On Books and Dreams

I went for the Popular Bookfest @ Suntec yesterday. I'm so glad I didn't miss the last day of the fest because there was a great sale. All books were going at 3 for the price of 2. Needless to say, I bought a Mount Everest worthy pile of books. I think crime/thrillers are my favourites. But of course.

Endless shelves of books. Giant posters that said "The truth hurts. Read Fiction". My personal favourite: "All books at 3 for the price of 2". It was a wonderlaaaaaaaaand. It took me about 3 hours to settle on my books because of the internal conflict I faced: Buy whatever I wanted and spend more or give up several books to save. In the end I went with the latter, which was better since the total amount I spent on books (yes and books only) was approximately $140.

I tried looking for John Wyndham's other book, The Day of the Triffids, and the other titles by Melina Merchetta, especially The Piper's Son, but to no avail. At least it's a good thing we all made sure we bought different books when in Australia so we could swap. =) I also had a hard time with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, because I didn't know if I wanted to buy those =(

In the end I bought 12 books for the price of 7, only because three of them were in a mega value pack. I love mega value packs.

Books I got:
Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami)
Her Fearful Symmetry (Audrey Niffenegger)

Sing You Home and Plain Truth (Jodi Picoult)
Wahahaha my collection is almost complete, Laura would be proud of me


Rose  Madder and Full Dark, No Stars (Stephen King)
I also stood hovering over all the Stephen King titles looking for Misery, as recommended by Laura. That attempt fell flat too. sigh.  

Girl with a Pearl Earring and Falling Angels (Tracy Chevalier)
Two for the price of one, which was only less than 10!


The Grave Tattoo (Val McDermid)
Prey (Michael Crichton)
Velocity (Dean Koontz)
The three above were in the crime/thriller value pack for $20. I couldn't refuse. 


The Dante Club (Matthew Pearl)
Dante's Numbers (David Hewson)
Both books were based on Dante's Inferno, the first part of the epic poem Divine Comedy (I did my research!)

In addition to the books, I got a pair of green ear buds that came with a free wireless mouse (yessssss!), a mother and baby Tyrannosaurus Rex figurine set and one Ornithocheirus figurine for Jayne dear.

When I got back I had to remove my all books from my ridiculously tiny "exclusively mine" bookshelf and place them into a much bigger, thank god, space right next to my table that used to be where the dictionaries were stored. I now have my beloved Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series and all other books that I'd won standing triumphantly on my Twilight series. Believe it or not, the only way to arrange my books respectably was to put the Twilight saga beneath all the other brilliant books, which should be the way anyway.

My redesigned bookshelf: Welcome T-rex and T-rex jr. to the dinosaur family. And books.

Each time I think of my bookshelf, I think of my table, and how small and ridiculously cramped my work area is. I also think of how things would be if I could have it my way. I want a small apartment, where I can store all my books, buy beautiful furniture, have walls I can work with. Stick my drawings and doodles and words up, display my favourite dinosaurs and music, design my little apartment and keep it really cozy and mine. I don't understand why the common dream is to own a big house. With great houses come great responsibilities (i.e. cleaning, more money urk). Maybe what I'm looking for is just my own bedroom, yes I don't have my own bedroom. I have my own bed, my own table and my own wardrobe. I just need them within four walls. I need the space to keep my books, I need space to call my own. I am sad.

I always dream of living in such a cozy house, perhaps in a block of apartments and surprise, surprise, my neighbours would be my friends, full of independent young women. We'd visit each other all the time, have tea parties and just talk the days away. It'd be so much fun. I know that dream is almost impossible in Singapore, where the culture is to: slog your youth away, get married, have children, slog the rest of your years away, retire, slog some more looking after those you slog for, die and have on your tomb: "She slogged and she died". You know, that's why they call it a dream. cue sad music *sniffle*