2013's Written Words

Hi there!

It has been a great couple of days because I got to eat delicious food in one of my favourite places in Kuala Terengganu, Tappers Caffé on the Block in Little Chinatown, and just now, I made [well, I helped more like it] a delicious apple crumble with custard sauce… but this post is not about food… or my appetite… or the fact that I will never reach the 50kg threshold even if I glut myself.

This post is about those blended corpses of trees with written tattoos on them, a.k.a. novels, my [other] favourite things to have. I’ve read a number of novels last year, and frankly, I still have a lot that I have not finished. Well, that’s what certain book addicts do, read old books and buy new ones in the same time. Why can’t books be cheap?! Why?!

Anyway, here are the novels:

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake

Okay, this is not a new novel, and honestly, I am not into Asian [or Asian-American] literature that much, but this is a novel that makes us think about what it means to be who we are in a fast-modernising world. Are we defined by our names, our background, or what we think of ourselves? Identity is more than a name.

John Green’s Looking for Alaska

I am an avid fan of Green. He’s an amazing storyteller, and Looking for Alaska proves that. An amalgam of Green’s great penchant of tingling humour and heart-wrenching prose, Looking for Alaska brings us honesty, joy, and at the end, teaches us that the ones we love do not always last long, but the love can. The last words we say mean a lot to everyone else.

G. Willow Wilson’s Alif the Unseen

This novel is just pure magic, a blend of modern computer science and Arabian myths. Alif the Unseen is a view into the tumultuous life in the Middle East, but at the same time, it’s also a window to the unknown, a world beyond our very senses. Sometimes, even the things that we have seen all this while can have more than one thousand and one meanings.

Tom Clempson’s One Seriously Messed-Up Weekend in the Otherwise Un-Messed-Up Life of Jack Samsonite

How’s that for a title? Fortunately, the hilarious and true-to-real-life anecdotes of the crude, crazy, and heroic (or so he thinks) Jack lives to the novel’s title. Really, the book is funny, and somehow, I think what Jack Samsonite does or thinks is reflective of many other inner workings of teenage boys.

Robyn Schneider’s The Beginning of Everything

Ezra, golden boy-turned-wreckage, what’s more symbolic of the teenager-y life that that? OK, this book is funny even if the plot’s a bit whimsical, but it shows that a glimmering past can be a detriment if you hold on to it when it cannot be gained anymore, but a tragedy that ends the past may not be the end of your life. Letting go is the best thing to do.

David Levithan’s Every Day

A resides in a human body for 24 hours and then moves on to another person, but A cannot control that. So, what’s A to do? And what’s A gonna go when A loves a girl? A is like us, we don’t know where our lives will take us, and oftentimes, we are even searching for the real meaning of our existence.

Okay, actually, I still have a few more books, but let's just stop here now. That's all folks!