The Devious Book for Cats (But mostly about bookshops)

These past few days, I haven't been reading much, because I (-shock/horror-) ran out of books. I did try to read the Ingoldsby Tales, where "The Hand of Glory" is mentioned, but for some reason, I couldn't find a decent ebook version. After searching (and unsuccessfully searching Kobo and Project Gutenberg), I found a copy from, I can't remember where. But I couldn't finish reading it. I couldn't even start.

But I did try to read the Hand of Glory story and I'm sad to say that I couldn't even comprehend the words used. I'm not sure if it's just really really bad copying or old English. It brings to mind a Discworld Quote, that this is "Old English, before they invented spelling" (I'm probably not quoting exactly). But to Kobo, placing the title (in image format) does not make it an ebook. And if anyone from Project Gutenberg can see this (A girl can hope), please make an ebook version. It was written so long ago the copyright no longer exists(:

But since yesterday was Vesak Day, Rae and I had a day off together (Poly and JC schedules are surprisingly hard to coordinate), so we went to Duxton Road. I "dragged" her to two bookshops (well, one, but the other was on the way). The first one, which I've never been to, is The Pigeonhole, which calls itself a 'bookshop by day, bar by night'. But even though the shop looks really cool, I didn't actually see any books, except here and there. I also understand that they import out-of-print books, but honestly, the books just looked old, and the titles weren't very interesting. We wandered around for a while, but we were so thoroughly ignored and felt out of place that we left.

The other bookshop is an 'old favourite' (though I've only been going there for less than a year), even with the change in staff (although one old staff, surprisingly, remembered my first visit there ^^). The bookshop, Littered With Books, was surprisingly friendly. The staff asked us if they could help several times, and even carried on a conversation about books (what I like, what do I think, etc). Even though most of them were new, their friendliness really impressed me.

Rae and I spent a surprisingly long time there. I was alternating between rummaging the books that were sold at 'special prices' (basically, they're books that are old/with tiny defects that get marked down quite a far bit) and reading random books. One book which I wanted to buy was called Euphemania (which, since Euphe's full name is Euphemia, is so cool), but the price deterred me. Rae, spent her time reading various cookbooks and wishing for the Jamie Oliver one.

In the end, I bought two books, an (old) Agatha Christie one for $3 and a Cecelia Ahern book (slightly old, but otherwise good condition) for $8, which is a really good find. After that, we walked over to Flor, had awesome cakes, realised that no restaurant in Tanjong Pagar was open and after a while, decided to go to her place for lunch.

And it was at her home that I found "The Devious Book for Cats", a book that purports to be a guide for cats to retain their dignity while still being house cats. I really wonder how she always finds such cool books, because this is one of the books that you'd want to read more than one time.

I can actually imagine cats thinking/talking in that manner, and the book was consistently funny (one of my favourite passages though, involves the logic that since Tigers like to swim, and they have stripes. And Zebras like to swim, have stripes and are large, therefore, Tigers are half Zebra half Cat. Another line was where they called the vacuum machine by it's 'real name' the 'Suck Monster'). The way of thinking is such that you can imagine that this is how cats think, and it's hilarious.

If you find this book, buy it immediately(: