The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| The winners of Gift-A-Book Survey Posted: 18 Dec 2011 02:38 AM PST IN the spirit of giving, we're rewarding the five most interesting entries to our Gift-A-Book Survey with RM100 worth of book vouchers, courtesy of MPH Bookstores. Here are the winners, and excerpts of what they wrote: Kok Ser Lin, 15, says she would give Diary Of A Wimpy Kid to her brother, and would like The House of Silk by Anthony Horrowitz as a gift. What made her entry a winner was that she described each book in adorable rhyming poetry! Kosheni Kalimuthu, 24, would like to give Chicken Soup For The Soul: Think Positive – 101 Inspirational Stories About Counting Your Blessings And Having A Positive Attitude to her mother, who is often down after having gone through many challenges in life. "I hope she will get a new perspective on life, that it is not too bad after all." Lean Ka-Min, 36, thinks you "can't go wrong with The Indispensable Calvin And Hobbes", because "now that cartoonist Bill Watterson has hung up his pen, this compilation reminds the reader just how the frolicsome twosome rocketed themselves – Spaceman Spiff-like – from the funny pages into our hearts. Wittier than Harry Potter, wiser than The Da Vinci Code, this book makes for a stupendous literary stocking-filler." Nandita Ray, 51, says: The perfect gift for Chin Kuan Leong, 22, would be Stuck by Oliver Jeffers, because the children's story of a kite stuck in a tree reminds him of when the same thing that happened to him. "I tried to get it down. I threw stones. I flung rubber bands. I threw my shoes. I flung my dad's boomerang from Australia, for goodness sake! The only thing I did not fling was my neighbour's cat! So, it will be a joy and curious nostalgia to see whether this kid has any luck." Winners will receive their prizes in the post. If the address you provided is inaccurate, call 03-7867 1289 or e-mail star2@thestar.com.my and give us the correct one. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Posted: 18 Dec 2011 12:26 AM PST The flu almost won but a helping of calming prose won the day in the end. I HAVE been terribly sick this week. The brooding discomfort sprang up last Sunday like a merciless demon, attacking my bones and flooding my nasal passages. It was overdue, the flu; full-blown and nasty, it snorted at my overworked body. I know, and I am sorry. Reading four books, colossal in girth and substance, in a month had indeed taken a toll on me. With my eyes turning blurry and my brain slowly dying, I read two books at the same time and in the midst of which, I had to manoeuvre around office politics and wrack my brain for highly improbable solutions, suggestions and resolutions. Work stopped the minute I sped out of the office, yet the headache remained. At home a family awaited, as did the two books, squinting their eyes invisible at those disinclined to reading. We have to be read, the rigid and thick one about oil whispered in tones so low it seemed to mimic the secrecy of the dusk into which our home sunk. I know. Thereafter, a fury of household chores followed, and it was not until 11pm did I get to lie down in my daughter's bed. Hers is a healing bed for the sick; it is also a reading bed, for its softness hugs aching joints comfortably, and her stuffed animals huddle and cuddle around to provide the necessary warmth in this unusually cold summer Down Under. The rain pattered on the window, the chill it brought stiffened my hands, making it hard to hold the book while lying down. I sat up. I had a race to run to the oil field laid bare by Daniel Yergin in his latest offering, The Quest. As interesting as the book might be, oil was not the best subject to "smell" while suffering from a whirling head and the accusing eyes of stuffed animals that had expected to, as usual, become the book's protagonists in my imagination.... Thanks to Yergin's exquisite prose and clarity, the subject came so vividly alive that I really could almost smell the oil, and the book became so slippery that it fell out of hands reluctant to hold it in the first place. Yet, my mind needed few pages of calming fodder. A remnant of awe aroused by a brief flirtation with Anita Desai's superiority in her latest book, The Artist Of Disappearance, beckoned like a lighthouse beacon glimpsed by a battered vessel losing direction. Rummaging through the library bag, I found it. And lying back down, I began to read, my mind already racing, dragging along the pounding head, soothing it and attempting to stop that ache. Desai is the mother of 2006 Booker Prize winner (for The Inheritance Of Loss) Kiran Desai. While reading The Artist, I could almost see Kiran standing behind her mother's powerful prose, watching this fan's awe over her sensuousness. The stuffed animals wouldn't mind the barren plain of the first story in which there reside no animals only mosquitoes and centuries-old aristocracies. They, as I, were taken in by Desai's powerful voice in narrating the tale of a very junior officer posted to a crumbling outback. "The high-pitched whining of mosquitoes sounded around me and I slapped angrily at their invisible presence." The stuffed animals bellowed, yet felt grateful to be in the comfort of a cool and silent room unadorned by a mosquito net. The sentences healed me enough to send me into a deep healing slumber. And as soon as I awoke the next morning, I devoured the novella, staying in bed. The rain made the midmorning look and feel like dusk. With not a ray of sunlight in sight, we dozed off, all four of us sick under one drenched roof, lulled by the sound of heavy rain and the whispering of books, which began to build up throughout the day – on the tables, in the bathroom, in beds in particular, besides beds, and, when day became the dimmest, underneath them for the children must have kicked them there. My son could not decide which book to read; my daughter built bridges underpinned by her books, waiting for them to tumble and mummy to read to her. My husband fixated on a cookbook, contemplating what we could possibly want to eat for dinner. Healed by Desai's calming prose, I was soon deep inside the oil book again, in silence but not in solitude. With my head much lighter and nasal passages cleared, I sprinted to the end – page 816. The flu warned of a return with a vengeance. I nodded and went back into the sick bed, feeling colder. An overworked body is a virus-prone body, and the flu sniggered at me foolishness. I know, and I am sorry. "Whyever did I imagine I was different, and could live differently from them?" Desai resounded. I am no different from anyone for I cannot domesticate books and tame their temptation. A book as colossal as The Quest can also be as alluring as The Art Of Disappearance. Abby Wong has recovered from her flu but is short of a book to read. Send book suggestions and flu remedies to star2@thestar.com.my. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Posted: 18 Dec 2011 12:22 AM PST FOR the week ending Dec 11, 2011: Non-fiction 1. Steve Jobs: A Biography by Walter Isaacson 2. A Doctor In The House: The Memoirs Of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad 3. My Lifelong Challenge: Singapore's Bilingual Journey by Lee Kuan Yew 4. Body Language At Work: Read The Signs And Make The Right Moves by Peter Clayton 5. Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths To Keep Singapore Going by Han Fook Kwang, et al 6. The Secret Letters Of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma 7. Chicken Soup For The Soul: Find Your Happiness by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Amy Newmark 8. Guinness World Records 2012 by Guinness World Records Ltd 9. Heaven Is For Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story Of His Trip To Heaven And Back by Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent 10. No Excuses!: The Power Of Self-Discipline by Brian Tracy Fiction 1. Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer 2. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (movie tie-in) by Stieg Larsson 3. The Time Of My Life by Cecelia Ahern 4. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami 5. In Pursuit Of Eliza Cynster (Three Heroes, Three Rescues, Three Weddings) by Stephanie Laurens 6. Altar Of Bones by Philip Carter 7. Conqueror by Conn Iggulden 8. The House Of Silk (A Sherlock Holmes novel) by Anthony Horowitz 9. Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult 10. Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Dominion by Eric Van Lustbader Weekly list compiled by MPH Mid Valley Megamall, Kuala Lumpur; www.mphonline.com. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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