If I Were A Book…

(Photo by delviking, Flickr.com, lifted from Mirage Bookmarks’ The Most Interesting Bookstores in the World)

…this is where I would want to be housed.

Even as a (very human) reader, the photo above makes me want to hop on a plane to Portugal. It’s of the Lello Bookstore in Portugal, regarded as one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world. The bookstore opened in 1906 for one of Portugal’s most influential publishing houses. The Livraria Lello has been selling books since the late 19th century. The building was designed by Francisco Xavier Esteves (the architect who introduced the use of reinforced concrete for civil buildings in Portugal), and with a design described as “neo gothic”.

What I am in love with is the curvaceous, sinewy staircase, and the view of books from the second floor….

(Photo by stukinha Flickr.com; lifted from Mirage Bookmarks’ The Most Interesting Bookstores in the World)

There is a reverential air to books, when housed in such a splendid building. In this day and age, where so many of what should be considered sacred are are maliciously brutalised, wilfully ignored or rudely trespassed, scenes like the Livrario Lello tell of order and beauty. That could be the appeal of libraries and bookstores: they are places where choice is abundant, but where order is enforced, rules and regulations comprehensible and obeyed, where peace is the norm not the exception, and everyone is highly respectful of other people’s rights and space. Idyllic, in other words.

If I do get to travel to Europe again, it would definitely include a tour of bookstores and libraries.

Filed under: At the Stores, Books, Personal Note , Books, bookstore

At the Mags Rack

The magazine racks at bookshops are always enticing – the text and images on the covers of a lot of publications compete for attention and it’s not surprising that customers station themselves for quite awhile at the racks.

As a former magazine hound, I can tell you that it’s the cosmetics as much as the content that enthralls. There’s pleasure not just in making new discoveries about your surroundings, which can be as immediate as your living room and as expansive as the universe, but also in absorbing the colours, photos and layout of an article. Subjects are liberally spiced by magazine’s big injections of graphics and photos; science, economics, business, politics, all perk up when the writing is complemented by pretty pie charts and prepossessing tables.

I’ve dropped magazine reading for a number of years now, namely due to the steep prices of the magazines I would like to read, and the sheer volume of reading that I need to plow through already which makes magazines a guilty distraction.

Still, I haven’t gone cold turkey. Stores such as Reissued on the second floor of Amcorp Mall that offer older issues of international mags for RM9.90 each, make magazine reading lighter on the wallet. Slick, online versions of magazines are also an avenue to satisfy zine-lust (my vote goes to The National Geographic website for both content and visual stimulus). If you ask me though, online mags are not as satisfying as the real thing in your hands.

In terms of the real thing, the socio-literary Off The Edge, home-decor mags Haven (English) and Anjung Seri (Bahasa), as well as MPH’s lovely book mag, Quill, are my regulars. With our recent home move, a slew of other interior decor titles have found their way onto my bookshelf in the past year, supplemented on and off by Madam Chair, a big (in terms of size) refreshing publication for career women that unfortunately eludes a lot of bookstores’ mag racks.

I have recently added a new title to the list of regulars: Discovery Channel’s Magazine, a beautifully-produced magazine on science and nature, containing excellent articles on a diverse enough range of topics to appeal to eclectics like me. I’ve bought two issues and have been delightfully apprised of: termites, space travel, high-rise farming, the Baja Desert Race, Chinese navigation, the Sydney Opera House construction and – in the latest issue 5 – the not-quite-so-humble-after-all pencil.

The quality of writing in Discovery is excellent and the layout, graphics and photos make reading a visually immersive experience. Given the content repository of the Discovery Channel, of course, the depth and breadth of coverage should not be such a surprise. It also taps into the decades of magazine-publishing experience of that old reading favourite of many of us, Reader’s Digest. I hope the magazine retains its eclecticism and piquant design for the issues ahead.

It’s great that a magazine is launched when the industry as a whole is fighting a losing battle  to remain relevant in the age of freely available dots and bytes. Perhaps in the not-so-distant future, and particularly so with ebook readers such as the lustworthy Amazon Kindle presently gaining ground, magazines will all migrate to the electronic form.

But until that time, the glossy, sometimes audacious covers, funky layouts, catchy titles, sharp writing and arresting photos of magazines still work their magic best through the print medium.

Filed under: At the Stores, Personal Note, Playing Favourites, Reads , discovery, magazines, reading

Words and Music

If I wanted to be romantic, I’d say recent events and encounters instigated this search for the lovely and the beautiful; on a more mundane level, we’d call it retail therapy. Either way, my hunger was assuaged somewhat on recent jaunts to the stores where, despite this ever-growing list of books to read, I splurged on…

Paulo Coelho’s The Zahir
I had read The Alchemist and found it to be too mystical to be relevant, but I’d wanted this title for some time now, intrigued by the plot of an author whose beloved disappeared, perhaps with another man, and who now has the chance to find out what happened with his lost love. The narrative is poetic, the narrator (so far) is engaging, and the story is tugging me forward through the pages. I do face distractions though because I also added, to my bookpile..

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude
Another translated novel in the bookbag, and a book that has been long-read by more literary friends of mine. I’d never had the inclination to pick it up, until now, when a chance encounter with another passage in another book (I do not remember which) brought my feet to this title. “Essential reading for the human race,” so touts the NYT on the back cover, and in the bookstore, my eyebrows shot up. The curiousity’s piqued, and as always, it overcomes reservations.

Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon
I’d read and enjoyed her first, The Lovely Bones, a tale which haunted me long after the last line was over, not because of the horror that lay trapped within her suburban setting, but because of the journey one of the book’s characters went through. It’s sobering, when events shake us and alter the way we look at the world. You cannot get any more sensational a follow-up than I-killed-my-Mother-and-now-let-me-tell-you-why, and the much-quoted opening sentence “When all is said and done, killing my Mother came easily” makes such an enticing bait, I am more than willing to be reeled in.

Carlos Fuentes’s This I Believe
The third translated Latin American novel in the bookbag, this is a collection of essays on subjects that range from Amor to Zurich (in true A to Z manner!) by celebrated Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes. I have tasted Amor and am skipping over to Children, Globalisation, Women, Reading, Freedom, Happiness, Education, Jealousy, Reading, Sex and Shakespeare next, though not necessarily in that order. In Amor, Fuentes touches also on politics: ”In political life, it is possible to convince oneself that one is acting out of love for a community, while driving that community into destruction and inspiring hatred from within and without“, before weaving through the more familiar streets of passion, desire and the very necessity (as well as frailty) of love. It’s a rich essay – not one I can digest in one sitting, in fact, so I look forward to lush meals of his thoughts, his words, one morsel at a time.

My search for the beautiful did not end at the bookstore. Music, as they say, has the power to soothe and inspire, too, and a trip to the MPO resulted in two bookings, one of what promises to be a fun day of dance and music (with kids in tow) and another of technical mastery and soaring piano music. Both are in May and June next year but having the tickets in my bag made me happier. This guy’s collection also ended up in my shopping bag – and I regard this as one of the best music purchases I’ve made this year (admittedly, I do not make many).

It was an uplifting trip, a revisit to the world of words and music, and a lyrical reminder, one hopes, of the good the world and its people still has to offer.

Filed under: At the Stores, Books, Music, Personal Note

The Bookaholic’s Seat

If only….

this was available in Malaysia.

The Bibliochaise, made by Nobody & Co (Italy), and featured on design blog Modern Roost.

This is what I would call creative furnishing: seating, storage, style and stimulation, all in one.

Filed under: At the Stores, Personal Note, Reads

Of Notebooks and Such

Chet got such a lovely gift recently.

Levenger – the source of my current notebook system - rewarded her seven years of custom with a free sample of their 3×5 Circa system. Lovely!

She’s a much more experienced user of Circa than I am. I’m very new, and I haven’t added much to my current Junior Circa notebook other than the To-Do list I printed from DIYPlanner and the Priority Matrix (with a puncher borrowed over breakfast with Chet). So far, I haven’t switched around that many pages other than bringing the most current daily task list to the fore. I delight in switching pages around at meetings though, but no one has noticed yet, unfortunately. There’s a wonderful article for Circa newbies at DIYPlanner, which I have to delve deeper into, once I have my workload sorted out.

Chet and I are going to be ordering some stuff from Levenger soon though we’re still put off by the exorbitant shipping cost. Once I get my new stuff (including the new pocket dividers in soft colours), I’ll post some photos up on the blog. Stationery can be exciting!

Anyway, here’s a shot of my (still boring) Circa notebook, from its unique Rollabind-based spine:

Filed under: At the Stores, Work & Productivity, Writing

Of Warehouse Sales and Interior Decoration

I surprised myself Saturday morning by being one of the first customers to hit the Times Warehouse Booksale. I missed all of last year’s warehouse sales and haven’t been to one for the past three years. So, thank you Sharon for the notice and thank you Google Calendar for the nifty SMS reminder.

I went with my six-year-old who straightaway busied himself at the Power Rangers CD section. At first, there didn’t seem to be that many books available – just five to six stacked tablefuls of books. Then I rounded the corner of the second storey shoplot at Dataran Hamodal and almost gasped – there were tables everywhere and rows and rows of books. And I only had two hours.

It was a good thing that I went with a specific purpose in mind: interior decorating.

Yes. Sounds boring, but recent developments over the past couple of months have made me revisit the interior decorating tomes that had been collecting dust on my bookshelf, and scour book aisles for new ones. These books are bloody expensive – a new title can easily cost more than RM100, and who can be satisfied with just one book? So when Sharon highlighted the book sale, I thought – perfect. I don’t need to know what the newest and swankiest home decor is, I just need inspiration and ideas, a new way of looking at space and interiors, and fresh insights into colour. 

I found a lot of inspiration sandwiched between books on Hillary Clinton and Yoga positions, at practically the first table I visited. The hardcovers were mid-90s and early 2000 editions, true, but at RM20 to RM30 each, I could afford a bit of age. So it was that barely half an hour into my foray at the sale, I was already piling up my basket with eight heavyweight decorating books. (The principle was simple, load up first, then reduce. The problem was, of course, that each title weighed at least half a kilo, so I got a spot of weight training as well.)

Anyway, in between lugging around the basket, inspecting home decor photographs, and keeping my eyes peeled for Philip Roth’s Everyman and Nigella Lawson’s Domestic Goddess (I am on a domestic streak, I tell you), I was peeking glances at the other visitors to the booksale.

Some were like me, with their baskets almost full with titles, whereas others were clearly browsers, picking up titles, reading their synopsis and putting them back. There were Moms and Dads with kids who were readers, too, or playing hide and seek among the tables or clamouring to go home (mine was pretty well-behaved, Alhamdulillah, though he alternated between giving me kisses – for allowing him a colouring book and a Power Ranger CD – and then punching me in the butt and tummy, for taking so long at the store). I also looked out for Sharon and Ted, but didn’t spot them.

There were some intriguing titles that I spotted. O, The Intimate History of the Orgasm, was one, and I rather wished I’d bought it now, given the reviews; Stephen Fry’s Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music actually went into my basket until I decided I couldn’t afford the time for his irreverence. I regret the decision - I would have enjoyed reading his thoughts on Rachmaninov! Confessions of a True Romantic, which turned out to be a how-to relationship book; and The Other Adonis, which sounded naughty but is apparently a reincarnation-murder-thriller tale.

Two books remained in my basket: Gretchen Rubin’s Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill (don’t ask me why but I’ve been intrigued by American Presidents, too, lately) and Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail which I’d always wanted to read. Both were a steal at RM10 each.

I wish I’d also bought Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys but these were not heavily discounted so I can postpone their purchases. I really was trying to be sensible, you know.

I left the bookstore finally with five decorating titles, four back issues of Aussie and Brit home decor magazines, the two non-fiction titles, a Power Rangers CD, educational workbooks for the kids, a tic-tac-toe travel set (my six year old insisted), two bubble-blowing sets (guess who again insisted), and, for my ten year-old who’s potty over moons and planets, my most expensive purchase of all at RM59, this gorgeous tome simply titled “Universe“, which contains colourised and magnified astronomical images of the universe with at least a page for each planet, moon, asteroid and galaxy. I blew about RM250 at the booksale, but I’m pretty happy at the quantity and quality of books I got.

Here’s to the next warehouse sale, deeper pockets and more time for reading.

Filed under: At the Stores, Books, Personal Note

Credit Card Fraud

I’m a victim of credit card fraud.

Over Christmas, someone booked hotel rooms in a continent far, far away and enjoyed a Christmas getaway at my expense. The bookings were done online, of course, and coincided with a heavy purchasing season that failed to trigger the alarms of my credit card provider (think black and yellow if you’re Malaysian and are wondering which bank). I’ve been defrauded to the tune of a few thousand ringgit. It’s a nasty shock to open your credit card statement and find that your due payments have suddenly shot up sky high, especially if you have been prudent with your credit card. It’s a nastier experience to find that someone else enjoyed a holiday at your benefit. I wish those thieves horrible accidents.

Apart from directing black thoughts that way, my credit card provider is also going to get the brunt of my wrath should they fail to respond in a timely manner by reversing the charges on my credit card. I am mild-mannered, usually, but if I feel I am wronged….well, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, particularly if she is also a consumer cheated. I do not harbour much hopes though of quick action because the last time I was double-billed for a purchase, it took the bank almost a month to reverse the charges. And that was when a high-ranking executive was helping me lodge the complaint.

Still, with more competition in the banking sector, perhaps their reaction times are now quicker. We shall see.

Filed under: At the Stores, Personal Note