Friday, September 14, 2007

Amante Del Libro

I am terribly excited. They are making Love In The Time Of Cholera into a movie, starring John Leguizamo, Benjamin Bratt and Hector Elizondo amongst others. Although I'm only halfway through the book (I only read it on my daily commutes to work), I am already anticipating the movie. But of course, I have to expect to be disappointed. Not all books successfully made the transition onto the silver screen. It is due for release year end, but I don't think it will make it's way to our shores due to the R rating though. Nevermind, that's what DVDs are for.

Which reminds me, I am still looking for A Very Long Engagement and Amelie DVDs. Anyone?

I have successfully finished reading 2 books in the past weeks, John Grisham's A Painted House and Kam Raslan's Confessions Of An Old Boy.

The former, superb. As eloquent as he always is, and for the first time he wrote something deviating from legal issues (later he would write Skipping Christmas, another non-legal fiction). I love it to bits, it's like reading the Alabama version of S. Othman Kelantan's short stories about Kelantan. Life in the rural backwaters in the 1950s, the issues they encounter, the hardship, the naivety, the innocentness, mesmerizing. I almost missed my stop once because I was too engrossed in it.

The latter, earlier parts of it is very good. Witty, charming, ironic. It's a good surprise for me that the fictional (semi-fictional?) Dato' Hamid is a budak koleq as well. That was my initial suspicion upon chancing on the title anyway. It is no surprise that Kam did his research by going through old issues of The Malay College magazines. However, the latter chapters tend to be a bit draggy and borders on being boring. Still it's worth my penny, I'd say.

What else on my bookshelf waiting to be read? Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years Of Solitude, Rehman Rashid's A Malaysian Journey, Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns and only last night I started Stephen King's Tales From A Buick 8 as a bedtime book. I'm thinking of getting Joshua Ferris' Then We Came To The End soon.

Ohh, if you are looking for a book to read, try Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Memories Of My Melancholy Whore and Paulo Coelho's Eleven Minutes. You won't regret it.

6 comments:

Lulu Zacott said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

audrey? nah..it's just that her movies has received lotsa ccolades, so i wanna see for myself.

shops? tell me which shop, n i'll go and buy it. as far as i'm concerned, xde lg jumpe...

nanayau said...

A Very Long Engagement - aku ada!! nak beli? ss2 ada. nak pinjam?! cam susah je nak jumpa, maybe i'll pass it to ninie, tu pun x berapa senang nak jumpa haha, hmm. loooooong time no see, both of u. no, just u.

which reminds me, some of my books are with u, rite? nak pinjam that gabriel garcia's kalau boleh.

selamat berpuasa!!

Anonymous said...

and all that i read were just mere newspapers. pity that i abandoned hard copies over the years. it it this boy that ignited the passion of reading inside me(by borrowing his books heh)

Anonymous said...

that very precious 'eleven minutes' yg kene ban kat MPH tu is back u know? nyesal t beli kat paris hari tu.. grrrrrrrrr. btw, its kittykat here!! GOTCHA. :p

Anonymous said...

nana: yeap, i still have your lord of the flies and one tony parson's book. but i think it's back home lah, lepas raya i'll find a way to return them to u

kidd: books were a commodity back in koleq, damn expensive to buy one. i usually borrow them from za'ba and dzuf. mine were only a few (tuh pon sume hilang dah)

cik kucing: yes i know who u r lah, haha. yeap eleven minutes is in abundance now, nyehehe.