10 posts tagged “books”

By the way, you should read The Economist's Style Guide, which I got for free thanks to the sister's renewed subscription.

Style Guide (Economist (Hardcover))

And while you're at it, also read Michael Chabon. At the moment I'm eating up Yiddish Policemen's Union after a delectable The Final Solution. Not available at Bedok Community Library. Screw it, I haven't read real books in a long time.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union (P.S.)

Michael Chabon

The Final Solution

Michael Chabon

Damned throat.

"Strange."

"Yeah. Strange."

"So, anyhow," he says, already bored, "what did you do? Talk to her? Follow her?"

"Nah, just passed her on the street."

Nothing much to say about the past few days I think, except I finally forced myself to admit that the smell of Malboro mixed with pouring rain is nice, reminiscent of nostalgia, if that is possible.

For the hungry people out there, here are three New Scientist articles to feed your interest:

Seal pups are drowning at birth because of a lack of ice cover. When the mother seals have no ice to climb onto, they have to give birth at sea, so the babies die.

Watch what you eat: beware, boys whose mothers who eat beef containing growth hormones (E.U. beef is safe and U.S' is not) during pregnancy will have 3 times higher a chance of having low sperm count.

Hooray! Those in extreme sports can use a ready-made cast to heal their fractures. The bandage, when poured with sodium citrate gel, will react with metal in the cast to crystallize to form a solid. And because the reaction is exothermic, heat is generated to keep the limb warm. Fantastic.

On Practice and Contradiction (Revolutions)

Mao Zedong

Le livre de la semaine est:

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Leo Tolstoy

I have realised, much to my annoyance, that Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman isn't Murakami's latest. It was published at least a couple of years ago. Singapore is just slow to bring it in. All of a sudden, his books are popping up everywhere. The libraries are being emptied of his books with the same speed. To my dismay, I only managed to find After The Quake at the Central Lending Library today. There wasn't even a single Kiran Desai book! In my desperation, I borrowed the Chinese versions of Murakami's Dance! Dance! Dance! and The Elephant Vanishes.

Dance, Dance, Dance

Haruki Murakami

I want his entire collection! At least Norwegian Wood. I would be contented with just one book.

Oh, Murakami, you break my heart so.

It would be queer for me to dedicate an entry solely to the festive season, considering I am the regular Scrooge. I loathe the jingles, I loathe the decorations (not even the Swarovski crystal tree cuts it), I loathe the food. There aren't even any good movies out this season. There are three, actually- at least in my opinion- After This Our Exile (yeah, bad grammar, I know), La tourneuse de pages, and Quinceanera. Problem? All M18. There was the NC-16 Days Of Glory, which was showing at the Picturehouse, but my sister refused to lend me her NRIC. The prick.

Only the other day I felt the full force of the Christmas spell at the NTUC Fairprice in Aljunied. (I digress for a moment: there is a very good fish soup and duck rice stall at #01-11 at the Aljunied Ave 2 hawker centre. It's called Ng Soon Kee Fish and Duck Porridge.) While waiting for lunch- typically they take half an hour- my sister and I traipsed off to the NTUC nearby and I was swept off my feet immediately by the music playing at the supermarket: a Christmas jingle. Oh, but not any other jingle. The singers sounded like children at first. I couldn't tell, really. They started to sound like... nothing I've heard. It's like when you fast-forward a song, you get those high-pitched noises? Yeah, it sounded just like that. It's not a comparison, by the way. It is what it was. NTUC: high-pitched screechy jingles?

Spare me.

It was the worst of the lot I guess. Everywhere people were playing warped versions of jingles. Not that I prefer the normal versions. It's just so, so, easy to get sick of them. I'd rather have them play the usual stuff, and let carollers sing the songs. But that's me. Scrooge.

But on a slightly happier note (for me),

Haruki Murakami's latest book is out in stores now!
It costs about SGD27 though. I don't even spend that much on... come to think of it, I don't really spend much. Sigh.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Haruki Murakami

Must save money. Must save money.

I must say that the books at Page One are exorbidant. Yeah, design books cost a lot, but still.
Kesselskramer's 2 Kilo book is a laugh, literally. And loads interesting. (Pun unintended.)

2 Kilo of Kessels Kramer

Kessels Kramer

Note to self: Avoid Vivocity.

with Jamie Oliver.

I'm pretty happy with my current level of culinary prowess. I'm a bit off my rockers though, the only books I've been borrowing on each trip to the library are cookbooks:

All of the above three books are currently in my possession.

A Fair Feast: 70 Celebrity Recipes for a Fairer World

Vicky Bhogal

A Fair Feast took me a lot of trouble to borrow. I cleverly forgot to bring my EZ Link card when I went to Kellie's house, so I had to convince my mom that it was worth making the trip to lend me her library card to borrow the book. The deal? Washing the dishes. (My father did it in the end, though. Ha.) The recipes aren't that fantastic really, even without Bridget Jones' Recipe for Cheese. I liked- surprise, surprise- Jamie Oliver's and Nigella Lawson's though. And a few others, though I forget the names.
This morning, I made pancakes. They turned out awful-looking. They looked like fat pratas and simultaneously also like thin pancakes. I'm not exactly sure what went wrong, but I think it had to do with the absence of baking powder. Don't think my subsituting the sugar with brown sugar was a problem. The pancakes tasted alright though, despite the deceptive appearance.

I made Jamie Oliver's Lemon Curd Cake on Wednesday in between replying messages from a very morose Claire who was early for our meeting. It turned out okay, though I think I should've left it in the oven longer till it was browner. And I very embarrassingly forgot to butter the sides of the corningware, so it stuck. Big mistake. I brought the cake in a gigantic silver Toyota bag.

Met Claire at Starbucks at VivoCity, where she was reading some Chinese book on this girl in a bread tree. (Beats me too.) We sat there for a while until Claire finished her Gingerbreadman Latte- I think?- and we moseyed our way to Naturally Supermarket, which Nat had been telling me about just the day before. Our extremely brief trip to the VivoMart was interrupted by a call from Kellie, ticking me off about not telling her that we had moved from Starbucks. She and Eileen met with us and we had dinner at Banquet. We conveniently passed by Thai Express before that, shooting looks at Shuting, who, to my great surprise, came out to greet us and excitedly waved to us and asked if we were having dinner there. Quite alarming, but nevertheless quite an amusing scene.

We headed back to The Caribbean after Bravissimo ice-cream and another innocent walk past Thai Express. No Huimin, sadly. Along the way, Kellie insisted that Eileen take a photo at the fountain. Claire and I were dragged into it because Eileen refused to take the photo alone. I would've.

The Caribbean feels as huge as its namesake. We had to walk for 5 entire minutes before we reached Kellie's block. It felt like Hansel and Gretel walking through the forest, and instead of breadcrumbs there were different kinds of water features- fountain A, fountain B, wading pool, swimming pool, canal (yes, canal), etc- that showed the way. Fascinating. The lift wasn't stunning, but it led right to their doorstep. So naturally, we were stunned.

I'm not really in the mood to elaborate, but in point form:

1. I have been chirstened the Mahjong Queen after reaching a grand age of 22- the number of rounds I won. Claire was 9, Eileen was 14, and Kellie was 20. I was immensely pleased with myself, as you can imagine. Claire was at a disadvantage I guess, since she was a rookie and left earliest. But ha, anyway.
2. Kellie's little brother likes me. A bit too much. At first it was kind of flattering, but then he got stalker-ish-obsessive and I had to try to hide from him. Thank goodness, Kellie says he'll forget me "the next day". Keane's really intelligent though. We played rounds of Froggy with him (in which he teamed up with me) and Catch Me If You Can, a slightly warped version of Ludo. Kellie has incriminating media of Keane and my relationship. I'm praying she doens't blackmail me.
3. Kellie's family is generous. Too generous. After every other round, we had food: first it was Wang-Wang crackers, then my cake, then more Wang-Wang. For breakfast we had bacon sandwiches, at lunch we had spaghetti and macadamia nut ice-cream. I feel like Wilbur.

I should think that's all. The bus ride home was a nightmare, I dozed off and I think no one dared to sit next to me, haha. Especially with my giant Toyota bag beside me. I nearly got off at Eunos, thinking I had reached the wrong interchange (Bedok, I remembered, but there was another bus which went to Eunos and I thought I had misread) and everyone was getting off the bus. I had to calm myself down. Ugh. I desperately tried to keep awake for the rest of the trip to prevent any further self-humiliation.

Ah well. Was very fun.

On a slightly belated note, I have finished reading every good book Murakami has to offer. Almost.

I'd say, Norwegian Wood is his best work, or at least my favourite. Poignant and well-weaved. I don't completely understand it, and I didn't like the ending, but the story really draws me in. My second favourite would definitely be Kafka On The Shore. Still waiting for Hard-Boiled Wonderland.

Meanwhile, still on the recipe books. Note to self: need to buy stationery and calendar from MUJI.

I hate getting back results. After the last day- yesterday, I went on a little joy trip to Bras Basah. I borrowed two books from the National Library:

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

Kiran Desai

Shame: A Novel

Salman Rushdie