On Books (And Their Titles)

I, Ms Super Contrarian, Defier of Well-Known Idioms, totally judge books by their covers.

I don't think of it as being superficial so much as literately snobby: I don't care if a book cover is old and ugly and tattered, and I love used books because there's so much history in them (whether it's true or not - it might just be my imagination running wild and creating an entire backstory for how a used book was bought and read and cherished and fell off a bookshelf and eventually found its lonely way to a used bookstore but that is, unfortunately, the way that my imagination runs), but hell to the yes I DO care if a book looks tacky.

Examples of tacky include:
- Chick Lit: First of all, I despise this genre even if I didn't find the covers tacky, because it is generic, insipid, and quite frankly insulting to my entire gender. So I don't buy chick lit, or, whether it's chick lit or not, books that have any sassy graphics of lipsticks and high heels and diamonds on the cover. Although I am actually quite fond of sassiness, lipstick, high heels and diamonds in real life, I totally resent the fact that some publisher out there is trying to exploit my love of these fabulously girly things to trick me into buying a shit book. 

 

 I say no. Nononononononononono.

- Books with the movie adaptation poster as the cover: The books are always better than the movie, so why reference the lesser? Also, I don't know if there is anyone who actually goes out of their way to actually buy the book WITH the movie cover, but I do know that I specifically go out of my way to AVOID AT ALL COSTS buying the book with the movie cover. If it's between buying the book with the movie cover and not buying the book at all: I won't buy the book at all. So why bother publishing the book with the movie cover, other than as a cheap way to advertise the movie and drum up book sales in anticipation of the movie? (Alright, so that's why. But still! I refuse to play! I may watch the movie and I may read the book, but I reject the industry's trying to mix up the two mediums!)

I also say no. Even though Leonardo DiCaprio is very handsome as Gatsby. I say give me the not-handsome and kinda creepy eyes of the original cover.

- Fifty shades of S&M/Twilight vampire covers: I cannot believe that we live in a world where these are actually things, but things they are. Once at Barnes & Noble I came across an entire table of Fifty Shades of Grey rip-offs. Really? Really?! Are there people who are that addicted to S&M porn lit that they need an entire table of it, all with similar covers, you know, in case they get confused about which books in their libraries are the S&M ones? I refuse to buy. REFUSE! I refuse so much that when I read Fifty Shades of Grey it was an illicit PDF version (hey, I didn't say I refuse to READ it). I couldn't finish it because the writing was so terrible, though, and had to make someone who had already read the book tell me what happened. Same with the Twilight books, though for that, I just watched the movies. You know, to find out what happened. Not just to see Robert Pattinson in the movie version. Robert who? I actually don't even know his full name.

Please tell me I'm not the only who's seeing this. I'm not, right?! Even Interview With the Vampire, the grand-daddy of vampire books, has been given a teen-vampire makeover.

 
But the number one factor that I REALLY judge books by: their titles. I think I've amassed enough books to classify myself a collector of Books with Awesome Titles. Though awesome book titles do not always translate into awesome books, I feel less cheated by a not-awesome book when I know that at least the author had good intentions, and at least put in a lot of effort with their title.

The top 10 best titles so far:

10. The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano
(But book was meh.)

9. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
(Also meh. Set in Paris, though, if you like books set in Paris.)
  
8. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
(Loved this; totally lived up to its title expectations. Apparently was supposed to be made into a movie. If it is - BUY THE ORIGINAL COVER.) 

7. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
(Was expecting a dystopian Romeo & Juliet-type affair. Umm. Not what I got. Though it was very dystopic.)

6. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
(I remember I bought this book because it had an interesting title, but also because I was hungry and wandered into Kinokuniya during a lunch break in fasting month. The plot has an interesting concept - about a little girl who suddenly develops the ability to taste feelings in food; as in taste what the baker/cook was feeling when they baked/cooked it - but then the author veered into magic realism territory, and failed terribly at it. Terribly.)

5. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
(One of my favourites; already reviewed here.)

4. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
(It's Douglas Adams! Of course I loved this. I could probably read his grocery lists and howl with laughter (albeit like a lunatic).)

3. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu
(Alas, didn't like the book - it was too metaphysical and new age-y.)

2. An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke
(Mehhhh.)

1. The Library of Unrequited Love by Sophie Divry 
(A trippy soliloquy of a very lonely librarian, who is ultimately not terribly interesting. But a library! Of unrequited love! Does that not sound like the most magical thing ever?!)

Honourable mentions: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky; The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend; The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder by J.W. Ironmonger; The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin; The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley; The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai


Looking at the track record above, judging books based on their book titles actually seems like a wildly inaccurately hit-and-miss way of gauging whether a book is worth reading. If it is any consolation (to myself, I mean; I can’t imagine that anyone else is feeling a little put-out or surprised that superficiality/literate snobbishness doesn’t pay in the end) at least I have a library full of interesting titles and no S&M porn.

On Marriage

Holy shit, people. I cannot believe I’ve now been married for a year.

There's nothing like the half-yearly Updating of the Blog to make you realize how insidiously time hovers around you, slowly depleting your finite supplies of oxygen and energy and cells, until all of a sudden a year has gone by.

(It’s like that verse from the Andrew Marvell poem I will always remember; firstly because it’s beautiful and is one of few verses of poetry I can quote offhand because for a brief, angsty, oh-God-I’m-growing-up period before high school graduation, I was slightly obsessed with it, but also because it is essentially a silver-tongued plea to get a chick into bed, and I appreciate effort when I see it: “But at my back I always hear / time’s winged chariot hurrying near / And yonder all before us lie / Deserts of vast eternity.”)

Either version you want to go with, mine, or Marvell’s (both equally eloquent I think) – it’s been a year, people. A YEAR!

I feel like by now I should have accumulated a wealth of marital information to impart onto newlyweds who are more newlywed than me, since for some reason this past year, other married people have just looooooved giving me advice while simultaneously asking me how married life is and when I’m planning to start a family. Is this a widespread married people phenomenon – the equivalent of initiating the newbie who has just joined the club? I still don’t know whether I have a distinctly innocent and naïve face that begs for relationship advice, or if Alman seems like a particularly difficult husband who would require his wife be given pointers to manage her man. Do all female newlyweds get their stomachs patted in anticipation of the baby that will emerge there (hint: it won’t be anytime soon, and also I am quite uncomfortable with the fact that you are rubbing the lunch in my belly)? 

And am I the only one with the anti-climatic answer that my married life is pretty much the same as my non-married life, but better?

Because if I were to fulfil my Married Club duties and pass on my Married Person wisdom – that’s pretty much it. And if it’s anti-climatic, it’s because it’s pretty logical. From what I’ve seen (albeit from my limited trove of experience), marriage will just amplify the traits in your significant other and relationship. If it was good before marriage, it should be better with marriage. If it wasn’t good before, then dude, do not get married.

And what you expect to get out of marriage depends a lot on what you expect from marriage. People get married for different reasons – none of which are right or wrong; none of which I would judge, as long as both parties understand the full ramifications of what they are doing and understand that the institution, as it’s set up, is supposed to be for life. Are you marrying for financial security? Go on, girl (or less commonly but we live in a decreasingly stereotypical world: boy). Are you marrying for companionship? A baby daddy? Someone to take care of you? Or someone to take care of? Someone who will be your religious guide and guardian? Whatever reason it is that is floating the marriage boat of two sane adults – I sincerely don’t judge, and sincerely wish every relationship happiness.

Personally, I am extremely clear about why I wanted to get married, and why I did eventually get married. And I have been totally set on my reason since I was a child. (Honestly. Even my Barbie dolls used to marry for life, and for the same reason I did – “life”, for my Barbies, being until their plastic necks were accidentally broken, at which point their heartbroken Ken doll widower would weep at his deceased Barbie wife’s funeral while my sisters and I would sing sad songs at the ceremony, because even a toy funeral needs background music.) (On a totally unrelated point to this entire post, Barbies “die” on a frequent basis because their long necks were made of hard, brittle plastic, whereas the Ken dolls had stocky, and thus sturdy, plastic necks. In case you ever find yourself in need of a fact that could prove the toy doll industry is inherently misogynist.)

I have always been clear about marrying for totally soul-sucking, all-consuming love. I believe in grand plans like kismet and fate; I believe in the universe guiding two people who are meant to be together, to finally get their game on and BE together. I am a serial monogamist, and towards the later part of my dating life, really did view most of the guys I dated as potential husbands, not boyfriends (tip: if you, too, do this: don’t advertise it. It tends to freak people out, not least your unwitting boyfriend. Now that I’m married though, I can tell everyone and not care!).

But I am also an unromantic romantic. I don’t define love by grand gestures or orchestrated efforts or bouquets of flowers (though of course I appreciate these when they happen). Those are just incidental one-offs. I find more meaning in the small, everyday things that one person does for another every day; that if you total up, in its entirety, would equal a lifetime of loving gestures and tokens of affection. I find more meaning in mutual respect, and collaboration, and partnership; political, spiritual, moral and social views that fit with your own (but don’t necessarily have to be shared); kindness and open-mindedness and patience and intellectual curiosity (and love of life and exuberance and a sense of adventure are perks); and I know that these things may not sound particularly exciting, but to me, they are such a turn-on. These the markers of someone who I would want for my partner in life, assuming, of course, that they fulfill the first criteria, which is for me to be totally, crazy, head over heels in love with them.

I have been waiting for the better part of 20 years, pretty much since my Barbies started getting married, for someone to fulfill this not unimpressive and (objectively even I have to admit) pretty intimidating list. I married him last year. 

So the simple logic that I am masquerading as my nugget of marital wisdom is (the TL;DR, if you would like to skip to the end of this post and not have to read about Barbies): Find your right person, for your kind of marriage; and don’t marry unless it’s good. Because if it’s already good, it will get better.

Happy anniversary goose.

On Patriotism

 

So, in the run-up to the 56th year of Malaysia's independence from British colonial rule, that will be feted as it is every year with fanfare, flags, and generous displays of patriotism... I feel compelled to admit that I actually don't really feel patriotic. Like, in general. I am apatriotic. Not UN-patriotic (I don't go around tearing down Jalur Gemilangs and would never begrudge anyone wanting to celebrate their country's independence, or feeling great loyalty for their country), but A-patriotic: just lacking completely in whatever box that's in me that's supposed to contain things like love and loyalty for the country that has issued me a passport and calls me a citizen.

I just don't really identify with "my country". Why IS it "my country"? Because my one side of my family's ancestors lived here? Because I hold a Malaysian passport and identification card? And what is a country anyway? A shared culture and belief? Since Malaysia's not exactly homogenous, let's revise that: is it the multicultural experiences of many sets of ethnicities? Is it a unified government with a set of founding ideals that has a control over x amount of land up until this or that invisible border?

I know I could try harder to assimilate, and I always wonder whether, if I identified more with Malaysia, I'd feel something stronger for it. As it is now, I'm comfortably comfortable with my relationship with it. I mean I live here, I'm happy, and it's a place on a map that I have made my home for now. But do I love it? Umm. Not really, sorry. I mean I don't hate it either, but I'm just not able to feel something intensely emotional and intangible for something that, to me, is arbitrary and intangible.

A big part of this comes from not having grown up in Malaysia. I was born and raised in Brunei, which isn't that far (if Sabahans and Sarawakians can feel Malaysian - do they really though? Another topic for another day - you'd think a Malaysian living in Brunei could), but it always felt, mentally, so far away. It was this alien place we went to for Hari Raya every few years (and KL, with its hustle and bustle, is about as alien as you can get from sleepy little Brunei). 

There's language. I went to international schools, and my Malay is rusty (to say the least). I took local language exams and passed them (even the oral; and I had to talk about globalisation! In Malay! I sometimes wonder if it was rigged) in high school, but I find it difficult to speak in the vernacular. I don't think my thoughts in Malay, so I'm constantly translating in my head before I speak sentences that go beyond basic. (My lack of verbal linguistic ability is not specific to Malay but also covers Arabic, which I studied in university, and which I can read and write MILES better than I can speak.)

There's shared history and culture, or learning about it, or in my case, lack thereof. I didn't study Malaysian history or geography in school. It was only when I moved to KL to work that I appreciated that each state is different and had unique cultures and dialects, and that people generally identified themselves by their states (or neighbourhoods... I still don't think I can ever wrap my head around the concept of neighbourhood pride. When you live in Brunei and 90% of the people you meet live within an hour's drive of where you live, your neighbourhood becomes as much a distinguishing factor as the fact that you have two legs).

I don't know all the words to Negaraku, because I never had to learn it. (I only learned how to sing the Bruneian national anthem as a result of an experimental, miserable-at-first 2 years in a non-international school in Brunei that ended when I won a scholarship to another international school.)

And culturally (if I can define culture in hugely broad strokes as activities and behaviours): yes, there are things that I do that overlap with Malaysian culture (which is itself, again, a hugely broad definition). But there are also other things that I do, and believe, and eat, and drink, and say, that aren't really dictated by or even considered appropriate in my culture.

There's appearance. My mother is crazily mixed and has Arab, Chinese, Dutch, English and Malay ancestry, and as a result, has red hair and looks Caucasian (the first time I heard the term Mat Salleh was when someone asked me if my mother was one). And I am constantly mistaken for Persian, Arab, Chinese (this has happened many times though I'm not sure in what universe an Arab person could also look Chinese), and Eurasian. Sometimes I feel irrationally touchy when complete strangers, who otherwise have absolutely no interest in my life, partake in what I've found is a uniquely Malaysian preoccupation with race. (This is different to when friends, or people who are genuinely trying to get to know me, ask.) I try to get around it by saying I'm Malaysian, but very curious askers will not be deterred, and that response usually leads to "no, really, WHAT are you?". It makes me feel self-conscious and weird, because not only do I feel like I don't blend in, but now I'm being asked to explain WHY I look like I don't blend in. Obviously this isn't the intent of the asker, who has no idea that I reject the idea of race and unfortunately am sensitive about being made to feel like an outsider, but irrational as it may be, that's how I feel.

So... that is the long and convoluted explanation of why I don't really feel Malaysian, whatever being Malaysian means. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, and hope I don't - in this world of arbitrary borders and increasingly paranoid immigration laws, anyone who is a citizen of any nation can count themselves fortunate. But where do you find the roots of patriotism, and how do you begin to love a place more than any other specific place? A shared language or culture? Familiarity? Nostalgia? A sense of belonging?

Because generally, I just... am where I am. My home is where I make it, and I feel like I belong with the people I love. When I was growing up, it was where my family lived, and that happened to be Brunei. Now, it's where my husband is, because we're our own little family of two, and that happens to be Malaysia. The geographic location of the place is just an incidental fact. That's not what makes a place home, to me, and believing that a place is your home is, I think, why people would feel patriotic.

Whenever I think about my apatriotism, I always think of my favourite quote from The English Patient (which I'm going to paste here since I can't think of any other way to end what has become a pretty introspective and extremely meandering essay: sorry). The quote (and the book) is about nationality, countries, national identity, and resisting the idea of being owned by anything - a nation, a person:

We die containing the richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography – to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps. 

Deal Breakers

Because it's Monday, and I'm cranky, and haters are gonna hate, only in this instance I'm the hater.

1. Typing "d" or "e" for "the".

You give the gods of Not Writing Like a Lunatic TWO EXTRA LETTERS and they will grant you literacy, being taken seriously, and puppies and rainbows. TWO LETTERS. It will not kill you to type like you actually give a shit and have a brain.

Related: "dis" for "this" and other types of this abbrev-speak.

2. Referring to one's husband as "hubby".

This is a complete and utter (metaphorical) boner kill for me. It literally gives me the heebie jeebies. Like if you say it in front of me and happen to be observant: you will actually see a subtle cringe and uncontrollable shudder go through my body (subtle because I'm a POLITE hater, and I'm made to understand that vomiting in public isn't very lady-like).

If I were to promise my future husband anything, anything in the entire world and mean it with all my heart and every fibre of my being, other than to love him forever and all that of course, it would be to NEVER EVER call him hubby, even under pain of death.

Related: being called "babe" (by guys - fine if by girls). I have a weird allergic reaction to most pet names actually. If I was a guy and dating myself I would be terrified to call me anything other than my own name. Which is actually my second name. I don't go by my first name. Yes okay fine after typing all this out I realize I may have name issues.

3. Putting empty ice trays into the freezer.

Why? Why?! I just don't understand why anyone would want to expend the extra effort of putting the ice trays BACK in the freezer if they're empty. Surely it would be less straining just to leave them out on the counter so that someone else can undertake the Herculean effort of filling the trays with water and putting them into the freezer?!

4. Entitled Malay Male Douchebags.

This means you, sexist chauvinist with your logic-defying double standards about how it's fine for YOU to do certain things, but not okay for your demure, ayu wives to do it (polygamy, partying, happy endings etc). This means you, smarmy and perverted probably-UMNO-voting future-Datuk stereotype. You are the epitome of everything that is corrupt and wrong in Malaysian society, and you don't even know it. These people usually "bro" each other unironically and cheat on their wives.


This post was brought to you by menstrual hormones and Monday.

Iman's Dos and Don'ts to Stay Sane While Preparing for a Wedding

A helpful guide from a worry-prone bride

1. DO delegate as much as you can to your parents, if they offer the help, even if neither of them are in the country in which said wedding is taking place.

Because they love it. Or at least, my parents seem to love it. My dad waxed lyrical about different types of flowers the other day (I myself only know 3 types: roses, orchids and lillies) and CGI-drew my seating plan and outdoor tents. So I have a 3D computerized seating plan. I may be one of only a few people in the world who can boast this.

Since I graduated five years ago (goddammit I'm old), I have done the following by myself and with minimal to no assistance from my parents: moved to KL, went to job interviews, got job offers, decided which job to take (repeat process for new job), managed own money and opened own bank accounts, found own place to live, paid own bills, sorted out own car loan, paid own road tax and insurance (though I admit I almost gave up at this point to run crying back to my Dad that I needed his help to negotiate the paperwork). Basically I have been a fully fledged, fully independent adult since I was 22 years old.

But with this wedding... I have no idea whether my parents secretly miss babying me and feeling super involved in my Life Decision-Making, but they've pretty much become my de facto wedding planners/helicopter parents, and I am SUPER OKAY WITH THAT. They call the shots, deal with the vendors, scold people on my behalf. It's amazing. It's like being a kid again. Except, you know, it's for a wedding, where I'll become someone's wife.

2. DON'T diet.

I'm really just saying this because I'm not really dieting and feel the need to justify it. It's probably better to be healthy and energetic in the run-up to your wedding and not have your hair fall out from malnutrition. Right? (Say yes so I can justify not dieting say yes)

3. DO find (hopefully healthy) hobbies to partake in so you have more to your life than wedding planning.

Like Yoga! And reading! And... okay that's actually all I've been doing in the spare time that I have that is not being taken up by looking for vendors for various things and drawing up magnificent spreadsheets of budgets and invitation lists.

4. DON'T offer up invitations when you're out and about and feeling a tad too social.

Really. I wake up on Sunday mornings and have to try to remember which other random acquiantance I bumped into the night before who offered their congratulations, and just seemed so happy for me and goose that they procured an invitation to the wedding.

5. DON'T agree to be staffed on a transaction for which crunch time will be during your marriage leave.

Or if this happens, DO try to drop hints to everyone that you'll be pretty much MIA during your wedding month, because I have more than 40 days of leave, dammit, and I really think I deserve to take a time out now.

6. DO try to stagger your wedding spending so as not to feel, and subsequently freak out at, the giant gaping hole in your bank account where your hard-earned (mostly) money used to be.

7. DO try not to fight with your fiance.

Because most of your fights will be about silly things, like why he hasn't responded to your email asking which of the 5 cake designs you spent hours trawling the internet for and attached to the email he wants for the reception. Which to you is a completely valid concern into which much thought must be put, but to him is like... just cake. (There is really no such thing as "just cake", but I'm trying to be open-minded here and accept that people may have strange and radical views on this, that I may never understand.)

If you have fights about serious things though (religion, babies, post-marriage lifestyle, polygamy) run, don't walk, FAR FAR AWAY and don't look back.

8.  DO compromise on wedding decisions.

Like if your fiance REALLY doesn't want Taylor Swift's Love Story played at your wedding because he hates cheesy pop music and thinks that that song is the epitome of all that is wrong with how girls are conditioned to think about Love happening in the form of a White Knight Savior... it's okay. Even if you think that he is reading way too much into a POP SONG, it's okay. After all, you get to choose the cake. ALL THE CAKES.

9. DO give out your wedding cards early.

Because everyone and their mother (figuratively, although I'm sure if we're talking globally, many mothers are remarrying) seems to be getting married in these next few months. I still don't know if it was some supersonic message that only men between the ages of 27 and 33 can hear that told them to get married in 2012 or early 2013. I didn't hear any such message. Other than this super strong one from my ovaries, which I'm ignoring, I mean. (I'm kidding, Alman, don't freak out.)

A Reading List

Yeah I'm not even going to pretend that this is about food. Here I present a reading list, for no particular reason other than I felt like writing a list, and have read a lot of books.


1. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

In terms of quotability, I actually like Slaughterhouse Five more than Cat's Cradle ("Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" is one of the most beautiful lines in the entire world) but Cat's Cradle is so weird and dark and fantastic and unrelentingly critical that it's one of my favourite books. I love the incongruity of such a ridiculous plot (midgets and dictators and the bizarre religion called Bokononism and a man-made substance that's the equivalent of the atomic bomb) and the themes it deals with. Religion is lampooned, science is chewed out, and humanity is just totally and completely fucked, but it's all so funny and so easy to read that you sort of just go along with it and at the end of the book you're like wait.... what?
 
A Sample:

In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in his cosmic loneliness.

And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat, looked around, and spoke. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely.

"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.

"Certainly," said man.

"Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God.

And He went away.

2. Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales


Although I have a total soft spot for sappy, weepy movies (I once sobbed my way through an entire box of tissues watching E.T., and while The Notebook doesn't make me cry anymore, that's only because it lost its effect after the first 100 viewings) I REALLY CAN'T STAND sappy, cloying novels. I don't like Nicholas Sparks, I don't like Mitch Albom, and words cannot express how much I dislike Paulo Coelho, the seemingly inexhaustible generator of boring preachy books and annoying platitudes that everyone quotes on their twitter timelines and which make me want to unfollow them.
 
But Oscar Wilde is usually so witty and hilarious and cynical that he gets a free pass to write so unabashedly and earnestly about love, sacrifice and Christianity in his fairy tales. They're beautiful and tragic and heartwrenching, and there are no happy endings. There's a kind of poetic irony in how someone deemed morally corrupt by the society in which he lived could write something so pure. Take that, homophobes! See the beauty the gay man can create!
 
And though it's not one of his fairy tales, a special mention for the preface to Dorian Gray. I quoted the shit of out of that preface when I was writing my millions of college application essays and millions of drafts of my UCAS personal statement:

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Every time I read it I remember what it was like to be young and idealistic, sitting in front of a desktop computer at 3 in the morning, trying so hard to inject my worthiness-to-attend-your-noble-institution into one piece of paper. It seemed like the most courageous thing to my 18 year old self to want to dive under the surface, get up close and personal with the symbol, and be totally unafraid to learn the truth.
 
A Sample:

"Dear little Swallow," said the Prince, "you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my city, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there."

So the Swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets. Under the archway of a bridge two little boys were lying in one another's arms to try and keep themselves warm. "How hungry we are!" they said. "You must not lie here," shouted the Watchman, and they wandered out into the rain.

3. The Lover's Dictionary by David Leviathan

Love! One of my favourite literary topics ever! But not a lot of people can write about love without making me want to throw up. I have a limited tolerance of romantical bullshit, which I would like to think comes from the fact that although I am a Disney Cartoon kid and have been weaned on stories of charming princes and true love and happily-ever-afters, I don't think love is just the happily-ever-after, or the grand gestures or rainbows and roses and kittens and babies that accompany it. It's the reality of the relationship, which can be at times wonderful and terrible and amazing and annoying, but is always the ups AND downs and little things AND huge milestones.
 
The Lover's Dictionary totally nailed what love is. Little snapshots of an everyday relationship defined in every day terms, and mixed up and in alphabetical and not chronological order. I doggy-eared pretty much every definition in it. It's way more my kind of romantic than any sonnet.
 
A Sample:

Lover, n.

Oh, how I hated this word. So pretentious, like it was always being translated from the French. The tint and taint of illicit, illegitimate affections. Dictionary meaning: a person having a love affair. Impermanent. Unfamilial. Inextricably linked to sex.

I have never wanted a lover. In order to have a lover, I must go back to the root of the word. For I have never wanted a lover, but I have always wanted to love, and to be loved.

There is no word for the recipient of the love. There is only a word for the giver. There is the assumption that lovers come in pairs.

When I say, Be my lover, I don't mean, Let's have an affair. I don't mean, Sleep with me. I don't mean, Be my secret.

I want us to go back down to that root.

I want you to be the one who loves me.

I want to be the one who loves you.

4. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
 
So it's not exactly original to include To Kill a Mockingbird on a list of favourite books: it's required grade school reading for most people, but I never read it as part of any curriculum, I never dissected it to pieces in a classroom, and I never learned about racial politics in the Southern US, so when I finished it, I remember feeling punched in the gut from the enormity of it all.

It was probably the first book I'd read that dealt with a serious topic. I was old enough to vaguely know about racism, but not old enough to have recognized it in my life or to have read about it. And I felt so enraged with the injustice of what happened to Tom Robinson, so disappointed with the townspeople, and so humbled that Boo Radley, who had been judged unfairly throughout the book, was one of its heroes. Like most bookworms, I learned about life through books - I re-read this one to remember what it was like to be surprised by injustice. 
 
A Sample:

Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

5. The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer
 
Okay, so the premise is almost like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but the author said he didn't know that at the time (which I actually do believe, because the Benjamin Button was a short story that really only blew up after Hollywood turned it into a movie), and I didn't know it at the time either. And even though the premise is so original, it really isn't the reason I like this book: it's because Andrew Sean Greer writes beauuuutiful prose. It's poetic and languid and haunting and poignant. Of course it helps that he's talking about unrequited love and all that, but really he could writing about a fly, and if he did it in the same style, it'd still be one of my favourite books.
 
A Sample:

It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing, to waste one's life for love.

6. The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Also gorgeous prose. I analysed the movie and read the book for an English literature class that was cross-referenced as a film class AND a feminist studies class (it was like the trifecta of interesting academic subjects) and somewhere between the fifth attempt to play and pause a speech in the movie at the right moment so I could write about the scene in my mid-term essay and the middle of the book, I fell in love. This book is beautiful.

A Sample:

We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so.

7. This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper  
Reminiscent of Nick Hornby, who writes classic Guy's Guy literature, but better. Also straddles the line between writing like a Bro and being sensitive and hilarious, which ultimately makes him not a Bro.

I bought this in an airport in Singapore and read it on a flight back to KL. It's about dysfunctional families and broken relationships and mid-life crises, which speaks to me more than it should considering my family is pretty vanilla, my relationship is great and I'm (hopefully) a decade or more away from a mid-life crisis, and I don't know if it was the hormones or the exhaustion or missing Alman or Tropper's writing but I bawled like a baby on the plane reading it, which is really one of my major criteria for whether a book speaks to me or not. Does it makes me blubber? If yes, proceed to Go and collect $200.
 
A Sample:
 
Phillip is the Paul McCartney of our family: better-looking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pictures, and occasionally rumored to be dead.




8. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Nicole Krauss's style is similar to her husband's (Jonathan Safran Foer) (like an eerie literary equivalent of when couples who have been going for too long start to look alike), but I don't like Foer and I like Krauss, primarily because of this book, and its main characters, a lonely old Jewish man and a precocious young Jewish girl. It makes me think about growing old, and what happens after the love of your life has died, and families, and legacies, which inevitably leads to feeling really melancholy and hugging Alman a lot.

A Sample:

2. WHAT I AM NOT
My brother and I used to play a game. I'd point to a chair. "THIS IS NOT A CHAIR," I'd say. Bird would point to the table. "THIS IS NOT A TABLE." "THIS IS NOT A WALL," I'd say. "THAT IS NOT A CEILING." We'd go on like that. "IT IS NOT RAINING OUT." "MY SHOE IS NOT UNTIED!" Bird would yell. I'd point to my elbow. "THIS IS NOT A SCRAPE." Bird would lift his knee. "THIS IS ALSO NOT A SCRAPE!" "THAT IS NOT A KETTLE!" "NOT A CUP!" "NOT A SPOON!" "NOT DIRTY DISHES!" We denied whole rooms, years, weathers. Once, at the peak of our shouting, Bird took a deep breath. At the top of his lungs, he shrieked: "I! HAVE NOT! BEEN! UNHAPPY! MY WHOLE! LIFE!" "But you're only seven," I said.

9. Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

I don't dislike any of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, but THIS is my favourite. It's basically all my favourite ingredients in one book: the City Watch (justice, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, right and wrong, black and white), feminism, class-ism and racism (which is actually specie-ism in the novel, but you can't fool me Mr Pratchett, I can see what you did there!), religion, faith and atheism, freedom and liberty, and lots and LOTS of humour. Oh, and its a murder mystery too.

And if you just read the synopsis - you won't even anticipate any of this. And that is why he is a genius and I spent the better part of an entire year reading all his books.
 
A Sample:

Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw.
It was its tendency to bend at the knees.

10. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
 
I saved the best for last: this is THE most hilariously insightful book in the world. And I'm not even exaggerating. Even though I tend towards hyperbole. 

I remember the first time I picked it up off the library shelf at school, and how tickled I was when I read the first page, which says that the planet Earth "has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."
 
It wasn't telling me anything that I didn't already know, but it was still like an imaginary cartoon lightbulb switched on above my head. That is totally true! We ARE generally unhappy! And it IS odd that it's all because of paper! And with this re-epiphany came the idea of money being unhappy, which was so ridiculous it made me laugh out loud. So basically Douglas Adams is the master of looking at life from a different perspective, and making you laugh about it, and for that I credit him some of qualities that I value most in myself (I mean I sure hope they're actually there in me somewhere or I've been living a deluded little life): my open-mindedness, my tendency to question everything, and my sense of humour.
 
It has come to the point where I have actually memorised entire portions of the book, and I am STILL so tickled by it.
 
A Sample:
 
The history of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.
For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?

The Ramadhan List

Things I Have Been Occupying Myself With During Ramadhan In a Desperate and Increasingly Futile Attempt to Not Think About Food During the Day

1. Books

I now have four books left before I finish Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (which was also my goal for 2012, so I am apparently ahead of schedule on this). 

But what will I do after that?! What if he passes away soon (I'm not being unrealistically morbid, he has Alzheimers and strongly supports assisted suicide) and I belatedly realise that I should have taken my time reading them instead of whizzing through like a madwoman on a mission? What if I never read another good book again?!

There is something strangely comforting about always knowing what the step (book) in your journey (book list) is. It's the kind of comfort that you take for granted right up until you graduate college and realize you have no idea what to do next. 

1a) Examples Why I Will Miss Terry Pratchett:

• “Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.” 
• “Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.” 
• “There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?"
• “Mr Horsefry was a youngish man, not simply running to fat but vaulting, leaping and diving towards obesity. He had acquired at thirty an impressive selection of chins, and now they wobbled with angry pride.*  

*It is wrong to judge by appearances. Despite his expression, which was that of a piglet having a bright idea, and his mode of speech, which might put you in mind of a small, breathless, neurotic but ridiculously expensive dog, Mr Horsefry might well have been a kind, generous and pious man. In the same way, the man climbing out of your window in a stripy jumper, a mask and a great hurry might merely be lost on the way to a fancy-dress party, and the man in the wig and robes at the focus of the courtroom might only be a transvestite who wandered in out of the rain. Snap judgements can be so unfair.”

Just reading random quotes like that makes me want to roll around the floor being highly amused, if not laughing.

2. Doing Research For My New Apartment &
3. Looking At Recipes Online

This is going to sound crazy, but for a good few months I completely and totally forgot that getting married would also mean living with Alman (like JUST with! Only us! No housemates!) in a new apartment. Which also means that I can decorate the entire house, as opposed to just one room! That I will truly be lord and master of my own kitchen, the part of the house that Alman probably cares the least about decorating but that I care about the most (along with the bedrooms, bathrooms, living room and dining room)! It means I can have a ginormous wardrobe and dressing area, and I will magically become super organized with my clothing and various accessories that are currently strewn about my bedroom in various boxes, nooks, crannies and piles! I will magically become super diligent about doing dishes, will colour coordinate my currently-not-bought-yet kitchenware, and finally put up my cupcake posters in the kitchen! This almost more exciting than doing honeymoon research, which I got bored of after a while.

I also seem to be addicted to looking at recipes online. Everything looks amazing when you're hungry, and even the most minutely detailed complicated recipes seem like they would be worth the effort when they probably aren't to a normal, non-starving food-crazed person.

If you are also so inclined to look at photos of furniture and food, I recommend Apartment 24

4. Deciding Where to Break Fast

Somewhat related to #3. Entails researching restaurants online and storing their phone numbers on my berry so I can make quick calls to reserve tables in case of emergencies. For someone who doesn't plan dinner ahead during the rest of the year, this behaviour is highly unusual and manifests only during this month.

5. Writing On This Blog

I really should get back to work now.

Too Much Information

I had to re-edit a personal profile that will be flashed up on our internal work network for everyone in my increasingly large company to see, and our HR department wanted me to add in my personal interests/hobbies. Notwithstanding that it’s not anyone’s goddamn business what I do in my free time… I feel like a little put out my profile sounded totally boring. I couldn't think of anything to write other than my “interests include reading and baking.”

It doesn’t really capture the fact that when I say my interests include reading, I really mean that one of my life goals is to own a library like the one The Beast gifted Belle with in Beauty and the Beast (that is totally the way to make me love a dude forever, FYI, even if he has hair all over his face and claws for fingers), and bookcase stairs make me swoon, and that I feel disoriented and despair of life in general when I don’t have a book to finish reading (and when I start reading a book I feel like I have a goal and sense of purpose again). And when it says my interests include baking, it doesn’t really capture the fact that I actually just like making cakes and cookies, but that I don’t really eat my own stuff and instead pawn them off to other people as little tokens of affection because I am like retardedly emotionally unexpressive. And that I really enjoy eating more than baking. And that I don't really have any other sustained hobbies because I have a habit of starting things and then not really finishing them, even though they're good for me (like running and swimming) and even though I may love it (like yoga). Actually these failed hobbies mainly relate to exercise, mainly because it's difficult to read while exercising (I've tried, and my book and I almost flew off the treadmill).

But then again do I really need people at work to know this about me? Probably not. I’d rather they think I was boring.