Less Book-Buying For Now.

Seeing as my country's government sees fit that me and wife starve to death, I don't think I will be buying more books in the near future.

We were amongst the crazy people stuck in last night's crazy jam and spent an hour and half in the car in what usually is a five minute journey to the local petrol pump.

Government says that they'll be reviewing the petrol price again next month. Not looking forward to going through that crazy rush to the pump again. Maybe next time I'll just resign myself and sit at home while muttering how cruel our PM is. Or read a good book. Or both.

Anyway it all boils down to having less money to spend on books. Which makes me sad.

For those curious, I am currently reading:

Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses (interesting at first, but gets a bit tedious towards the end. Surprisingly I like the parts with Mahound more...I guess that might reflect something in me?)
Jorge Luis Borges's Ficciones (very, very good; but not something to read in the LRT in the mornings...it's too heavy. His writing I mean, not the book. The book is light and easy to carry around.)
Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita (I had grown a little bored with Satanic Verses so I wanted to read something different...and I picked this up. I was reminded what irony was when I discovered that this had been the inspiration for Satanic Verses. It's still a good book though but maybe I will try to pick up a Murakami or an SF book if I want something totally different.)

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REVIEW: Confessions of an Old Boy by Kam Raslan

Kam Raslan's right. In the preface for his new book, Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato' Hamid Adventures he writes that we've known Dato' Hamid all our lives. Seeing as my own dad is an old boy of MCKK, the people I get to meet when he drags me to an Old Boy function and the people he tells me of, reflect the characters found in Kam's book. It really does feel like I've known Dato' Hamid all my life. Dato' Hamid is a civil servant of the Tunku Abdul Rahman generation. He is the sort of person you rarely see nowadays, a fine example of the anachronistic Malay. This generation, groomed in the ways of the colonial British would be out of place not just in 21st century Malaysia, but in Britain too. And yet, Dato' Hamid, in all his snobbishness and patronising ways, is essentially a Malaysian. Without people like him, our country would probably never exist at all. At least not like we know it now. I'm glad that Kam Raslan decided to capture this ...

Lesson: Commemorative Covers are Lame.

Well, I got the first day cover that commemorates the 35th anniversary of the establishment diplomatic relations between China and Malaysia that I mentioned a couple of posts ago. Except that it's not a first day cover, it's a commemorative cover, which is a slightly different beast. I guess I should read the news article properly next time! The difference between the two is that first day covers are specially-designed envelopes stuck on with specially-designed stamps, and marked with a specially-designed postmark. A commemorative cover is a specially-designed envelope... and that's it. All in all, it's an unremarkable affair, especially if you're used to well-designed first day covers (not that Malaysian first day covers are well-designed... but I digress). Oh sure, a commemorative cover has a stamp printed right on to it but that's just like an overglorified aerogramme. Lame. On the whole, what a disappointment. I haven't been collecting first day cover...

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...

Ted Mahsun

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