Archive for February, 2011
Book Queue
The majority of people who ask me about the books that I own tend to ask me how my library looks like. I suspect this is because they don’t really know how my ever-increasing collection actually fills up space. How much space does it actually take up? Is it a big mess, as all well-used literary libraries apparently should be? stacks and stacks of books with that lovely musky old-book smell? Well, unfortunately, they’re usually disappointed to find that it doesn’t take up as much space as they had initially envisioned, and also that it’s all quite tidy. (That’s not to say that I have a lot of space though; it still takes up more space than I should by right be able to afford.)
However, I’m not going to show you how my library looks like today. Instead, I’m going to tackle a different question, one that very few people ask: How does my book queue look like?
Well, here it is:
Well, it’s not exactly entirely my book queue. The right-most stack of five books are books that I’m reading now. My queue is made up of the other three stacks.
I counted forty-five. Together with those that I’m reading now, it makes fifty. And actually, I loaned one book to a friend without having read it (Wolf Hall), so it’s actually fifty-one. I find it a lightly worrying number. I’ll never get through this properly. Something new will come in again before I reach the halfway mark, I’m sure.
It’s a slightly eclectic mix, I think? It’s mostly in English, though you’ll spy a couple of Chinese books, and even one in Japanese. Most of it is fiction or poetry, although there are at least three non-fiction books (Men in White, Hatfield’s Herbal and Henrietta Lacks) that I can think of off the top of my head. Oh the 北岛 book I’m not reading yet is non-fiction too. Some are newly released books, some are less recent; some are brand new, some are second- or third-hand; some are absolutely new to me, some are rereads (new purchases, usually); and so on. There’s an art book and a comic book in there. There’s also literary criticism and books of interviews.
Okay, I guess I should spend less time blogging and more time reading. Until next time.
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Panda Cookies
Been meaning to put this up, but have been… busy. Panda cookies! Courtesy of the awesome Huitian.
Thank you, Huitian!
See more in flickr. [via flickr]
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Who Killed Lemmy Caution?
Oh hello. Today I want to mention something about my new blog. [Link]
It’s called, as you can probably see, “Who Killed Lemmy Caution?”, taking its name of course from the great character played by Eddie Constantine. I love that film.
It’s about three weeks old right now. It’s going pretty okay, I suppose. It is an arts and culture blog in which I will be pointing out some of the things that interest me, ranging from literature and music to photography and philosophy. Of course, I reckon I won’t be able to help a Singaporean slant on things, which is great, I guess, because I don’t think I know too many Singaporean arts and culture blogs.
You will realise that it doesn’t look all that impressive now. No, this isn’t the final version of it. It’s basically a testbed where I try to figure how best things will work and also what I want or do not want to include in the future. It’s a nice way of starting off, I suppose. In the foreseeable future, I want to be doing more features and writing for the site (it is a bit bare now), and will work towards some sense of a unique identity. I’m thinking of having a featured item every month, whether it be a book, a play, a record, or a television series. Working that out (in my head for now) is going to be my main concern until March.
I kind of like where it’s going. I don’t know how successful it will be, or even how successful I will be at keeping up with it, but there it goes. I realise also that it is eating into my blogging time for this place, but I think of them as complementary, so I’m blogging as much as I used to be again, in a sense.
All right, that’s all I’ve got for now. Please support it. Here is the link again: [Link].
Currently, you can findsome mentions of the new Radiohead album, The King of Limbs, on the site, which also happens to be a great way to end any post, so here it is:
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