Skip to main content

Thor Kah Hoong's Scattered Brain.

Thor Kah Hoong's back with a desultory article about... er... well, lots of random stuff. And a poem about Hemingway. Okay okay I admit it! I have no idea what he's on about half the time!
Labels:

Comments

  1. Lydia Teh18/7/06 10:41 am

    That makes two of us, Ted. I gave up reading the article halfway as I got lost. Most of the time his articles are too "brainy" for me and I'm just an average Star reader, as Sharon might say.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ted Mahsun18/7/06 11:18 am

    Ha ha! Funny isn't it? But somehow, I still find his articles wonderful to read. Must be the way he strings words together.

    ReplyDelete
  3. bibliobibuli18/7/06 4:57 pm

    sometimes his articles are wonderful - one or two have been classic (his crit of harmony silk factory and petr ho davies short stories) mostly they are a total ramble and offputting for most star readers ...

    it seems to be a column about "look how clever i am to have picked up these books you've never heard of" when it should be a column about "look guys, you are going to enjoy this and this ..."

    it's a wasted opportunity to draw in potential readers and i feel quite cross about it at a time when reading needs all the convincing advocates it can get ...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ted Mahsun18/7/06 5:16 pm

    I enjoyed his review of tash aw's book very much but did not read the other one you mentioned.

    You are right that the column seems like a show-off soapbox for him but I've come to accept that maybe all this show-offiness is an eccentricity of small bookstore owners :D

    I don't mind it in particular. When there's potential readers to convince, at least there's Daphne Lee and all those other book writers at the Star, not to mention you, and Lydia.

    ReplyDelete
  5. bibliobibuli18/7/06 9:27 pm

    ted - there's not enough of us writing about books and there's not enough space in the papers

    which is why your voice in cyberspace is a very welcome one

    i don't mind thor's cumudgeonly tone - in fact i like it myself - but perlease focus!!!

    Here's the Peter Ho Davies article

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ted Mahsun18/7/06 9:58 pm

    Haha! "Curmudgeonly" is a nice word to describe Thor's ramblings!

    Thanks for the link.

    BTW, Sharon, I emailed you just a while ago and I'm wondering if you got it... or whether it fell into your inbox's black hole...

    ReplyDelete
  7. Lydia Teh19/7/06 10:36 am

    Sharon, I agree with your take on Thor's selection of books : most of them I've never heard of.

    Ted, 'eccentricity of small bookstore owners' - I don't personally know any of these folks but you may have a point there.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm going to Clarion West!

So yeah! I'm going to Clarion West this year! If you didn't know, Clarion West is a really awesome science fiction and fantasy writing workshop that runs for six weeks in summer every year at Seattle and is usually taught by a faculty of award-winning authors and editors. Many students who attend this workshop also go on to have illustrious writing careers of their own too. I've been meaning to attend this workshop (or its sister workshop, Clarion UCSD, which is the original Clarion workshop but runs in San Diego around the same time) for years now but never had the courage to apply. Many reasons as to why: didn't think I'd have money for the most part, didn't think I was good enough, didn't think I could leave work long enough, didn't think I could leave family behind, etc. But something sparked inside of me late last year. I felt I should at least give it a go this time round. So I did. They requested a sample of my best work and an applicatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

REVIEW: Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami.

UPDATE: My Wind/Pinball review can be found here . ISBN: n/a Publisher: n/a Paperback: 160 pages In Murakami fan circles, simply owning a copy of Pinball, 1973 is a mark of hardcore-ness. Like Hear the Wind Sing before it, Haruki Murakami does not allow English translations of Pinball, 1973 to be published outside of Japan. Back in the 80s, Alfred Birnbaum translated it into English and Kodansha published it as a novel for Japanese students who wanted to improve their English. While the English edition of Hear the Wind Sing continues to be reprinted and sold in Japan (and available for a moderate sum via eBay, see my review ), Kodansha stopped its reprint runs of the English edition of Pinball, 1973 and has now become a collector's item, fetching vast amounts of money on auction sites and reseller stores. Last time I checked, the cheapest copy went for USD$2500. Of course, Murakami addicts or the curious can always download a less than legal PDF of the book, painst...
18 comments
Read more

Hitting 1000.

Last night Sharon quoted Raman of having said to writers when they bring him their manuscripts for publishing, "How many books have you read? Have you read a thousand books? If not, get out and go read a thousand books, then come back with your manuscript." His point being, you've got to have read a lot if you want to be a writer. And I thought to myself, a thousand books isn't so bad. I've probably read more. Er...Wrong. After some quick calculations, we determined that if a person read a book per week, it would take around 20 years to reach a thousand. I'm a slow reader. I'm only 25. There's no way I've read 1000 books my whole life! When I got home I counted the books in my house. I estimate I own around 300 books, probably another 300 left at my parents's house. That's only around 600 books that I own... and a lot less that I've read! So with that number in mind, I have resolved to start keeping track of my book reading. I need to...
30 comments
Read more