Reading List - part 2
I finally made it to the neighbourhood library. I must say I am impressed with the Marine Parade Community Club (so much more of Singapore I have not discovered).
The library has five floors but it is serba tak lengkap (Malay: incomplete/ incomprehensive) in its collection. I was looking for Hemingway and they don’t carry his books. I have to go to the national library branch at Bishan! Too late, paid $10 for membership- might as well make full use of it for the rest of the time I am going to be here.
You could only borrow four books each time and I did (kiasuism alert).
What to do when you have rows and rows of books and do not know where to start. I wished Carol or Joyce were around.
So I found my way to rack MA and my eyes caught this book called Samarkand, by Amin Maalouf, a Lebanese. It was about a man who was accused of misinterpreting the Quran and was jailed but the judge instead, gave him a book with empty pages to pen his thoughts for the latter’s private audience.
I've not read stories that are open about Islam and of being a Muslim. That intrigued me. However, Amin’s best book was supposed to be The Rock of Tanios, about a Lebanese boy who lived in the mountains.
The book started with this: In our village, the rocks have names.
How can I not want to read on? Samarkand will have to wait. Amin has this other book that also captured my interest. It is called The First Century After Beatrice and the story is about the discovery of a native seed that could help bring about the birth of baby boys only. The synopsis alluded to how the scientist who discovered it wrestles with the possible commercialization of this seed and how the world would tilt at the edge of catastrophe thus.
Mmmm… let’s see if this first book makes good reading. The few books I’ve read translated from French have been quite enjoyable.
My second and third books were also from rack MA (once your eyes stop roving, they appreciate what is around the focus point).
Book No.2 : The Noodle Maker by Ma Jian, translated from Chinese.
Ma apparently wrote the award winning Red Dust (which I could not locate). I didn’t even read the synopsis because Ma Jian was touted the Chinese Kundera. That is, Milan Kundera the Czech communist aspirant who wrote the Unbearable Lightness of Being (which was quite unbearable).
Joyce said I should have started with Kundera’s The Story of Laughter and Forgetting, which I latter borrowed and never finished because it was also unbearably bleak. I believe I also could not fully appreciate his literature because of the yawning gap between the culture his protagonists, the zeitgeist of their time, and mine.
Still, I am quite keen to give Ma’s Noodle Maker a chance.
Book No.3 : Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith (I have no idea why he is put under MA).
If you think it is a book on Portuguese grammar then you don’t know me at all. It’s part of a trilogy and I was first caught by the third book entitled At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances. The second book is called The Finer Point of Sausage Dogs. It would really irritate me not to start with the first book.
Book No.4 : Love, Life and Linguine by Melissa Jacobs (not from MA, just thought I’d let you know).
It’s supposed to be light and funny. That's all that needs to be said when you are on to your fourth book! I need variety in my readings or I WILL turn into Plain Jane surely.
C’est tout!
