Ted's Thoughts

We apologise for the lack of updates. We are in the midst of several life-changing situations and may not be able to blog until further notice (or at least, it feels that way). In the meantime, do feel free to visit Ted Mahsun's new, writing-and-reading-oriented blog, Ted's Thoughts.

Selected posts for your consumption:

1. Submitted!
2. The Etiquette of Eating Pizza
3. On Murakami
4. Getting Free Books from Kinokuniya

Enjoy!

My 2005 Read List

My 2005 books read list:

January
Tuesdays With Morrie [Mitch Albom]
Memoirs of a Geisha [Arthur Golden]
The Dilbert Principle [Scott Adams]

February
Eats, Shoots & Leaves [Lynne Truss]
Number Ten [Sue Townsend]
The Amulat of Samarkand [Jonathan Stroub]
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time [Mark Haddon]
The Rules of Work [Richard Templar]
Diary - A Novel [Chuck Palahniuk]

March
Angela's Ashes [Frank McCourt]
Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 [Sue Townsend]
The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole [Sue Townsend]
True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole [Sue Townsend]
Chinese Cinderella [Adeline Yen Mah]
Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years [Sue Townsend]
The Magician's Nephew [C.S.Lewis]
Girl, Interrupted [Susanna Kaysen]
Confessions of a Shopaholic [Sophie Kinsella]
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe [C.S.Lewis]

April
The Broken Bridge [Philip Pullman]
He's Just Not That Into You [Greg Behrendt & Liz Tuccillo]
The Jane Austen Book Club [Karen Joy Fowler]

May
Life of Pi [Yann Martell]
Diary of a Young Girl [Anne Frank]
The Golem's Eye [Jonathan Stroub]
The Asti-Spumante Code [Toby Clements]

June
Darren Shan: Cirque de Freak [NA]
Bergodf Blondes [Plum Sykes]
Fever Pitch [Nick Hornby]

July
Mister God, This is Anna [Fynn]
The Sunday Philosophy Club [Alexander McCall Smith]
Sophie's World [Jostein Gaardner]
Cather in the Rye [J.D. Salinger]
The Alchemist [Paulo Coelho]

August
Lullaby [Chuck Palahniuk]
The Horse and His Boy [C.S.Lewis]
Charlie and The Chocolate Factory [Roald Dahl]
Nothing Ever Happens in Tiffany [Marian Keyes]

September
Rich Dad, Poor Dad [Richard Kiyosaki]
Veronika Decides To Die [Paulo Coelho]
Joy of Work - Dilbert [Scott Adam]
Harmony Silk Factory [Tash Aw]
Adrian Mole & the Weapons of Mass Destruction [Sue Townsend]

October
The Full Cupboard of Life [Alexander McCall Smith]
Last Chance Saloon [Marian Keyes]
White Teeh [Zadie Smith]
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies [Alexander McCall Smith]
The Rice Mother [Rani Manicka]

November
Oryx and Crake [Margaret Atwood]
Angels and Demons [Dan Brown]
2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom [Alexander McCall Smith]

December
Wild Swans [Jung Chang]
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire [JK Rowling]
Sari & Sins [Nisha Minhas]

Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction by Sue Townsend

I don't know whether to weep in despair or breathe a sigh of relief knowing that Adrian Mole is mostly the same loser we knew 20 years ago. In Sue Townsend's latest Adrian Mole book, our bespectacled protaganist starts his diary by writing a letter to his travel agent asking for a refund for a holiday to Cyprus seeing that Saddam Hussein harbours weapons of mass destruction and said weapons were in reach of Cyprus.

We then follow his life as he finds himself in increasing debt as he spends compulsively with his credit cards and finds himself trapped in near-matrimonial hell with a needy, depressive girl called Marigold. To make matters worse, he finds himself falling in love with Marigold's half-Mexican sister.

Adrian Mole continues the laugh-out loud humour of the previous books in the series and is a constant page-turner. My boss even found myself stealing a read from it once. So embarassing. A recommended read though.

And if you're wondering, yes, he's still in love Pandora.

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

What can be said about J.D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye that hasn’t been said before? A modern classic, almost everybody knows the story of the teenaged Holden Caulfield; how he brought himself to the brink of despair.

So all I can add to the discussion are merely my thoughts on this book. They say great books have great characterisation and there’s no doubt about it, Catcher in the Rye is a great book. Containing some of the most memorable characters ever, regardless of what you think of the book, you remember who Holden Caulfield is like, what he does, what he says, what kind of mannerisms he has. You remember the other minor characters as well—Phoebe, Mr. and Mrs. Antolini, Sally, Stradlater, Ackley. They all have their distinct personality, speech and mannerisms.

In the end it’s not much of the story that grips you but the interaction between Holden and the people around him. But for what it’s worth, what Holden does and how he slowly dives deeper into depression does provide an interesting stage for these social interactions.

Holden spendthrifts, acts irrational, has a low perception on other people and seems to think everybody else is a “phoney”. The only person Holden seems to care about is his younger sister, Phoebe, who seems to have much more sense than him even though she is much younger. There are clues in the book as to what the cause of Holden’s depression is however it is never told explicitly as to the reason why.

Though I did not appreciate Holden’s personality, I could at least appreciate how alive J.D. Salinger made the people in his book seem.

Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby

This is a book about football. And I read it. To the end. And enjoyed it tremendously.

Fever Pitch concentrates on the writer’s terrible obsession with football, and especially Arsenal in particular. He explores his relationship with football and Arsenal, examining football's hold on his life. The writer is witty and honest and he relates events, cause and effects, decisions, relationships, growing pains and life within his confining obsession with football.

Apart from the other-point-of-view personal story Nick shares in the book, I liked the way he tells this story. The book is organized historically, journeying through the years when he picked up his obsession to the point of current writing. Each chunk of story is written in reference to a football game. (eg: Arsenal vs. Stoke City, 14.9.68 - the books opening match). Each match tells of an unrelated topic from the next.

It is like reading a collection of blog post spanning over 3 decades, all revolving around football obsession. And a very interesting collection too. Even for a non-football fan!

Highly recommended.
(want to borrow I got book)

The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason

I think the one big mistake an unsuspecting reader of The Rule of Four by first-time author tag-team Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason can make is that he or she may compare it to the blisteringly fast-paced, action-packed, cliffhanger-at-every-chapter-esque The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

If I may offer some advice: just don't. Don't, even if you had to sell your mother's teak furniture, compare the two books. Just don't. Unless of course, comparing apples and oranges is indeed your speciality but if that is indeed so, I will have to show you the door, sir, and please do not come by again, thank you very much.

The Rule of Four is about four college boys about to graduate from Princeton. It is not, however hard it is to believe so, about a symbologist who gallivants around Paris and London hoping to find the Holy Grail. In fact, sometimes it's about an ancient Renaissance text and sometimes it's about one of the boys' confused love life. It does not at all feature hot French babes and this may disappoint some of you.

How exciting can you make a book that's about another book, albeit a bit more more older, mouldy and mustier book? Answer: not very. But, it still is a very, very, interesting read as long as you don't fall asleep waiting to turn the pages and in the end, if that's what floats your boat, then I guess this is something one should not afford to miss.

I loved it. I would have loved it more if the publishers didn't tout it as the next Da Vinci Code, which it is not. At all.

Borders Berjaya Times Square, Kuala Lumpur

I dropped by the newly opened Borders bookstore in Berjaya Times Square today, and though it's not as big as Kinokuniya, MPH Midvalley, MPH 1 Utama or even Popular Ikano... it's still a pretty good bookstore. I'm in love.

I mean, what other bookstore provides comfy seats for you to seat your rumpus on while browsing through an unsealed book? Yes, that's right! The books--they're unsealed. Remember when Kinokuniya KLCC first opened and they didn't bother to seal their books either? Yeah? Remember how awesome it was to leaf through a RM200.00 book without having to go to the grumpy girl at the information counter?

Well, rejoice, for Borders is like that! But, unfortunately, knowing how our fellow Malaysians treat other people's property, I'm sure the books are not going to stay unsealed for long.

If you haven't been to Borders yet, you should. They've got this "buy-three-novels-for-the-price-of-two" promo thing going on. Also, you know a bookstore's good when you walk in and realise how amazing it is that the History section is crammed full of people. At least Borders was when I walked in this afternoon. Oh, and their selection of books are pretty wide... rivalling even that of Kinokuniya's.

So we'll see you there! If only they had free wireless internet in the Starbucks inside Borders, and I'd be there every night. Maybe soon.