The week ... it begins again ...

A lot of people have seen the Grumpy Cat. It's kinda emblematic of how Mondays make you feel. See?

 

The Grumpy Cat inspires memes like ...

 But how do you Disney-fy such a misanthropic critter? Eric Proctor did it.

Awesome, no?

The Right to Bare Arms (is better than to Bear Arms).

Die Trying by Lee Child
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Pages: 549
Time taken: Roughly a day.

It's been a while since I was so taken by a male protagonist in a thriller series. Nicholas Linnear of Eric van Lustbader's Ninja and Jason Bourne of Robert Ludlum's Bourne Identity series ate my brain once upon a time. Now it's a retired soldier bumming around the US of A who caught my imagination.

Jack Reacher was in the wrong place at the wrong time for doing the right thing. His chivalry got him kidnapped and we get a first hand view of what life in a survivalist militia commune is like. It's filled with a great deal of gruesome violence and super fast action. Mr Child has crafted a nice post Cold War thriller that gives an interesting perspective from an individual POV: what happens to a soldier when there are no more wars to fight?

This time around the female protagonist has a first name and it was used liberally through out so all is cool. I give Mr Child credit for creating decent female protagonists who are not the die-away type and are resourceful ladies who kick ass and take names. It's a skill that not many male authors (at least those that I read) possess.

I am enjoying Jack Reachers's journey on his perpetual road trip to discover the country that he barely knew and will look for more.
Favourite quote/excerpt:

"The defense cuts were happening. Made the army seem unnecessary, somehow. Like if they didn't need the biggest and the best, they didn't need me. Didn't want to be a part of something small and second-rate. So I left. Arrogant or what?"

Male protagonist: 5/5 stars
Female protagonist: 3/5 stars
Storyline: 4/5 stars
Pacing: 5/5 stars
Fun Factor: 4/5 stars
Repeat Reading Factor: 4/5 stars

View all my reviews

Kill 'em all and let God sort it out.

Killing Floor by Lee Child
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Pages: 523
Time taken: Roughly two days

The first I heard about Jack Reacher was from the movie with Tom Cruise in it. I'm not a fan of his, but no hater either so whatever, right? But I got curious enough to pick up the back story novel The Enemy and now I'm hooked.

Self Pimpage ...

Presenting my first attempt at writing something of a romantical nature in Malay. It's not easy for someone who thinks and dreams in English, okay?

It's going to be a serial. Click here if you are curious. Part 2 is here.

QUIT BLAMING THE VICTIM

Just. Stop.

Stolen in entirety from here.

Hell Hath No Fury

... you know how the chestnut ends. Jealous wives who got violent is a common trope in pop culture.

Lorena Bobbitt made world news when she made her husband's surname into a verb.

But no fear, gentlemen who are unfortunate victims of such assaults, the surgeons in Thailand know what to do in such a situation. These are likely among the sawbones who made Thailand a popular destination for those who wish to switch from basso profundo to mezzo soprano.

You're in good hands.

Tears in my eyes

I like onions. I love 'em raw with my satay. I love 'em chopped in my pasta sauce. I love 'em caramellised on my burgers.

I just hate peeling and/or chopping and/or slicing them. For obvious reasons, no?

It is good to know that scientists have discovered what is it about them that made me (and loads of other people) cry. However, until they come up with an eye wash or eye drop that contains a powerful inhibitor to that pesky enzyme, I guess we onion peelers/slicers/dicers will have to continue to cry us a river.

A fishy story

I hated The Little Mermaid story. I thought she was stupid to throw away her entire existence on a mirage and I saw no romance in that kind of idiocy. But this?



 Oh, if only I was a slash writer ...

The Perils of Doing Laundry

What have been seen cannot be unseen.



Try not to watch this where people could see you howling with laughter like a complete loony.

God bless the child

Title from this song. Ah, a walk down memory lane.

My childhood was rife with epic adventures. Whooshing down mountains on cave rivers, battling the Nazis in a Sopwith Camel, fighting for what is rightfully mine with magic, plotting to regain royal thrones, performing in a circus, solving mysteries with my boyfriend Ned, and much, much more.

No, it's not just because I'm lucky enough that my parents were unsuccessful in curtailing my television viewing, but because of BOOKS.

Beautiful, marvelous, magnificent BOOKS.

Enid Blyton, Carolyn Keene, Captain WE Johns, Rubaidin Siwar, Khadijah Hashim, Othman Puteh, Othman Wok, and many, many more has helped fuel my imagination and vocabulary. I became addicted to reading at a very young age, and the habit remains to this day. It got to a point that I was borrowing a book every day from the school library, and I made no bones about harassing the student librarians to open up the gates to paradise. I can still recall the crisp scent of my primary school library, the hushed hall and the rows upon rows of delicious books. Mmm.

School holidays were highly anticipated for the opportunity to haunt bookstores. Those stores were wonderlands for exploration, racks upon racks of fragrant, bound pages that harboured secrets and knowledge. I think my Mom sighed a breath of relief when we discovered the rental book store that carried books that I would read (I was an age appropriate reader up to a point); the money would go for much longer with rental and would save on storage space.  

However, I find that the section for children's books in Malay these days are terribly disappointing. I posit the evidence below:

Some desultory fairy tales, and ooh. Encyclopaedia stuff. Exciting.*yawn*

Hikayat Derma Taksiah modernised, most of these.

These pictures were taken at Borders in Bangsar Village 2. Notice that the children's books actually occupied only the top one and a half row of a SINGLE RACK. Those are mostly encyclopaedia types and a miserable collection fairy tale fictions. The rest is taken up by religious tracts and sappy, I-like-to-be-emotionally-abused romance novels. I mean, WTF?

How on Earth can we hope to inculcate the reading habit in our children with such a meager selection? How do we encourage them to explore worlds and dig for information and knowledge beyond what can be Googled? When most of the books are directed to the Malay Muslim audience, how do you hope to encourage non Malay children to love the national language when they have nothing engaging to read?

What happened to the writer of children and young adult fictions in Malay? What happened to the translated books? I remember seeing Harry Potter and Twilight in Malay on display in Popular Books but I don't see them any more.

I got to read Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Eyre, Jules Verne and many more English literary works, not in its original form, but beautifully translated and abridged (I did get on to read them in the original version). Most of my Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Biggleswort adventures were in Malay and what a wonderful discovery it was to read them as they were first published. Those books taught me about life in foreign lands, understanding motivations and reading between the lines, and made me pretty good at comprehension exercises.


The English books selection, on the other hand, is fantastic. You can get up to 6 racks for the young readers and the same number dedicated to young adults. But how do we instill a love in the national language when there's nothing to read in them? Children rarely read newspapers, and most of the Malay magazines for children (except for Dewan Pelajar and Dewan Siswa) appear to be geared only for the Muslim readers. Not to mention that it is darn hard to find Dewan Pelajar and Dewan Siswa in regular bookstores anyway.

Truly, we cannot blame the children for pooh-poohing the national language. Not with this appalling situation.

*shakes fist*