So last weekend I was invited to a play of Gormenghast: Titus Groan by Blackshaw Theatre at St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden. I was so excited! I love love play and theatre. (Did I tell you I was in theatre club in high school?) And one that is adaptation from a book is a plus. I have not read the Gormenghast series (starting from Titus Groan, which is what the play is based on), but I’ve heard of it and I also went to the Mervyn Peake exhibition of illustrations and handwritten pieces at the British Library a while ago. It was wonderful! (On that day I went for Neil Gaiman panel talk and met Nymeth and Sakura for the first time. I just remember about that and just realized I forgot to write about it here – or maybe was just lazy.)

I love Peake’s illustrations. And from what I heard from people, like Dickens, he created great characters. I was so happy to find out that this is true! The characters were interesting and the casts of the play have portrayed them wonderfully. My absolute favourites were the two sisters Lady Cora (Angela Ferns) and Lady Clarice (Clare Harlow), who talked and moved in unison, in equally tilted body position, both wearing purple dresses, and have this dumb (but adorable) look. For me they almost stole the show! It’s hard to imagine for them to be described better in the book (in the whole book is always better argument). Other standout performances were the Doctor (Alexander Pankhurst) and the Nanny (Sarah Shelton), both hilarious in their own ways. But really, I thought everybody was excellent and so dedicated!

Moving back a little bit, for those of you who don’t know much about the book, Titus Groan is set in this gothic castle somewhere in a high mountain, which has been there for centuries and has pretty rigid custom and inheritance line. Titus is the baby of the Lord of the castle who’s just been born and is the next in line for the throne. (Interestingly though his name is in the title, he’s just a baby, so takes no real part in the scene.) The main character really is Steerpike, the ambitious kitchen boy who does everything he can to go up the ladder with the purpose to overtake the throne one day. But the castle is a crowded place, so we have lots of characters, each with their own interest and problem: the Lord Groan and his wife (yes Groan is their family name!), the eldest daughter of the Lord, the twin sisters of the Lord, the Lord’s personal assistant, the nanny of the baby, the family doctor and his sister, the chef, the Library Lord, plus a bunch of minor characters – some I’m sure have been cut off from the book in the play. After seeing the play I would really like to read the book! And apparently there is BBC mini series based on the book series so I might check out that one too.

So back to the play, my only grudge is that they did not use microphones. Which kinda reminded me of high school time, because we also had the same problem. We did lots of exercise to talk loud and clear, but it’s always tricky to reach all the audience. In Gormenghast play we sat on the third row, and at the beginning it was really hard to comprehend anything they said. The church was a good idea for doing a play, but it was quite echo-ey. It got much better after a while – probably because we got used to it. But still the problem stayed when the characters were positioned further from us or when they spoke not in our direction. Understandably good microphones and sound system are expensive, but it would definitely be a worthy investment for future plays! We sat on the third row from the front and I imagine the people at the back might have more difficulties in catching the words, though I appreciate the team really tried to use the space and moved around, not solely stayed at the front stage.

All in all it was a lovely night and we really enjoyed it. It was quite a unique venue with wonderful performances throughout. I would like to thank Cole and the Blackshaw team for inviting us. I’m gonna keep an eye on their future plays :)

Mee in front of the church. The blossoming flowers were so pretty!

Inside the church with my companion for the night at the corner. I wish I had taken pictures during the play! My phone died just before the play started. Have to be more ready next time

Gormenghast: Titus Groan at St Paul’s Church (11-14 April 2012)

I don’t remember the last time I read a book that I totally did not want to put down. Probably Room, which I finished a couple of years ago in 7-8 hours plane ride, and I would say The Handmaid’s Tale is a better book (though completely different, so I don’t know why I made the comparison). Considering how long it takes for me to finish one book these days, I finished this one in a breeze! I spent a couple of weekends just reading for hours, which I also don’t remember the last time that happened.

I’ve read only read Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood before this one, which I wasn’t too impressed of. I’m still not sure if I like her writing style from reading The Handmaid’s Tale. I found it a bit… choppy at times. And it’s not like I’m a fan of dystopian stories, which seems to be the topic she embraces the most. I would really like to read Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin though. I also have Cat’s Eye somewhere in my piles.

All in all, I really liked The Handmaid’s Tale. The way it is written by revealing a little at a time made me want to read more more more and faster. Now I feel like reading another dystopian book, and I’m thinking of Orwell’s 1984. We’ll see.

1985, 395 pp

Sunny day reading at Kensington garden

The Handmaid’s Tale, 1990, rating: 5/10

As always I could not resist a movie adaptation of a book I just read. Unfortunately the movie is such a silly rendition of a good book. It lacks all the suspense, subtleties, and claustrophobic feeling that the book does so well. You can safely skip this.

I loved Winnie the Pooh so much that in the middle of reading the book, I was compelled to write on a sticky, now stuck on the first page, so that I could be reminded about the wonderful feelings that I had while reading the book.

“When I feel anxious about life, world, and All the Big Things, I read Winnie the Pooh and melt into some kind of strawberry milkshake. And it’s like everything is gonna be okay again.”

I think that really summarizes it. I love love love the books. I read them slowly, savoring each words. Once I finished the first one (Winnie the Pooh, 1926), I ordered the second one (The House at Pooh Corner, 1928) straight away.

If you intend to read Winnie the Pooh, you really need to read both Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, because the story actually ends in the second book. (and oh the end is so touching and important..) Also, Tigger just appears on the second book, and you don’t want to miss him!

Memorable Quotes

“By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, ‘There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.’ But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late.” ~p89, The House at Pooh Corner

“We keep looking for Home and not finding it, so I thought that if we looked for this Pit, we’d be sure not to find it, which would be a Good Thing, because then we might find something that we weren’t looking for, which might be just what we were looking for, really.” ~ Pooh’s wisdom, The House at Pooh Corner p121

“‘Rabbit’s clever,’ said Pooh thoughtfully.
‘Yes,’ said Piglet. ‘Rabbit’s clever.’
‘And he has Brain.’
‘Yes,’ said Piglet, ‘Rabbit has Brain.’
There was a long silence.
‘I suppose,’ said Pooh, ‘that that’s why he never understands anything.’”
~ The House at Pooh Corner p127

A. A. Milne, Christopher Robin, and Pooh Bear

Winnie the Pooh movie (2011)

I watched the 2011 version of Winnie the Pooh, which takes bits and pieces from the 2 books. I also watched the first Disney movie on Pooh and friends that came out in 1977, which also takes bits and pieces from the 2 books. Then I just realized there are freakin so many Disney Pooh movies! I thought there were only those two!

The 2011 movie was quite true to the book and since I just read it it was nice that the scenes were fresh in my mind.

But in the battle between author and Disney today, there is no way Disney could’ve won! The books are so rich with humour and wisdom; the characters are so much richer, adorable, and real in the books. The only thing that Disney captured was the cuteness of the characters, which is not so bad, considering the huge task at hand. But there is just no way the magical words of A. A. Milne get transferred to the screen. Some things can only get across in words.

Disney Literature Challenge Round 3

Disney vs. Milne
on Winnie the Pooh

A. A. Milne won by long long miles!

Current Score
Disney – 1 vs. Authors – 2

More battles here…

“I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I’d go looking for the England of English literature, and he nodded and said: ‘It’s there.’” ~p91

Possibly one of the first books I read when I arrived in London last year. A sort of impulse pick from the library not long after passing The Charing Cross Road in person. The book is divided into two parts, 84 Charing Cross Road and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. I found the first part about the twenty years correspondence between Helene Hanff (US) and Frank Doel (UK) post World War II to be mildly enjoyable and relatively short, while I didn’t quite finish the second part where Helene Hanff finally visited London in the 70s. Surprising considering I was probably as excited as her to visit London for the first time. But the book was left untouched for a while so I finally returned it to the library. Who knows, I might go back to it someday for more insights about London in the 70s. (3.5/5)

The movie (1987) for me was reminiscence of Anthony Hopkins in The Remains of the Day with his controlled performance and old fashioned style. Helene Hanff was played by Anne Bancroft, who already looks and sounds old in 84 Charing Cross Road, but omg, looks so pretty when she was young! And I just realized that she played the girl’s mother in The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman. (7/10)

I went back to Charing Cross Road again purposely to find the plaque that marked the Mark & co bookshop that was said to be there, but I could not find it, even after going back and forth and checked the road across the street like what the internet says. I can’t find any picture on the net too so I don’t know if it is true that there is a plaque. Have any of you seen it? Where is it??

Scary.

Or in my case, ALMOST losing my blog. By luck, I migrated host a few months ago so still have the database zip file from sometime last May in my temporary Download folder somewhere in my laptop. By luck, I haven’t been updating much at all since May, so I only needed to manually search google cache for six pages and copy pasted them manually (the comments I only copy pasted in one big chunk so you will see them all in one comment per post).

Not so cocky now, aren’t I? You always think these things would never happen to you. But even the most careful squirrel falls from the tree!

Now that I’m posting though, I should probably talk a bit more about Bookie Mee.

Since year 2000 when I first entered University I have always had a personal space on the Internet to express myself. But like my self in real life, my personal space moves around too. Some last longer than the others, some have very short life. As I remember it, Bookie Mee is possibly the longest spot I have ever stayed on. It’s been over four years now since August 2007.

But now I’ve decided that I’m going to step back from the whole book blogging world (or I probably already am). Not that I stop reading, but I would most probably stop reviewing. There’s much give and take in this community, and as much fun as that is, I’ve decided that it’s time to channel my time and energy somewhere else.

What does it mean for Bookie Mee? I will keep it here. I might be back once in a while still to talk about books I’m excited about, but no promises.

What does it mean for you? You all stay on my reader which I still check once in a while whenever I’m in need to be in touch with the book world. All of your resources combined are so invaluable. I will lurk a lot on your sites, but may not leave as much footprint. Hope that’s okay, and hope you would still recognize me if I pop up once in a while. (though don’t ever feel obligated to reciprocate)

Even though this blog will continue to exist, it feels good to have some kind of closure. To announce that I’m stepping out of the inner circle and retiring. Consider me as a bystander now if you will.

Thank you all, it’s been a blast! :)

2006, 132pp

First line
1978 was the year that Ivory Coast, my beautiful country, got to see its first television ad campaign.

Award
Winner of the best first book at the International Comics Festival, Angouleme, 2006

At the end of the book there are some tidbits of information with pictures about their piece of clothing (e.g. pagne (pa-nye) is a piece of brightly colored, wax-printed cloth. Every pattern has a meaning so you need to watch what you wear.), drink (Gnamankoudji, known as ginger juice), and there’s even a recipe! I would really like to try making their African peanut sauce (which is more like stew). A lot of Indonesian food has peanut or peanut sauce, so it’ll be interesting to try this one.

Peanut Sauce recipe

2 lbs beef (or 1 free range chicken)
4 large tomatoes
1 can of tomato paste
2 large onions
1/4 lb jar of unsweetened peanut butter
1 hot pepper
salt
2 maggi cubes

Trim and cube the meat. Dice 1 onion. Brown the meat and onion in a heavy pot, add a bit of salt, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.
When all liquid has evaporated, add 4 tomatoes, cut into quarters, the second onion, cut in half, and a can of tomato paste.
After 10 mins, add water to cover the meat. Stir in the peanut butter, a pinch of salt and the hot pepper (don’t slice or crush – the pepper is meant to perfume the sauce). Remove the pepper after a while (serve it separately for people who like their food spicy), cover and simmer for half an hour.
After the 30 mins, remove the tomatoes and onions, blend them in a food processor and return to the sauce. Add a maggi cube. Top off with enough water to barely cover the meat. Place a lid on the pot and simmer for another 30 mins.
When a film of oil appears on the surface of your sauce it’s done.
Skim off the oil if you like and season to taste. Add the second maggi cube. Your sauce should be rich and flavorful. Serve with rice.

Unfortunately I cannot say the same with Through the Looking-Glass. I’m not sure if it was the timing or if it’s really a less piece of work, but the magic I found in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was a bit lost in the sequel. It was still a pretty good read, but I did not love it as much.

I read the Vintage edition on the right which has both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, both with illustrations by John Tenniel-the original illustrator. I decided to wait a bit for the second book after reading the first one, hence the gap (they were actually published with 6 years gap anyway).

In Through the Looking-Glass I found that characters often appear and disappear too suddenly (literally–like poof!) which I don’t remember happening as much in the first book and kinda baffled me a little bit. I laughed reading the first one a lot more too. Lots more. The second book is probably supposed to be smarter because it integrates chess moves throughout the entire story, but I never have much interest in chess unfortunately!

What I found interesting was a few key events or characters that were taken from Through the Looking Glass and get adapted into the Disney’s version of Alice in Wonderland, like:

the garden of live flowers (John Tenniel’s illustration on the right)

bread-and-butterfly

tweedledee and tweedledum (John Tenniel’s illustration on the right–as if you’re gonna get it wrong..)

and Mickey Mouse short where he goes through mirror and finds world on the other side of it is an obvious tribute to Through the Looking Glass!

My super favorite passage:

“‘Well, in our country,’ said Alice, still panting a little, ‘you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.’
‘A slow sort of country!’ said the Queen. ‘Now, here, you see it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!’” ~ p196

which I think so reflects the fast pace of our modern life.

1871, 170pp

I hate birthdays (and I mean mine!). There’s so much pressure to be happy and social and get confirmations of love from people around you. And often the birthdays fall on work days, people ask whether you’d do anything special so you feel like you really have to even though you may not feel to do anything after a long day at work. On top of that you get older another year, forcing you to think whether you have used your years on earth in the best way possible. The clock is ticking, you get less time and more things to do in life.

In other words, birthday is exhausting! So exhausting that I often get sick on my birthdays (oh heat of the pressure!). And worse than the rest of my other birthdays, this year I hit the big 30. I have spent almost the entire year of my last 2, thinking that this is it, this is the last twenties. Have I done everything I wanted to do before I turn 30? Where is my checklist? What do I need to prepare to be 30 and beyond?

Actually I’m not sure why I even write this post. Half of me really just wanted to close my eyes hoping the day goes by quickly and to emerge on the other side of the decade totally indifferent and unscathed. But the other half of me want to acknowledge that yes no matter how you think about it, it is a pretty big milestone (though completely arbitrary in the big scheme of things), so a bit of reflection is called for. I mean, really, 30 is a big deal. You jump to a different age bracket! Even visa and residency rules are getting harder when you turn three-zero (important for me who is citizen of the world).

Going back to the checklist. Honestly, it wasn’t carved on stone. In fact it was never written on paper. I’m guessing everybody has this mental list about things they want to do before they reach certain age. Some you manage to do some you don’t, and I guess the part of growing up is to accept that life is what happens when you’re planning to do something else. Looking back I do tick all the major points that I want to do by the time I’m 30, some I never thought I could do but happened anyway (love the surprises of life!). I have lived in 7 different cities in 4 different continents, married my high school sweetheart, taken a mortgage, done a month of backpacking trip, credited for 3 video games and 1 animated movie, published a piece in a magazine, and gone for lots and lots of traveling and road trips. Sure I have not jumped out of a plane or been to Japan, but they’re easily achievable within a year or two. I have not had a dog (not since I was a kid)–that’s probably one of the hardest to achieve with my nomaden style of living. Some things I thought I wanted to do, I no longer do. That’s the great thing about the list. It’s fluid and it’s changing all the time as the wheel of life goes on.

But if I was to learn anything in my 30 years of living, it’s that friendship and relationship is the hardest of them all. Probably especially for me who in the past 13 years never stays in one place longer than 3 years continuously. Despite my (sometimes their) best effort to keep in touch, physical distance does make a big difference. Friendships fade away. If I used to believe that the best of friends would always be there for you though you may not hold hands all the time, I learned it the hard way that it’s not true. That you do need to hold hands, keep in touch, nourish the friendship, and if you don’t the day you need them the most you’ll turn back and find they’re no longer there. So yes as you can tell, though I make new friends every time I go to a new place, I lose friends too. I lost a couple of important ones for reasons I cannot fathom. I don’t regret it as such because I guess part of growing up is to accept that people do grow in different directions and to let things go. If anything it does make me appreciate those who do stay and those who might come into my life in the future.

Here’s to another decade of life and surprises!

No I didn’t get sick this year. And had a lovely day too :). Like I said, I survived!

Well, at least the list nudged me to write this little post, right? I’m not staying long now, but I do have a couple of books I want to talk about so I’ll come back soon. In news of reading, you might have noticed on my sidebar that I started to read Jane Eyre months ago. Well I’ve been neglecting it a lot (all books really) and so far I’ve only got to around page 150ish, just when Jane meets Mr Rochester on the street when he falls from his horse. Now yesterday I was watching my foodie hero Jamie Oliver on the web, when somehow the newest Jane Eyre movie ads just showed up again and again (the movie was out months ago but I think the DVD is coming up soon hence the ads), and I was panicking everytime the ad showed up, because I hate spoilers! So imagine me frantically trying to mute the ad on my laptop and not see the clip at the same time (MUTE! MUTE! I don’t wanna hear what Mr Rochester is saying to Jane! I don’t want to see them kissing! Aarrgghh!). On a hindsight I probably should’ve just pressed the mute button on my laptop keyboard instead of trying to click the mute button on the small web video window with eyes half closed. Anyway, all that made me start to read the book again today as I want to find out what happens next.

Be back soon!

So instead of reading a book, I read the free newspapers. Now the free papers are kinda new to me too. In Australia we have one free paper, and that’s only in the evening, only available in the city area. The free paper MX is quite thin and mostly contains unimportant things, like magazine in a form of newspaper: gossip, light news, horoscope. But in London, there are one free paper in the morning from suburban area, and one in the evening. There is also a free magazine every Wednesday which I quite like (Stylist). The papers here are quite thick, and feel almost like real paid newspapers (actually I never pay for newspapers, so I don’t know what they’re really like). Okay, after a couple months, I started to notice that they contain mostly either murders or what Kate is wearing that day, but other random bits and pieces are perfect for the rather short tube rides I have.

Apart from the free papers, I read travel books, photography books, Japanese language learning books, I listen to podcasts. At home I read cookbooks and watch movies on my laptop (no TV yet). Anything but sinking into long period of reading. Especially at home, there’s far too much distraction for me to settle. Therefore I find non fiction to be a lot easier for dipping in and out. I get frustrated with fiction, with how slow my progress is by reading only a few pages in the morning.  I started a few books and have not finished any. I don’t want to name names, because I think it’s me, not the books!

Now going back to the one I did finish. There’s good reason for that. It’s only 89 pages long, with a few illustrations. The book is tiny. Has almost no weight. So on a good day I could even read it on one hand standing up. And it was given lent to me by a friend before I left Sydney. I think it’s very sweet to lend a book to someone before they go on a long journey. Sort of like saying, we’ll see each other again. (Though in my case he also wrote his address on the last page of the book so that I could send it back…) He asked me to REALLY return it because he can’t find it anywhere else. (Actually that part is not true either because I can see it in amazon.) I said, well what if I don’t return it back. After all I’m going to the other part of the globe. He can’t chase me for it. He said, “Oh you will. I’ve lent it to dozens of people. The book always comes back.”

So, that’s the story how the book came to be. It is Fup by Jim Dodge, an American, set in California. I’m not quite sure why he thought I would like it. It has nothing to do with where I’m going/am. It’s about a cranky old grandaddy and his grandson Tiny, a gentle giant young man, living in the farm. Grandaddy is obsessed with home brewed whisky and Tiny with making fences. And then there is Fup, a big duck, who is part of the family.

I wasn’t quite sure about the whole granddaddy grandson thing at the beginning, but I loooved it when the duck has come into the picture. The dynamic between the three characters is so endearing. I had many grins and laughs and heartwarming moments. At the end I’m still not sure what the whole point is, but I think it’s a lovely little book and I know why my friend liked it. It’s got him written all over it.

So, thanks Matt!

1997, 89 pp

“You know, I’ve seen 30,000 sunsets, and no two that I can remember have ever been the same. What more can we possibly want?” ~ Seven Moons, p67