The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Posted: 31 Dec 2011 10:37 PM PST FOR the week ending Dec 25, 2011: Non-fiction 1. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson 2. A Doctor In The House: The Memoirs Of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad 3. Chicken Soup For The Soul: Think Positive – 101 Inspirational Stories About Counting Your Blessings And Having A Positive Attitude by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen & Amy Newmark 4. My Lifelong Challenge: Singapore's Bilingual Journey by Lee Kuan Yew 5. Heaven Is For Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story Of His Trip To Heaven And Back by Todd Burpo & Lynn Vincent 6. The Secret Letters Of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma 7. I Moved Your Cheese: For Those Who Refuse To Live As Mice In Someone Else's Maze by Deepak Malhotra 8. Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths To Keep Singapore Going by Han Fook Kwang et al 9. The Night The Angels Came by Cathy Glass 10. No Excuses!: The Power Of Self-Discipline – 21 Ways To Achieve Lasting Happiness And Success by Brian Tracy Fiction 1. The New Collected Short Stories by Jeffrey Archer 2. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (movie tie-in) by Stieg Larsson 3. Aleph by Paulo Coelho 4. The Time Of My Life by Cecelia Ahern 5. Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer 6. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami 7. The Sixth Man by David Baldacci 8. The Litigators by John Grisham 9. The Fifth Witness (a Lincoln lawyer novel) by Michael Connelly 10. Empire Of Silver by Conn Iggulden Weekly list compiled by MPH Mid Valley Megamall, Kuala Lumpur; www.mphonline.com. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Posted: 31 Dec 2011 10:37 PM PST I'M always excited to greet a fresh new year and think of all the books that will find their way on to my shelves during the coming months. Several highly-anticipated books were published during the last quarter of 2011. Some, like The Chronicles Of Harris Burdick, The Phantom Tollbooth 50th Anniversary Edition and The Scorpio Races, were featured in my best of 2011 round-up. Others missed my reading deadlines and might be included in next year's list. In the coming weeks, I will be reading and reviewing Jay Asher's The Story Of Us and Garret Freymann-Weyr's French Ducks In Venice – two books I've been anxiously waiting to read these past couple of months. Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why was a little too melodramatic and whingey for my tastes but I'm really looking forward to his latest – the story of a couple of teenagers who find their Facebook pages online ... 15 years before Facebook was invented. As for French Ducks In Venice, Freymann-Weyr's very first picture book is illustrated by Erin Mcguire and published by Candlewick Press. Reviews call it a princess story with a difference – focusing on the heroine's talents and personality rather than her looks, and celebrating the qualities of independence, grace and self-confidence. I can't wait, especially as Freymann-Weyr is one of my favourite novelists and her books have never disappointed me. This month, there's John Green's The Fault In Our Stars to look forward to (my review will be out at the end of February). I have enjoyed all of Green's novels, even if I do find some of his characters insufferable. Green's heroes give (false?) hope to teenage girls everywhere, but I find myself warming more to his supporting characters who are usually funnier and less up their own bottoms. Bewitching by Alex Flinn will be published on Valentine's Day, but I'm not sure if we should expect a typical happily-ever-after tale even if it does reference all our favourite fairytales. Kendra, a witch and immortal, can't seem to stop meddling in the affairs of others, usually with dire results. In Beastly, Flinn's modern take on Beauty And The Beast, Kendra was the witch who put a curse on Kyle, the handsome and obnoxious teenager. Kendra was also somehow mixed up with the little mermaid, the princess and the pea and Hansel and Gretel. In Bewitching, she attempts to help a girl whose problems include a beautiful and manipulative stepsister. Cinderella? Well, yes, but not quite. Under The Moons Of Mars will also be published in February. This is a collection of stories and art, created to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Edgar Rice Burrough's sci-fi classic, John Carter Of Mars. The movie of that book will of course be released this year and may encourage Malaysians to do some reading. Also, although The Invention Of Hugo Cabret was published in 2007, I expect it to be given a new lease of life once the Martin Scorsese film is released in Malaysia in March. The same goes for Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games and its sequels, once the movie is out, also in March. A book I just feel in my bones will be one of my favourites this year is The False Prince, the first of a trilogy by Jennifer A. Nielsen. I've just been given an uncorrected proof and can't wait to get stuck in. Stay tuned for my review in April, which is when the book will be published. There are many more titles on my must-read list: The second in Laini Taylor's Daughter Of Smoke And Bone trilogy is due out in September, Girl Of Fire And Thorns by Rae Carson, Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler (gorgeously illustrated by Maira Kalman), Shadow And Bone by Leigh Bardugo, and Reflections: On The Magic Of Writing, a collection of' articles, lectures and talks by the late, great Diana Wynne Jones. I haven't listed any picture books (apart from French Ducks In Venice) or middle-grade chapter books, but join me here every Sunday for news and views of all the best releases, for tots, tweens and teens. Happy reading! Daphne Lee reads to wonder and wander, be amazed and amused, horrified and heartened and inspired and comforted. She wishes more people will try it too. Send e-mails to star2@thestar.com.my and check out her blog at daphne.blogs.com/books. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Posted: 31 Dec 2011 10:37 PM PST If you find picking up a novel intimidating, why not kick off a year of regular reading with short stories? THE Galeries Victoria in downtown Sydney is a beautiful building. It is even more during this holiday season with books falling from its high ceiling, literally. That's what this department store chose as its Christmas decoration: books hung in mid-air, as if Santa had clumsily tripped, spilling piles of books from his sack and leaving them behind to remind shoppers that books make great presents. Look, a book, I pointed out to my daughter. She giggled, less at the majestic sight than at the fond memory of the book I had read to her the night before, Look, A Book! by Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood. It is one of her favourite Christmas presents. "And then we can read it again and again," she lilted gleefully at the concluding sentence of the lovely book. If you take the stairs up from the Galeries' basement where the food court is, the books appear to be wide open right above your head. I could nearly read the words. Books have replaced baubles, and with the help of sunlight from the glass roof, they need no lights to shine. There, in the week before Christmas when the streets in downtown Sydney were swarming with shoppers, I sat on a bench in the Galeries, looking up and admiring the spectacle. I went up to the second floor to admire it further and, of course, to buy some books from Kinokuniya Bookstores. The sight of the bookstore bustling with activities and crowded with shoppers evoked a strange melancholic feeling. I used to be part of this noble job of choosing books, recommending favourites, and prescribing them for ailments only books can heal. But now, I only buy them. Like those ailing customers I used to serendipitously consult, I might easily get lost among the tens of thousands of book while seeking gems. Yet, I had a plan. Short stories were what I was going after, for they can be read "again and again" and still give the same degree of pleasure as if they are being read the first time. I needed to venture no further than the front of the store to find my first book. Right there as I stepped in was Alan Garner's Collected Folk Tales. Garner is an old man who tells frightening urban fantasies. My son and I screamed like little kids at the sight of this new book, evoking in our minds the screaming habdabs we read about together on a winter night in Garner's The Owl Service, a fantasy that, in my opinion, is one of the spookiest books I have ever read. This new collection of previously unpublished work and out-of-print folk tales handsomely produced with a gold-embossed purple cover is surely a book to be read and be spooked by it "again and again". I placed it in my basket, still giggling. My son strode toward the children's section, while my daughter faithfully tailed behind me as if she, too, wanted a shared moment of laughter about books similar to ones I always have with my son. Red being her favourite colour, she quickly picked out the red cover of There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbour's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales. It looks like a children book, but it is actually a collection of Russian short stories for adults. Eeriness abounds: a woman fills a pit in the forest in the middle of the night; a wizard punishes two beautiful ballerinas by turning them into one hugely fat circus performer; a colonel, heedless of advice, lifts the veil from his dead wife's face; and a despairing father eats human hearts in his dreams to bring his daughter back to life. And it's the perfect time to read this book, when the weather Down Under is schizophrenic, with coldness reigning over all and summer light struggling to pierce through the gloomy clouds. I placed it in my basket, my daughter cheering. The two books in my basket must have, in a way only books can, informed others a sucker for short stories was out on a buying spree. I was henceforth drawn by an uncanny force to places where they lay. As I lingered by the towering shelves, many began to emerge though only three made it into my basket: Roald Dahl's Tales Of The Unexpected, Amy Bloom's Where The God Of Love Hangs Out and Jack Zipes' Little Red Riding Hood And Other French Tales. Why short stories? you may ask. And why the search for eeriness? you may wonder. I was taking them on a 10-day camping trip in the wilderness where we would survive without electricity or any other form of modern amenity save a single toilet and a river of crystal-clear water. How did it turn out? As I lay in my red hoodie on a rock in the middle of a river amidst the rustling sound of bamboos, a wombat watched over me. The fox, so they said, knew I was not the real Red Riding Hood though I was reading a book about her. Happy New Year! Abby Wong urges you to make regular reading one of your New Year resolutions. Like her, you could start the year off with short stories. For women, she recommends Sarah Hall's The Beautiful Indifference; for men, Steven Millhauser's We Others: New And Selected Stories. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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