The Art of Animaling

Thursday, November 27, 2008

my favourite books

The first time I ever read Mark Haddon was during uni, in the midst of my Creative Writing: A Novella class. I had picked up the Whitbread Book of the Year 2003 winner, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time for a spot of inspiration; things were running dry in the ideas department. It was a really good read and I found it really creative the way he infuses habits of the protagonist into the physical book itself, such as the page numbers (you have to read it to find out). This was a book about an autistic boy, who gets accused of killing his neighbour's dog and thus sets out to investigate the murder to clear his innocence. Perhaps the morbidity (dog was speared with a garden rake thingy) got to me - I ended up writing 6,000 words on a boy killing his mom. Ooer. Sick, but I got good marks on that paper okay.


Last night I finished reading Haddon's other book, A Spot of Bother. Really good book! I like his style: easy to read, straight forward, a good balance in the story telling which was neither too much nor too little descriptions. This particular book is about a very nice old man (albeit a bit detached from the world) who discovers a lesion on his hip - a spot of bother - which is actually eczema, but he's convinced that it's cancer. He starts losing his mind, but he doesn't go crazy insane. Instead, he tries his best not to trouble his family; tries to 'go insane politely' so the back cover says. Haddon is also quite unrelenting with his descriptions. Somewhere in the middle of the book, the protagonist tries to remove the cancer by cutting the lesion of his hip with a pair of scissors. The descriptions were so detailed and so real, the picture of it was so clear in my mind! At this point I felt damn lemah sial. I felt so geli and queasy that I couldn't even hold the pages properly. So gross, but I couldn't stop reading! Only thing to do was to read faster and get past those few pages. Only other book that ever made me feel and imagine something so real was Kim Wilkin's The Resurrectionists.


I normally don't do horror. I used to, having read every single one of R. L. Stine's books (does Fear Street ring a bell?) and watched a lot of horror movies until the year my grandpa died and I got freaked out with all these...death and supernatural stuff, and have since turned into a BIG FAT COWARD. Yah, go ahead and boo me.


But I digress. In my second semester, I was forced to read horror. In my reading list was Kim Wilkin's The Resurrectionists. I went to the uni bookstore and grabbed all the books, without noticing the genre. I didn't even know it was horror until I was quarter of the book in. Oh. My. Lord. For the remaining three quarters of the book, I had goosebumps all over just reading it. But I couldn't stop, because it was just too good to put down. I read it at home, on the bus, in uni, till the very last page. Then we had an exam on it. And until today, I can't stop raving about it, because it's just about the very best book I've ever read. Even if you don't like horror, you will appreciate the fantabulous story telling.


Another one of my favourite books is Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie. Super touching, super real, super super! Fantastic read. Not a long book, easy to read and explores in depth the human mind, existence, life. Makes you think, ponder, wonder. Gives you a different perspective on life. The book was practically glued to my hands till the last page. I'm thinking of trying Albom's other titles.

I'm now about to crack the spine of The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch. After that will be the famous Marley & Me by John Grogan. Can't wait for that book! Cute little doggie on the front cover staring at me everyday, grr.

Off to read, ta!

by CharSiu at 10:58 PM |