An Affair with a Book Fair

I am a bad shopper. For clothes. I don't know the art of comparing and trying and testing and feeling the materials or even checking out details of the clothings to decide if I should fall in love with it or not.

I don't know how to shop for food or to buy vegetables and meat. I don't have the patience to do so.

But I have patience when it comes to buying DVDs. Or novels.

Piazza, beside Penang Sunshine Square, held a book fair for Times Bookshop recently. There were books sold 3 for RM10, 3 for RM20 and new books were sold at 30% discount.

When I looked at the rows of books, poorly stashed up on the tables for book-discount worshippers to oogle over, I decided to go for gold. I spent 2 hours plus, and almost broke my neck, reading the book titles one by one, to find familiar titles and authors.

Mind you, this happened on the day when I swore in the morning I would not be buying any more books soon.

Why?

Because I have been a tramp when it came to buying books lately.

I took advantage of HSBC's 35% discount on books bought in ACMAMALL dot com. This, in fact, happened several weeks after I bought my first sum of novels from ACMAMALL. Since that delivery is only free after a purchase of RM200, I did buy that much.

And then, there was this factor that my Godbrother went to USA, and he was able to get me books I am not able to get in Malaysia. So, I bought again, through him, books I ordered through Amazon dot com.

And although I swore that morning, a discount like that was too tempting to resist. So, I bought myself three more books.

I really need a long vacation to finish all these books. ;p

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows

I kept telling myself that sometimes we need to do something crazy.. something stupid. Not something bad like any violent act.. but you know.. like hiking up the hill at 4am. Or meditate whole day. In fact, once I was invited to meditate the whole night into the next morning. Something like this... something crazy.

I still remember queuing up for Harry Potter's last book. I was eager to know the conclusion. I needed to know if the unstable, though talented, JK Rowling was going to do something bizarre like writing off the one character that had made her a billionaire, just because I suspected she felt guilty for the fame Harry Potter received and not Neville Longbottom.

Here is the diary of the day Harry Potter Book 7 was released.

Lined up for my book at 6.40am, and I was already customer no.40. To fend talkative people who would blab out the spoiler, I blasted my MP3 out loud - letting Rihanna and her eh eh ella ella Umbrella to drown the voices around. No problem even at the cashier when I could pick up my order at Borders. And then, queued up for my free breakfast at Starbucks. And then, I saw it - this young girl, who sat down on an empty chair, already reading, like others in Starbucks. But she was starting with the last pages instead of the first chapter. Freak!! I scrambled. Breakfast or no breakfast, I was not about to let anyone tell me the ending.

I did not avoid internet and switching on tv for nothing, just in case any news blurted out the ending.

Skipped lunch. Skipped dinner. Did my reading from 8 am and finished the whole Harry Potter Book 7 at 1030pm. Phew!

Sophie's Choice - She's Back

I was not planning to blog anything like this. My blog is new - I thought of only blogging about silly things that had happened - to me, around me, on me and about me. You know - silly me, silly job, silly management, stupid management and crazy ex-colleagues. (It's never safe to blog about current colleagues. They read.)

I am a slow reader but I am a fan of Sophie Kinsella's work. I had fallen in love with Kinsella since I got my first copy of Shopaholic. Since then, I became a collector-a-holic for anything Kinsella, minus her Madeline Wickham's books. I am still puzzled about the need to release books under two names, but this is not a blog on that. This is a blog on my new FAVOURITE book - Twenties Girl.
Lara's boyfriend has just dumped her, without any explanation. Her business partner, Natalie, went away for a holiday and never came back. She's stuck with a job title as a small headhunter business parter, but she has no clue on how to be a headhunter. Her uncle is the rich Bill Lington, who owns chains of coffee cafes and has a snobbish wife and a spoilt daughter. Lara's parents are nice, but they are too worried about her condition since the boyfriend break-up thing. Her sister is enjoying her suffering.

Lara's luck takes a turn when she is the only one in her great aunt's funeral who is able to see her great aunt's ghost - a 23 year old ghost, who is looking for her missing necklace. And since that Lara is the only one who can see her, young-looking great aunt Sadie pesters Lara into helping her.

I was giving up a little on Sophie (If you are reading this, Sophie, which I doubt you would, 'coz you are so busy... but if you are, uhm, I'm lying.). I did not buy Domestic Goddess. I mean, I bought the book, but I did not accept the idea. I mean, a business woman knows how to cook a good meal after one lesson? Hell, I still burn fried eggs after so many years of cooking. Remember Me? is a nice book, but it is nothing like Shopaholic series (minus the one with the sister thing - what was that all about??) and Can You Keep a Secret? I am a major fan of these two. Remember Me? failed to impress me because it painted the female lead as a bad person. And I did not see any reason to like the male too.

But Twenties Girl brings back the Kinsella I have learned to love. It is a funny book. Sometimes, as I read along the book, I wondered of the necessity to delay getting-to-the-point thing, but Kinsella has the magic to fit the whole story nicely. I felt for Josh and Lara. Because Kinsella wrote it such a way. I did not feel for Josh and Lara. Because Kinsella wrote it such a way. I felt for Lara and Ed. Again, because Kinsella told me so, in the book. It was delightful.

I read slow. But I could not get the book off my hand. I finished reading it within 2 days, minus the office hours. I was addicted. There were moments I laughed out loud (now I really know what LOL is really about) that I did not even care if my neighbours would think I was crazy. Those were the moments I could believe that only Sophie Kinsella's crazy and funny female lead characters are capable of doing.

It is a good book. That is why I actually decide to blog about it. And it makes me falling in love again with Kinsella, and make me proud that I am a fan of hers. Gosh, if only I can read another new work from her now. :D