W. Somerset Maugham : On Art

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words from book #1

"In my heart was a desire to live more dangerously. I was not unprepared for jagged rocks and treacherous shoals if I could only have change - change and the excitement of the unforeseen" 

- The Moon and Sixpence, Maugham

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Hunting Books in Bali Part II

Two years after Hunting Books in Bali Part I, I finally able to sit down and write a decent entry. Ubud as the art, culture and spiritual center of Bali has the best selection of books in the whole island. Travelers actually go there to read and contemplate, in between their busy schedule of meditation, yoga and aura reading classes. The annual Ubud Writers and Readers Festival also help to spark the literature virus to the small town. In no particular order, here they are.

Pondok Pekak Library and Learning Center

Aside from being the best library in Bali, where you can borrow books with all sort of genre during your stay in Bali, Pondok Pekak also offers art classes like Balinese dance, carving, painting and music. They have a very comprehensive collection for Indonesian interest. There’s also a special section books for sale with a very good price. I found some real treasure there (Frida Kahlo’s biography and The Memory Keepers Daughter). Deposit is required.

Ganesha Bookshop

Definitely my favorite used book shop in the island. There are many others but you can always count Ganesha for some sophisticated and interesting literature selection. Ubud sure does invites well read travelers from all over the globe. Prices started from 50,000 – 100,000 IDR and you can trade back for half the price. They recently put on an AC inside and thoughtfully provide wooden stool for a comfortable book browsing. There is also another Ganesha in Petitenget, housed inside Biku (tea house and a bookshop!) with comfy leather chair and romantic reading light.

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Monsieur Lagerfeld's Library

via The Selby
I'd rather wish he's my Uncle Karl.

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Recent Treasure Acquisition

I bought books like a librarian on steroid. I found a very kind older Kiwi couple who had to sell their books after moving out to Bali. There, I found some of the best used books I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Their lovely traditional house was flooded by rows of books and two georgeous cats. It brought me back to my visit to Shakespeare & Co., back then in Paris.



Here are the treasure list:



Eva Luna (Isabel Allende)

Under the Tuscan Sun (Frances Mayes)

Picasso: Creator & Destroyer (Arianna Huffington)

Switch Bitch & Over to You (Roald Dahl) – beautiful vintage Penguin edition I may add

The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)

The News from Paraguay (Lily Tuck)

The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency ( Alexander McCall Smith)

One Hot Summer in St. Petersburg (Duncan Fallowell)

Shogun (James Clavell)

84, Charring Cross Road (Helene Hanff)

Sea of Poppies (Amitav Ghosh)



...and to think that my to-read list in goodreads shows 123 books. Tsk.

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Counting the Days to 2010 Ubud Writers & Readers Festival

If you just wake up everyday, go to work and cari makan, that’s your preoccupation and you don’t think about other things. Reading a book could help you think about other things. It should be entertaining, but it should also help you think about things.
- Tash Aw, in an interview for Quill magazine

Two months from now (hopefully) I would be in a wooden lounge chair, sipping a freshly brewed fragrant Balinese coffee, hands busy scribbling on my Moleskine, brimming with ideas and inspiration from world's most prolific writers. Ubud's soulful breeze would be caressing my hair and love for words would be my intimate companion apart from the fellow book lovers and brilliant writers.

2010 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival will take place on 6-10 October.

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Online Bookstore with a Soul

Being an avid reader, I'm always in search of good books. I read reviews, stalking wishlist of other bookworms, trying to scourge a book deal and swapping book. The high price put on imported books in this illiterate country is insane. The only hope I have to survive a book diet is to buy elsewhere. Some of my favorite book hunting place are Bras Basah Road stalls in Singapore, second hand book shops in Kuta (FYI, still expensive) and recently, buying books online.

The problem about shipping it to this corner of the world is the sky high shipping price. It is just silly to buy a book whose shipping cost is much higher than the book itself. However there are two online book shops that offer free and low price shipping. Book Depository, a company from U.K, send book for free to anywhere on the world and their price is still lower than imported books sold in book stores here. I ordered five books as I mention in earlier entry, and all arrived safely home.

Yesterday, I purchased two books which has been in my wishlist for as long as I can remember. A memoir about reading and books by Larry McMurthry and a reading recommendation aptly named More Book Lust. I bought those two babies in what could be the most environmentally friendly book shop, Better World Books. This is my first time buying book with options like used or new, carbon free shipping and conciously knowing that by buying an eight bucks used book I have also contributed for global literacy.

Check out this cute e-mail I received from Better World Books :


Hello,

(Your book(s) asked to write you a personal note - it seemed unusual, but who are we to say no?)

Holy canasta! It's me... it's me! I can't believe it is actually me! You could have picked any of over 2 million books but you picked me! I've got to get packed! How is the weather where you live? Will I need a dust jacket? I can't believe I'm leaving Mishawaka, Indiana already - the friendly people, the Hummer plant, the Linebacker Lounge - so many memories. I don't have much time to say goodbye to everyone, but it's time to see the world!

I can't wait to meet you! You sound like such a well read person. Although, I have to say, it sure has taken you a while! I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but how would you like to spend five months sandwiched between Jane Eyre (drama queen) and Fundamentals of Thermodynamics (pyromaniac)? At least Jane was an upgrade from that stupid book on brewing beer. How many times did the ol' brewmaster have one too many and topple off our shelf at 2am?

I know the trip to meet you will be long and fraught with peril, but after the close calls I've had, I'm ready for anything (besides, some of my best friends are suspense novels). Just five months ago, I thought I was a goner. My owner was moving and couldn't take me with her. I was sure I was landfill bait until I ended up in a Better World Books book drive bin. Thanks to your socially conscious book shopping, I've found a new home. Even better, your book buying dollars are helping kids read from Brazil to Botswana. Eagerly awaiting our meeting.

I'll keep buying for sure!

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Wise Quote from Someone Else #1

"One’s life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father’s library had not comtained the right books"
Graham Greene (Travels with My Aunt)

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Recent Bookish Things

Found a hot blog which sole purpose of existence is collecting picture of hot guys reading. Yes, apparently men do read.

Five out of five baby books arrived safely at home. They came from Book Depository U.K, passed the volcanic outrage all the way to Indonesia. The best news is Book Depository delivers books almost everywhere for free!

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Wicked-ly Hilarious

We don't go on having babies, that's quite apparent. We only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out. Once we really get the full measure of it -we're slow learners, we women- we dry up in disgust and sensibly halt production.

But men don't dry up, Melena objected; they can father to the death.

Ah, we're slow learners, Nanny countered. But they can't learn at all.

page 8, Wicked by Gregory Maguire

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Free Vintage Ex Libris Template

Something free and beautiful for your book collection. Click here to download and printing instruction. Via designsponge.

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Recent Things That Made Me Mooing

Latest Magazine addiction
Monocle. What a perfect magazine should be. Enlightening, informing, enticing.
Lonely Planet Magazine. Very hard to find here but I savored each page in it.

Couch Potato Watches...
Tropic of Capricorn on BBC Knowledge Channel. Mostly because Africa mystifies me. Partly because of Simon Reeve's boyishly handsome charm and come on, the man "... has survived malaria, played polo with the corpse of a headless goat, swum with sea-lions, fished for piranhas, climbed the equivalent of half-way Everest while surviving on coca leaves, travelled around the planet by van, canoe, car, train, boat, horseback, helicopter, plane, a 50-metre-long $1m truck, and used a zip-line to get inside one of the most repressive states in the world." What's not to adore?

Unhealthy Food Obsession
Calamari. It's like a five weeks pregnant calamari craving. Strange.


Books Treasure Chest
Pondok Pekak Library & Learning Center, Ubud. Lowest prices for second hand books and their library collection is just amazing.

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I Would Kill For This

A collection of 100 postcards, each featuring a different and iconic Penguin book jacket. From classics to crime, here are over seventy years of quintessentially British design in one box.

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Books That Nearly Broke My Back

Recent purchase on latest trip to Jakarta:

1. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski (hardcover & on sale for a mere 100.000 IDR)
2. Lust, Caution by Eileen Chang
3. More About Nothing by Wimar Witoelar
4. Oeroeg by Hella S. Haasse
5. Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
6. A Version of the Truth by Jennifer Kaufman & Karen Mack
7. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
8. Middlemarch by George Eliot

and it was only a week trip.

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Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2009: Indonesian Literature on the Global Stage

Due to a very busy schedule of holidays, my work in BaLi (or affectionally shortened as “Banyak Libur”) was interrupted to a certain degree causing e-mails traffic jam in my inbox. Idul Fitri was not fully done as can be seen in the unfinished paving project in front of my office; but yet we are welcoming Galungan and Kuningan tomorrow. This year’s Ubud Writers and Readers Festival was jammed between those two holidays. Dreadfully, I had only one day to spare.

After a late start (was watching a splendid performance of ‘A Midsummer’s Night Dream’ the night before), I made it on time to Neka Museum just before Seno Gumira Ajidarma, Zeffry Alkatiri, Nelden Djakababa, NH Dini and Pam Allen (as moderator) took their seats. The panel session: Indonesian literature on the global stage. Or, lack thereof. The small audiences, consisted mostly of foreigners and as usual, only few locals, were obviously has been exposed to one or more works of Indonesian literatures. After a brief introduction of the writers, the moderator then moved to ask about how important it was for the writers to have their works translated and published abroad. Seno Gumira Ajidarma in his reknown candid self answered, “It’s not that important for me but it is important for Indonesia, to show the world that we can write.”

When the moderator asked to the writers about what was their early exposition to literature and if formal education got anything to do with it, the response were amusing. It is fair to say that all of the writers have had little brush with literature on their early ages. Nelden Djakababa admits frankly that she was traumatized by her school experience when she was pressed to memorizing Armin Pane’s ‘Belenggu’ instead of discussing it. Zeffry Alkatiri also admits that in his limited childhood, he was at first reading only magazines or comic books. Seno Gumira Ajidarma recalled Chairil Anwar poems as his early exposition on Indonesian literature and it was due to the fact that his poems was always in use at every school competition. The Grande Dame of Indonesian women writers, NH Dini, admits that she was lucky to have good teachers at school who shared with her the passion for reading, which ultimately made her a reader for life. In her soft Javanese accented voice, she says she's an autodidact writer who learns how to write by reading. To my surprise, she also admits to the audiences on how limited was her budget to buy books and how she counted on her friend in France to send her books. It was NH Dini, a well-known writer and I dread to think of another readers who share the same hardship on purchasing books which by the way, are getting more expensive each year.

Anton Kurnia, another panelist, came belatedly at that moment and in a brief summary (between sweating and talking, since it was very hot in Ubud) told the audiences about his reading (an adult magazine which published crime and sex articles together with Camus’s short story) and what it means for him to write. He calls it “solidarity in solitude” on how he writes about the country and its people. The panelists also discussed about the need to strengthen readership in Indonesia first, then later to bring it abroad. What kind of literature would it be if the work was not known in its original language and origin. It was quite a memorable session and as an Indonesian hoping to be one day hearing Seno Gumira Ajidarma or Danarto mentioned in the same breath as Vikram Seth or another Asian writer, I hope this event could be a platform for Indonesian wealth of literature to be known abroad.

To sums it up, Indonesian literature should first be founding a strong hold in Indonesia itself. It can be done only by erasing the grave prejudices most people have on the word ‘literature’ as a heavy, intimidating and intellectually superior meaning. Memorizing poems or classics surely are not enough to create a reader out of a student. Reading is a process. One moves from fairytales and storybooks to comics to short stories to poems to novels. Adapted film can also be another media to put Indonesia on international stage such as “Laskar Pelangi” to name one. Richard Oh, in his sparkling comment, said, “We are unfortunate that we weren’t colonialized by the British” as witnessed in the thriving growth of Indian or Malaysian literature and their easier access to international publication. Eric Setiawan’s “of Bees and Mist”, for example, has been published abroad and he might be a beginning of many Indonesian diaspora writers who can tell the world about Indonesia.

Before I ended this entry, I’d love to quote Seno Gumira Ajidarma when he says that ‘the love of literature doesn’t always to be found in school and writing doesn’t always about technique but also about things that you have to say’. Very well said, indeed.

P.S: Sorry, due to my camera being broken, I couldn't take any shot of this event.

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Confessions of A Bookaholic

1. I confess I have plenty of unopened books scattered all over the house and yet I still appallingly buying or borrowing new books whenever situation permit me to do so.

2. I confess I shamefully prefer not to lend my precious book to a stranger or a ‘friend’ (because in most of the case, it happens that a friend of a friend borrows it and it will eventually ended up in wilderness). It feels like that I have missed a limb.

3. I confess I once stole a book from hotel library. Guilty as charged.

4. I confess that there are some low moments in my life when I prefer to spend time with a book and a cup of strong Toraja coffee, getting swept of my boring mundane life to the other world, than going out with real people.

5. I confess I still read on bed in the worst yet most comfortable position ever known in history and certified by optometrist to be sure giving you bad eyesight (I’m minus 4 and counting, for this very reason). Oh well.

6. I confess that if there is such a thing as ‘bibliorgasm’ I surely have had hundreds of them whenever I got a new book to read ;-)

7. I confess to wishing fervently that one day I will fall in love with someone by the books, or library he owns.

8. I confess if it happened that my check-out time from Hotel World has come, my heaven will be some sort of a spectacular library.

9. I confess I’m not the neatest reader. My books are creased, spilled, tattered and occasionally ripped…a healthy sign that it’s been savored passionately.

10. I confess the concept of retirement is very tempting. I can’t wait to read as much as I can when that time arrives (optimistically thinking my eyesight then will be as good).

11. I confess the reason I select my handbag is if it’s big enough to carry a book.

12. I confess that my friends find me insufferable if they found themselves trapped with me in a bookshop. It will be most likely that I spent few hours in there, lost between shelves (and later on, will belatedly realize I came with a friend).

13. I confess I visit online book store when I’m supposed to finish works.

14. I confess whenever I travel; local book shop is always in my top priority even tough in some countries I couldn’t even read the alphabets.

15. I have confessed. Now is your turn.

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Wonderful Way to Spend Your Retirement

A 91-year-old woman from Stranraer in south-west Scotland is believed to be Britain's most prolific library book reader after staff at her local library realised she is on the brink of borrowing her 25,000th book. Louise Brown, who borrowed her first book from Castle Douglas library in 1946, now reads about 12 books every week – chiefly Mills & Boon romances, war stories and historical dramas – and has never had a fine for returning a book late. Janice Goldie, of Dumfries and Galloway Libraries, said: "The staff at Stanraer library think she is a remarkable lady and look forward to her weekly visits."

-From an article in Guardian.co.uk.

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More Reason to Take Coffee Break

..if the coffee itself is not already an excuse, I mean. Listen to these three charming fellow reading passage from some of the best classic books such as Pride & Prejudice, Great Expectations or High Fidelity. I don't think drinking coffee will ever be the same after this.

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Murakami New Book: 1Q84

Can't wait for it to be translated into English. As Haruki Murakami's die-hard fan, I pledge to start saving now. After all, two hard-covers of 1,000 something pages does sounds expensive. No publisher review has leaked yet beside this tiny bit of info that the book is about 'two characters, a man and a woman, who are searching for each other'.

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Summer Reading

Ah, Summer. The glorious season to read. During vacay, at home or in your favorite cafe (like what I do all the time). AbeBooks compiled lists of 2009 summer read. There are classics as well as new books from new writers. Currently, I have 52 to-read books in my goodreads page. How I wish I own more than a pair of eyes and hands.

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