reygreena’s books collection

Marjane Satrapi
Pantheon
Softcover, 2005
Graphic Novel/Memoir
978-0-375-71467-2
Aksara Pacific Place – IDR 158,000

What I like about “Embroideries” is the fact that it’s very outspoken and hilarious. It’s about something that most women have discussed with their girlfriends. Marjane wrote her own, gathering with all the women around her including grandmother, mom, aunts, neighbors and friends for what they called as an afternoon tea party and ‘a long session of ventilation of the heart’. It’s pretty much an open discussion about sex, love affairs and making fun of men.

The conversation starts with talking about someone else’s life secret, then progressed to their own secrets; how one of them never seen a penis although she has already 4 daughters, how to fake virginity or to get an embroidery done, about getting white magic so a boyfriend would be persuaded to get married, how good it is to be a mistress and many more.

The best story is definitely the miracles of plastic surgery. In order to keep her husband from having an affair with younger woman(en), an aunt decided to get her buttocks and breasts done. Now her buttocks are tighter, her breasts are fuller. What she did was basically removing some fat from her (big) ass and got them injected to her (small) breasts.  Voila! Now, she’s the most beautiful wife for her husband. Every time the idiot-husband of her kisses her breasts, you know he’s actually kissing her ass! Hahahaha…

Marjane is an Iranian but surely she shares the same stories with women everywhere regardless nationality. From housewives to artists to career women, every woman has their own similar stories about finding a man, keeping the man and keeping their appearances to keep the man :)

Realistically funny, definitely bold and bawdy, the book offers full laughter and full of surprises on every page turning. We’ll never know what topic and whose stories are coming next and be the central of the tea party joke.

I thought I would never get to have this book. Sometime last year I ordered the Bahasa version from an online bookseller and the book arrived in such horrible state I insisted on returning it. While killing time after working on audit reports two days back, I spotted this book on the top shelf of Aksara fictions. It stood side by side with “Persepolis 1&2″ from the same author, which story I had also watched on DVD mid last year. Too bad “Persepolis 1″ was only one copy left and it was slightly damaged. Maybe next time for the two ;) The Bahasa version called “Bordir” is available from Gramedia publisher, priced at idr 35,000.

Scarlett Thomas
Canongate
Paperback, 2008
Science Fiction
Kinokuniya Ngee Ann City – SGD 17.95

This is definitely one of the books that’s hard to read yet hard to put down. The book itself looks mysteriously inviting with bright cover and what look like black leaves of papers inside. It turned out that it was just the outerside that’s coloured black, the papers inside are still normal papers. I was almost excited having to read a novel from black papers hahaha…

With so much praises on the covers, it thought this book must be special. It is indeed, not that I like it’s specialty. First, I don’t like science fictions and this is one if them! Secondly, it explores thoughts, something that I believe is tedious and aggressive. I mean, thought would have no end. Why would anyone explore it? Reading this novel consumes so much of my energy (not that I comprehend the whole thing).

Ariel Manto is a post-grad student preparing her thesis on ‘experiments of the mind’. When she found “The End of Mr. Y” on a second-hand bookshop, she can’t believe her luck! She’s ready to give in all the money she has for the book. The book is exceedingly rare, and told cursed. It was written by Thomas E. Lumas who mysteriously disappeared after he wrote the book. With the book, now begin Ariel’s thrilling adventure of love, sex, death and time-travel.

Remember “Quantum Leap” or “Sliders” TV series? This is something like it, only more complicated and less entertaining. Half of the book is looking for the secret tincture that would make people able to explore mind, someone else’s mind to be exact. I am just going to spoil it for you.

Make the tincture in the following way:-

Combine one part Carbo Vegetabilis, that is, vegetable charcoal, in the 1,000th centesimal homoeopathic potency, with 99 parts holy water in a glass retort or flask and succuss the mixture ten times.

FD 1893

I just kept reading it although most of the time I almost puked from the spinning. I wasn’t able to digest the whole thing yet I wanted to know how all the mess would end up. To make the book even tougher to read, it is written in font with so many tails… Gosh!

Indeed, a special book for special people who understand what this book ia all about and who would think the story is as fascinating as the cover. For myself, the only enchantment is as far as those written on the covers. Beyond it, is a different world altogether in which I am too dumb to understand or I consciously refuse to understand.