It's Reading Time!

The things that I am starting to appreciate here in Malaysia after a stint overseas, besides her cheap food, are cheap books. I have long made a list of items that I am going to bring back to Sydney in February in my head, and without a doubt books have always remain on top of the list.

Attention: To those of you who are looking for cheap new books, especially fictions, head down to Section 14, PJ. Times Bookstores are having their end-of-year clearance sales. But be quick, it ends on the first day of January.

I got myself two new books at the clearance sales which are Thomas L. Friedman’s award-winning The World is Flat: The Globalized World in the Twenty-First Century, and Al-Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World by Hugh Miles. I have been craving for the former for more than a year already and nearly bought it at Sydney last month for a price of AU$26.90. These two, I got for an unbelievable RM12 each, or slightly more than AU$4. Nevertheless my heart sank upon looking at Jared Diamond’s Collapse which I could not resist from buying six months ago auctioned for as little as RM15. As for the second book, Al-Jazeera, I did not really plan to purchase one and was actually looking for some other bestselling titles. But what can you expect from clearance sales. Though any book on Al-Jazeera is actually on my long wish list, I only decided to go with it after a long futile search of other titles. As for now, this book will sit for my bookshelf for awhile, since I believe I do not plan to read it anytime soon.

Next I went to BORDERS, The Gardens with one clear thing in mind; that I will use BORDERS’ 15% off coupon to get Tim Harford’s The Undercover Economist as well as Tun Mahathir’s celebrated The Malay Dilemma. I stepped out, however, without The Malay Dilemma. The thing was as soon as I got in I was greeted by BORDERS’ routine 3 for 2 offer, and this time around they coincidentally included The Undercover Economist, along with Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, another non-fiction in my wish list. Both books basically revolve around a same topic, and I actually thought of getting Freakonomics sometime later but try I might, I just could not resist the offer. To complete the trio, I picked up another book, this time a fiction and gifted it to my sister.

I am still midway through Collapse as of now, decided to give myself a break and have since started George Orwell’s 1984 and Dr. Ang Swee Chai’s From Beirut to Jerusalem, both being illuminating reads. For the record, I am huge fan of Orwell’s Animal Farm but have not managed to get my hand on 1984 until now, which is a shame. From Beirut to Jerusalem meanwhile is a personal account of Dr. Ang, an orthopedic surgeon who volunteered to help the Palestinian exiles during the civil war in Beirut, who also become an important witness to Sabra-Shatila massacre in 1982 and pioneered the mass Palestinians aid movements in Britain. I first heard of the book from this website, make sure you give it a look.

I should finish 1984 very soon, and will then proceed with The Undercover Economist. At the moment there is no particular preference order for other books I have bought, but surely another 239 pages of Collapse will have to wait. In the meantime I will definitely try to get The Malay Dilemma before I leave this country, and that shall complete the list.