...you have great writing by all the wellknown and great writers on all kinds of topics...fiction, biography, novel in progress, travel, opinion pieces/essays...anything and everything worth reading...
I highly recommend you all to read this ....you sometime can get some issues in Payless branches in Klang valley....want to know more about GRANTA...just tap this word in search engine and you've got it.... tell me what you all think about it..... |
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I did post once there about 慳urat拝My!!..did I get a shock卭ne of the 憇upporter |
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Among the books i enjoy reading
1. The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann) - good book for engineer <wink>
2. Snow (Orhan pamuk)
3. What Went Wrong (Bernard Lewis)
4. Crisis of Islam (Bernard Lewis)
5. The Prosperous Few And The Restless many (Chomsky)
6. In the name of Identity (Amin Maalouf) |
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Category: Belia & Informasi
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Post time 2-12-2004 08:20 PM
变色卡
Post time 3-12-2004 01:24 AM
Author
