Posted on 3 March 2007 @ 18:37 in Reading
MPH is Malaysia’s own home-grown bookstore, equivalent to Borders in the States, Chapters in Canada and Waterstone’s in England.
Every once in a while, MPH holds warehouse sales (as do other bookstores such as Popular, Times and Payless). There’s one going on right now, and it lives up to the name “warehouse sale” as it is literally located inside a warehouse.
I went this morning, and came away with the following books:
As I was Passing I and II by Adibah Amin
The Glass Palace and The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by YiYun Li
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
It’s ages since I’ve seen paperbacks priced in the 20s. The only chance to buy books that cheap is through Borders’ 3 for 2 offers. And hardbacks for less than 40? That would be the YiYun Li book, at RM35.00.
I’ve dipped into The Alchemist and fallen in love.
Ms Bookaholic Sharon was at the sale yesterday, and wrote about parking being a nightmare. But I didn’t have any problem finding a parking space. I have access to the biggest parking secret in that neighbourhood – a car wash on the premises of a church across from the sale. The car wash is the secret, but the church is not. There are lots of parking spaces on the premises, but it’s private, not open to anyone but people going to the church, and customers of the car wash. I belong to the latter category.
After I’d made my purchases, and returned to the cool wifi-enabled waiting room at the car wash, I heard some funny tales about the public trying to get into the church premises to park their cars. The funniest was of the woman who told the guard and his immediate superior (on duty today) that she was attending a meeting in church. They stood by as she gathered her stuff to watch and make sure she went in the direction of the church. She dithered, and after a while, got back into her car to drive off. Asked the guard’s immediate superior of this woman: “But I thought you said you were attending a meeting in church?” No answer, she ignored the question and drove off.
I did think of telling friends where to park while they went to the warehouse sale, and have their cars washed at the same time. However, the car wash is usually very busy on Saturdays so I thought it might not be able to handle the extra business. But this Saturday of all Saturdays, the car wash didn’t have much business (its regulars must still be away for the tail-end of Chinese New Year) so it was a missed opportunity for the extra business, and hassle-free parking for my friends.
But now you know where to park and get your car washed during the next MPH warehouse sale … provided it’s held in the same warehouse. Oh, the name of the church is Glad Tidings.
Related Posts:
The Bibliobibuli’s Warehouse Wonderland
Lydia Teh’s MPH Warehouse Sale
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Posted on 17 January 2007 @ 17:03 in Reading, Writing
“Though it’s unlikely you’ll write something nobody has ever heard of, the way you have a chance to compete is in the way you say it.”
Amy Hempel
The Paris Review, Issue 166, Summer 2003
Although it only happened today, I cannot remember how I came upon Jonathan Raban’s review of The Paris Review Interviews Volume 1 in the 13 January 2007 issue of The Guardian. But from there, I went to The Paris Review’s web site, zoomed in on the Interviews section and came upon the above gem by Amy Hempel.
The Interview Index is impressive, going back more than half a century to the 1950s, and includes the likes of Chinua Achebe, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Joyce Cary, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Joseph Heller, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, Beryl Bainbridge, Paul Auster and yes, Amy Hempel whose little gem above caught my eye in the short time I spent browsing that section.
Most of the interviews featured are excerpts of the originals printed in their respective issues, but there are some complete interviews available for download in PDF format. And – get this – images of manuscript pages. Priceless.
I will be going back for a longer read later on.
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Posted on 31 December 2006 @ 13:06 in Reading
This must be the longest book sale ever. More than a month. I went to the shop near the beginning of the sale and wasn’t too impressed. I went again yesterday. Still not too impressed.
On my way to the supermarket downstairs, I found the real location of the sale. Triple duh, Chet
The one I’d been going to is the proper bookshop. The one with the sale is located where the book section of Parkson used to be. And man, the selection of novels in the proper sale. Wonderful trade paperbacks going for RM12.00 each.
I was impressed.
I got me a few books, including one each by Annie Proulx, Jeanette Winterson, and Isabel Allende. Also one by the former chef for Mick Jagger. I don’t remember the chef’s name, but the book is called The Taste of Honey, and it’s fiction about a restaurant on the island of Crete.
The most valued purchase from the sale yesterday is Gene Wilder’s autobiography, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art. He doesn’t write it like an autobiography; instead, he presents only the events in his life that mean something to him (life-changing?), and he presents them through sessions with his therapist.
I love Gene Wilder’s film work. I love, too, that the late Gilda Radner was married to him. She was the funny woman from Saturday Night Live who succumbed to cancer in the late 1980s. There was one sketch she did about an old lady who said she didn’t understand how there could be too much “violins” on air. Go figure.
I’ve started reading Kiss Me Like a Stranger. I’m also reading When Red Is Black, a Chinese mystery about the murder of the author of a book banned in China. The book’s in English but set in China, with Chinese characters, and written by a Chinese, Qiu Xiaolong. That’s why it’s a Chinese mystery.
And I just finished reading Oracle Night by Paul Auster. Probably the best book read all year. But then, there was no competition – all my other 2006 reads were either work-related or light fiction. No, wait. Those two books by J A Jance that I read cannot be considered light reads, but made subtle statements – Exit Wounds about domestic abuse leading to certain obsessions later on (in the case of the book, it was about animal hoarding), and Edge of Evil about a television presenter sacked for no longer being young who fought back.
Oh, I’ve digressed … But so much good reading waiting for me in 2007!
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Posted on 12 October 2006 @ 22:06 in Reading, Writing
I discovered this book through either the Moleskinerie or Notebookism site, and immediately set about looking for a copy. It’s one of those rare, out-of-print books so I headed straight to my favourite rare book site, Alibris, found what I wanted and ordered a copy. That was more than a month ago. I almost thought it got lost on its way to me, but this evening, arriving at my sister’s, I found a brown envelope waiting for me. Yay! My copy of Howard Junker’s The Writer’s Notebook is here.
What drew me to the book is not just the opportunity to read about how writers work, but also to see pictures of actual pages from their journals. The book was mentioned in a discussion about contemporary obsession with how we write, or rather what we write with. This is one of many discussions at the NaNoWriMo site’s NaNo Technology discussion forum – participants discussing what they plan to write their NaNovels with. I, of course, am an active participant, telling the others about my wonderful AlphaSmart Dana. But I digress …
A total of 16 writers are featured in Junker’s book. I am only familiar with five of them – Kathy Acker, Dorothy Allison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Martin Cruz Smith and Gary Snyder. I read the Dorothy Allison article while waiting for dinner at my sister’s, and then started reading Maxine Hong Kingston’s on the way home – literally reading it while waiting for the lift at my apartment block and even in it, too.
I love seeing pictures of how writers work. A while back, I found and bought a copy of The Writer’s Desk – also from good old Alibris.
I only wish reading about how and where writers work, I am inspired to write better, or at least to write more.
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Posted on 11 August 2006 @ 07:17 in Reading
When I moved to my own place early this year, I packed away all my books, and had one box labelled with the name of a book cafe in the new neighbourhood. The plan was to give that box of books to the cafe because the place offers a couple of shelves of books for patrons to read while waiting for their food or even while just hanging out there (that’s why it’s called a book cafe).
Well, that box of books is still with me, and I’m rethinking the earlier plan. What I’d like to do instead is to give away the books for a small donation to my favourite charity. I’ll need to think about this more. Stay tuned for more details.
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