Between then and now

It's been a (fairly) long time since I posted, well, relative to the average time I update. But, I've been busy (staying in Malaysia) and now, with the JC law programme. I didn't have much time to read in Malaysia, despite the fact that I have more books there than I realise. But this is probably because I spent my time reading my daddy's Master's "Business Economics" textbook. Even though I didn't understand half of it (my brain turns itself off once it sees math), it was useful in reminding me how little I know about the subject. And if I'm not wrong, I read a book about Princess Diana, and one other about Masako-Hime.

And the Very Good News is that I finished the three Sarah Dessen books I bought, Catching the Moon, Lock and Key and uh, and Someone like you. They were all so good, and really really moving. In particular, Someone like you, which I haven't read before, is about friendship, and got me to appreciate my best friends even more.

But with JLPT coming up, and the Law programme, I haven't had much time to read, except the one on collecting books (I'm too lazy to try and recall the name) and The Man Within, which is for my EE. And un-surprisingly, since I have to take the MRT to and fro Chinatown, I've been reading on the train. It's actually quite conducive for reading, and I managed to go through the JLPT N5 textbook (*roundofapplause*). And today, I was asked to read through past cases ^_^, it was really informative and really really fun (for me, at least). But due to the non-disclosure form I had to sign, I can't say anything here.):

 My "Library" at Malaysia

 What I actually managed to read in the few days I stayed there(:

There are pictures~ (The first ever here)

I have the nagging feeling I can't remember all the books I read over the weekend, I guess that's what comes when you're lazy (although I did just pack/repack all my books). The only two I can remember is The Pemberley Chronicles, which is a continuation of Pride and Prejudice and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (aka Huck Finn, aka HF).

The Pemberly Chronicles is a "fanfiction" which happened to get published. This is a really good thing because I can't imagine reading it as a fanfic, the chapters would be too long. Too bad not more fanfictions get published, because some of them are as good as this. This book is (most importantly) believable, and I think the characterisations are true to the original, but when it says "the saga begins" it means saga. It's really a saga/chronicle of what happens, so while things are more or less happy, there are unhappy moments/deaths that occur ):

Huck Finn on the other hand, is one of the English books that I have to read, and it's not one of my favourites. For one thing, it bores me. And the more I know about Mark Twain, the less I like him (Who can hate Jane Austen? Or say that any library with her books suck? >.<), and even Wen Xi think's he's disturbed.  But still, it is what I have to study.

But on the bright side, I'm going into Malaysia tomorrow, and I'll have lots of time to read books there. And before I forget, here are pictures of the Sarah Dessen Set I bought on Saturday (You can see it's sooo pretty).

                                            (Pretty right?)

                                          (And the view from the other side)

                                           (This is without the paper cover-thing)

                                          (What you see when you open it, look at the pendant)

                                           (Everything opened out, all the covers are so pretty)

                                     (And last but not least, the かわいい(kawaii) camera holder)

"Oriental" Reads

Today was a very "oriental"/Japanese day. For starters, I went to the embassy of Japan, at first, we wanted to talk to the student counsellor about studying in Japan, but she wasn't there (left early =.=) so we just read the material available, which was really informative, since they had info on the majors available.

But I managed to finish 2 books today: In the Footsteps of the 10 lost tribes (something like that), and Shinjuku Shark, which is suppose to be a very famous/popular series of detective novels from Japan.

In the footsteps of the 10 lost tribes attempts to explain the mystery of the disappearance of the 10 tribes of Israel and is written by a Jew. It's a fascinating, engaging read, although too much of it rests on conjecture (which is to be expected since there's not a lot of information, or rather, there's no definite information available). Apparently, the lost tribes had great influence on Afghanistan, China, India and more notably, Japan. According to the author, the Japanese are descendants of the exiled Israelites. It sounds plausible, although sometimes it seems a bit far fetched. And another issue is that he refers a lot to Jewish Folklore, such as using Lilith to support the Japanese mythology. (I had to look up what Lilith was, and I've been in Sunday School my whole life). The last thing is that he seems to cast the authority of the Bible in doubt, suggesting that certain things have been omitted or edited in the Bible. If you ask me, a better book is The Biblical Hebrew Origin of the Japanese People by Joseph Eidelberg; although it only focuses on the Japanese and not other countries.

The next book I finished was Shinjuku Shark, which is apparently a popular mystery series. However, it seems to be more of an American-style detective novel than a British-style detective novel. According to my understanding, American-style refers to the "tough guy", beat everyone in your way up style, while British-style has more deductive reasoning involved, like Agatha Christie's Poiret, Miss Marple or Conan's Shylock Holme's (I only remember Conan because of Detective Conan).

But I suppose, to each his (or her) own.

Fact and Fiction

So far, I managed to finish three very long books, two today and one over the period of a few weeks. The non-fiction book is A Proper Education by Karl D. Coke, PhD. It's basically a call to return to a Hebraic centered model of education, rather than the Humanistic model currently in vogue. Again, it's America-centric, but what makes this book so good (to me), is that in dealing with such a touchy subject, it made all the right calls, unlike The Way Home.

While A Proper Education does have lot's of emotion sometimes, it manages to steer away from excessive emotion-based appeal (at least to me), and when quoting, the whole quote, plus context was given, which is a definite plus. And I think the best part of it, is that it managed to steer clear of politics, instead of demonising a particular party, it was neutral (except for the blame in Secular Humanists). Which made this book an enjoyable read, unlike The Way Home.

The book that I finally finished is The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear: A novel by Walter Moers. While it sounds kiddy, it definitely is not, looking at the size of the book, it is very very very long. Eugenia and I are both reading it, and while it's possible to read it in one go, I decided that this time, I was going to read it slowly. As I remembered, it's really funny, very enjoyable; and to top it off, it got Eugenia to want to read. Even thought she gave up, she did restart, before giving up again (the book is really long).

The other book that I managed to finish is State of Fear by Michael Crichton, who apparently wrote Jurassic Park (which I never realised was a book). It's one of the books on the read-before-you-die booklist, and the fact is that my friends have incredible tastes in books. The book is about whether Global Warming is a real cause for threat or over-hyped by the media, and with so many detailed sources and footnotes, it provided food for thought. I guess this is the type of book we say "Art imitates life", and it shows how fiction can be used to approach controversial issues.