Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

by Lewis Carroll (Illustration by Camille Rose Garcia)

This is of course the classic story of Alice's Adventure in Wonderland...down the rabbit hole...the growing and the shrinking...meeting the white rabbit...the mad hatter. the duchess...the Cheshire cat...the Queen of Hearts (Off with her head!)...and the Mock Turtle and Gryphon.

I just read the story again because I got the new version with illustrations from Camille Rose Garcia. Well, firstly the book itself is like Mr. Carroll was on some hallucinatory substances. It reads like it's written by someone high whilst still maintaining some semblance of sanity, a 19th century stoner if you will.

Well, to add to the effect the new Garcia illustrations are just very very strange and add to this weird world that Carroll has created, though Garcia's illustrations have a more modern and dark undertone to it. See the cover there, you would wonder if Alice is a suicidal, pill-popping alcoholic who really is just tripping on too much medication. I always pictured it to be a colourful world, sort of like when the kids from That 70's Show smoke too much weed. That said, Garcia's is still a beautiful set of illustrations. Great book for any collector of classic fiction, updated with lovely modern artwork.

The Sorting Room

by Fred Petersen

I went to the world premiere of this play. Details below of the play from ASN website.

Fred Petersen is a Life Member of Garrick Theatre. He is a multi-award winning Director who in recent years has added Playwright to his long list of achievements. Fred has a huge following amongst our patrons and he knows what they like. We recommend that you book for this show as soon as possible.

When Mr. Sterner, manager of a charity clothing collection company, decides to employ a voluptuous lady with a predilection for fishnets and revealing clothing, in the sorting room, the well ordered working relationships and the happy dispositions of the other ladies fly out the window.

Throw in an innocent young truck driver, a drunken vagrant, a frustrated social organizer and a not too worldly Pastor, maintaining some semblance of order becomes a mammoth task for Mr. Sterner.

I found this play quite entertaining but not as intellectually satisfying as I would have liked. The humor was predictable and you sort of could have guessed what was going to happen next. The dialogue was also very ordinary where I would have preferred more wit. The emotions and tensions and humor could have been more intertwined and voluminous for it to be of more substance.

The acting was acceptable, thought I am not very sure what accent they were going with. It felt like it was interchanging between English and Australian accents. Some characters were better than others, but overall the plot carried through, but was a bit bordering on the feeling that they were reading from script. At least they did not stumble too much through their lines, only on one or two occasions did this happen.

I found it just alright. My sister enjoyed this play, whereas I perhaps enjoyed The Woman In Black better. So I guess not every one's cup of tea but it is still worth watching if you just want something not too heavy, not too immersive.

Eat Pray Love

by Elizabeth Gilbert

This book I guess pretty much everyone have heard about it now, seeing the movie version of it came out starring Julia Roberts. Only picked up the book again after the hype about the movie after I read about a quarter of the book when I first bought it a year or two ago. Well, I have not watched the movie and do not have much inclination to actually watch it. I don't know how it would translate well into a movie because what made it special was most of it was monologue of her experiences and speaking out all the lines or conveying it through action would be quite difficult to do. Everyone interprets images differently from their mind and the past experiences they have.

Here is the synopsis from the back of the book.

Elizabeth is in her thirties, settled in a large house with a husband who wants to start a family. But she doesn't want any of it. A bitter divorce and a rebound fling later, Elizabeth emerges battered yet determined to find  what she's been missing.

So begins her quest. In Rome, she indulges herself and gains nearly two stone. In India, she find enlightenment through scrubbing temple floors. Finally in Bali, a toothless medicine man reveals a new path to peace, leaving her ready to love again.

I liked the first two parts of the book of life in Italy and India. Perhaps these world are foreign to me and thus mystifying and unique. Indonesia is closer to to my sort of upbringing so I can understand what she says but it just brings out disillusionment. Or perhaps I was just in a bad mood while reading it. The writing is witty and smart. Her views are practical and easy to relate to. And she writes without pretensions, like a person now comfortable of explaining how she was uncomfortable in her own skin.

It is an encouraging story of an amazing journey. It gives one inspiration to stop, remove oneself from the pressures and white noise from day to day life, and be more rigorous in the pursuit of peace, contentment, love and happiness.

Writing Dialogue

by Tom Chiarella

This is a book on writing dialogue as the title suggests. It talks of the idea generation process of dialogue, creating distinct voices to you characters, how to infuse emotions within dialogue (tension, nonchalance, anger, joy, etc), and when to or not to use dialogue.

I read the first 2 chapters and read parts of the other chapters. I did not find this book useful. The intention is there, but I felt it is more of how the author would go about doing such things but my processes for creating dialogue ( be it good or bad) are quite difficult. And some parts of them are instances of what can be done. I guess it is very limited to the perspective of the author (of how dialogue should be structured) which are not as widely applicable than what I would have hope for.

My dialogue at the moment is not perhaps as good as it can be, but I did not see how this book helped in making it better. Even Stephen King's On Writing book was more insightful than this. Overall, I think this book would be helpful for people who would like to see another perspective on dialogue writing but this book did not appeal to my idea generation process and writing sensibility.

The Woman In Black

by Stephen Mallatratt

I watched this play just now at Stirling Players, which was directed by Dannielle Ashton. I actually was keeping my hopes up because the last play I watched there was not very good. But this is in a different class altogether. First the plot, as described on The Woman in Black site.

Eel Marsh House stands tall, gaunt and isolated, surveying the endless flat saltmarshes beyond the Nine Lives Causeway, somewhere on England's bleak East Coast. Here Mrs Alice Drablow lived - and died - alone. Young Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is ordered by his firm's senior partner to travel up from London to attend her funeral and then sort out all her papers. His task is a lonely one, and at first Kipps is quite unaware of the tragic secrets which lie behind the house's shuttered windows. He only has a terrible sense of unease. And then, he glimpses a young woman with a wasted face, dressed all in black, at the back of the church during Mrs Drablow's funeral, and later, in the graveyard to one side of Eel Marsh House. Who is she? Why is she there? He asks questions, but the locals not only cannot or will not give him answers - they refuse to talk about the woman in black, or even to acknowledge her existence, at all. So, Arthur Kipps has to wait until he sees her again, and she slowly reveals her identity to him - and her terrible purpose. 

The Woman In Black treads in the footsteps of the classic ghost story, following the tradition of Charles Dickens and M.R James, of Henry James and Edith Wharton. It is not a horror story or a tale of terror, yet the events build up to a horrifying climax and instil a sense of horror. It relies on atmosphere, a vivid sense of place, on hints and glimpses and suggestions, on what is shadowy, heard and sometimes only half-seen, to chill the reader's blood to the marrow and make reading the book alone at night inadvisable for the faint-hearted. 

Stephen Mallatratt's adaptation for the stage remains entirely true to the book itself and uses much of Susan Hill's own descriptive writing and dialogue, while transforming the novel into a totally gripping piece of theatre. 

This is a wonderful play, the words in it so beautiful. And what is powerful is there are only 3 actors in the play, yet it is so gripping. In this particular production, the actors were all fantastic and I could not find fault at all. I were at times lost in their world and had forgotten I was sitting in a theater. The power of imagination is amazing, and in this play you are pushed to every faculty of your imagination effortlessly to dream this world that is dark and eerie. And you will be afraid, in the dark, it is scary. you feel alone, and a deep tingle down your spine. I love it and could not stop smiling at how wonderful this play is. If it comes along in your town, do give it a chance. You will not regret it, or maybe you would, depending on how much you like horror.

Absurdistan

by Eric Campbell

Eric Campbel is a foreign correspondent for the ABC. He started out as TV presenter for travel shows promoting places around Australia. But he then found that absolutely boring and wanted to do reporting that actually mattered. So he applied relentlessly to be an international journalist. He finally got his break. This book is about a section of Eric Campbell's life as a foreign correspondent spanning 7 years. These included his time in Russia, war torn regions of Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, China and also Iraq.

This book has a different tone that Sebastian Junger's writing. Well, I do not know what makes good journalistic writing. But both their styles are different. Junger's style is more immediate and direct. Eric Campbell is more modulated, so you may not get the full emotional impact. But as a collective, Campbell's writing really highlights the absurdity of what goes on in this country by his quiet honesty and fairness of describing the situation. In all his lack of melodrama, you get the full impact of what he is saying. As if speaking to genocidal leaders is what he does before breakfast. And Campell just takes it all in stride and reports. Amazing person and an amazing time. A really absurd real life story.

The Black Cat

                                          acacello

Once there was a black cat. He did not care much for superstition. So one day just to prove it to himself, he walked across the road, up the road, down the road and in all other directions he could think of, crossing his own path over and over.
He had nine lives.

The next morning he went down to have breakfast. A bowl of milk with colourful treats in it. He finished the lot in one gulp. The cat overdosed on Froot Loops.
So he had eight lives.

Fearing of milk and food in the bowl now, the cat tried to catch a mouse. But the mouse was mightily hungry, and the cat ended up being mauled by its meal.
Then it had seven lives.

Then to clear his head, he went out and climbed atop a tree. A plane fell out of the sky and hit smack right into the branch he was on.
Down to six lives.

He pulled himself out of the wreckage and tried to lick himself clean. He choked on his own fur.
Five lives left.

He coughed out the clump of fur and at that moment the door from the crashed plane flew open and landed on him.
Arriving at four lives.

He stretched himself out from under the door and saw who it was that blew the plane door out. Chuck Norris. The cat had a heart attack. When he came to moments later, Chuck Norris was in front of him, staring at him. Chuck Norris walked past the cat. The cat dropped dead, because Chuck Norris did not get bad luck when black cats cross his path, black cats get bad luck crossing Chuck Norris' path.
Lives three and two gone.

He woke up and thought of his miserable day. What a horrible day. One life left. He stood still and waited. He waited for an hour. Two hours. Three hours. Six hours. Nothing else happened. He was safe. He took a step forward, stumbled on his own leg, and broke his neck.
Black cat dead.

Moral of the story: Do not cross a black cat's path, even if you are a black cat.....unless you are Chuck Norris.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

by Stieg Larsson

I thought this book was crap because on one of the book covers there was a picture of a young punk goth looking girl with a middle-ages guy. I thought it was one of those guy falls in love with girl half his age kind of story.

 So goes the saying, Don't judge a book by its cover. And indeed that's true for this. Ok, I bought the book with this cover which looks better than the other cover anyways. And I bought it only after my sister told me it was a good read.

Well, it does not disappoint. it follows the life of Mikael Blomkvist, an economic journalist. He is convicted of libel case for writing things that did not have sufficient proof to back it up. And so his reputation and career was going down the drain. Then came the retired business mogul, Henrik Vanger with a very interesting proposition. He wanted Mikael to investigate the death of his niece who died almost 2 decades ago. Mikael was reluctant but agreed after Henrik convinced him by providing him with a significant financial compensation. Henrik also promised he would deliver him with a story to destroy the company that originally charged him with libel. So there begins the fun.

Parallel to this story is that of Lisbeth Salander, who is a anti social computer genius. The story gets interesting when Mikael and Lisbeth's paths intersect and they work together to solve the mystery of Henrik Vanger's niece, Harriet Vanger.

This is such a wonderful book. You get a feel that the characters are real people and multi dimensional. Sometimes reading books like Sheldon, thought the pace is riveting, the characters can seem to serve the purpose too well. But with this book, their development seem very true to their own personality and it really is a clash of all these personalities that bring about a truly remarkable story.

I love this book and can't wait to read the other 2 in the series. Rest in peace Stieg Larsson, I wish you had more time to write more wonderful stuff.

Book Reviews

I am now branching out to reading a lot of non fictions these days and well, for some books it is very difficult to read cover to cover. So I shall from now also include books that I have read sufficiently much for me to form some opinion on it for a review. Like I've been reading lots of philosophy books. Reading the whole of these books, I might as well go get myself a philosophy degree also. Not happening, I'm reading just for the interest of it.

Also, there are books of poetry I'm reading, like Paulo Neruda. Those books you would not read cover to cover also, they are not really ordered that you need to read the whole book anyways. Maybe a few poems together but certainly not the whole book. 

That said I should probably include genres and type of books I'm reading from now on in my blogpost tags, the range is getting quite vast for me to just tag the authors I think. Better way of ordering is required.

Another thing is I'm making up a full list of books I am to read, books I have and book wishlist. Probably going up on my blog soon. That is to track the books I have and the books I want! And which I have. That's because I actually 2 of some books. I have 2 Vampire Armands and 2 Witch of Portobello's. Giving it to my sister or something...So yeah, I'm not that rich to  buy multiple versions of books.

War

by Sebastian Junger

I have been waiting to read this for a long time. I finally got it from my sister and finished it in 2 days. Great book.

It's written in a pretty professional, journalistic sort of way, with references and fact checks etc. It is a sort of journal by Sebastian Junger during his attachment in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan with Battle Company during their deployment there.

He talks of the psychology and life of what the men go through, what life means and how they cope with all the crazy shit that goes on up there.

It is such an insightful look into all the things that happen there and what things are of value and realize what things are not important.

Also, you better understand the mechanics and motivations of the men going to war, be it agreeable or not to your beliefs, it is certainly not what I actually expected. But after reading it it made perfect sense. For instance, Junger said men on the ground did no really care for the moral implications and ideological beliefs as much as they just wanted to stay alive and do their jobs the best they can, and not let the their brothers. Everyone's lives is dependent on each other and if you screw up it really is due to the weakest link. A split second decision could be the difference between a total loss to a resounding win. And luck plays a huge part even in this day where technology is so far advanced.

As a whole, this is a great book of insight to humanize the battle and the very real, practical issued of war in Afghanistan with not much discussion behind motivation and the ideological (spread of democracy) battles. It is very humanizing look at the people on both sides and the very practical problems that they face.