15 Books

I've succumbed to yet another Facebook meme that has gone rabid. This one can be basically called 15 Books. You are supposed to choose 15 books that you love, or that had a major influence on your life. It was a very difficult task for me, given how much I enjoy reading, but here is the list I've come up with:

1. The Lord of the Rings | J.R.R Tolkien
2. Dune | Frank Herbert
3. The Sandman Graphic Novels | Neil Gaiman
4. The Passion | Jeanette Winterson
5. Housekeeping | Marilynne Robinson
6. Atonement | Ian McEwan
7. Disgrace | J.M Coetzee
   
8. The Remains of the Day | Kazuo Ishiguro
   
9. The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald
   
10. The Things They Carried | Tim O'Brien
11. In Cold Blood | Truman Capote
    
12. King Lear | William Shakespeare
13. Ex Libris | Anne Fadiman
    
14. A Wrinkle in Time | Madeleine L'Engle
    
15. True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle | Avi

Two books that probably influenced me greatly but which are too embarrassing to list: The Firm by John Grisham (it was the very first "adult" novel I ever read after I picked it up off my mother's shelf) and Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer (I read through the night trying to finish it, fell asleep, woke up around lunch and carried on where I had left off).

Near Misses: A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes, Practical Ethics by Peter Singer, Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George, Bartholomew and the 500 Hats by Dr Seuss, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisevitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

My Simple Pleasures

It all started when CL sent an SMS commenting about the simple joys of gelato, and watching happy dogs and exuberant children frolic about, with a subsequent query about what my simple pleasures were. Conventional wisdom tells us to count our blessings, a simple old as apple pie piece of advice that has been echoed by countless self-help and positive psychology books centering on how we can achieve happiness. Admittedly though, having the question posed so starkly gave me pause, though it hardly took me all that long to reply. What I can up with was:

reading a good book, watching an enjoyable movie in the cinema, browsing in a bookstore or a library, watching a play or a concert, holding someone you care about deeply, my dog wagging her tail and bringing me her toy ball whenever I step through the door, a beer in the pub with some friends, dinner at a nice restaurant with good company, meeting new and interesting people, catching up with old friends, randomly bumping into someone on a street corner, the thrill of pulling out a random piece of trivia or information, sleeping in, sharing a bottle of wine with company, staying up late doing absolutely nothing, spur of the moment decisions, suppers, lazy Sundays, reading the news, heartfelt kisses, the fresh smell of a brand new book and the musty smell of an old one, pretty notebooks, dry humour, long rambling discussions, sitting and watching the stars, hiking and walking, visiting new places, lovely little cafes and eateries

Of course the list doesn't end there. But the rather long list shows that as cynical as you care to be, there are lots of little things in life that inherently make it worth living.

Telegraph 100 Essential Novels

It is in the vogue for newspapers to come up with lists of novels that everyone should read now, and the latest list I have found is on the Telegraph website. I probably only discovered it so late because I don't read the Telegraph as a general rule but was directed there when a friend sent me a link about a new Jane Austen biography, claiming, you guessed it, to have found that mysterious man that broke her heart and eventually led her becoming the ultimate literary chick lit novelist.

The Telegraph's selections are:

100 The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein
99 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
98 The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore
97 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
96 One Thousand and One Nights by Anonymous
95 The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
94 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
93 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
92 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
91 The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki
90 Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
89 The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
88 Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
87 On the Road by Jack Kerouac
86 Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
85 The Red and the Black by Stendhal
84 The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
83 Germinal by Emile Zola
82 The Stranger by Albert Camus
81The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
80 Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
79 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
78 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
77 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
76 The Trial by Franz Kafka
75 Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
74 Waiting for the Mahatma by RK Narayan
73 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque
72 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
71 The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
70 The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
69 If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
68 Crash by JG Ballard
67 A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul
66 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
65 Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
64 The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz
63 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
62 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
61 My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
60 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
59 London Fields by Martin Amis
58 The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
57 The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
56 The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
55 Austerlitz by WG Sebald
54 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
53 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
52 The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
51 Underworld by Don DeLillo
50 Beloved by Toni Morrison
49 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
48 Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin
47The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
46 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
45 The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet
44 Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
43 The Rabbit books by John Updike
42 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
41 The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
40 The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
39 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
38 The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
37 The Warden by Anthony Trollope
36 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
35 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
34 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
33 Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
32 A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
31 Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky
30 Atonement by Ian McEwan
29 Life: a User’s Manual by Georges Perec
28 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
27 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
26 Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
25 The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
24 Ulysses by James Joyce
23 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
22 A Passage to India by EM Forster
21 1984 by George Orwell
20 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
19 The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
18 Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
17 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
16 Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
15 The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse
14 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
13 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
12 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
11 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
10 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
9 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
8 Disgrace by JM Coetzee
7 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
6 In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
5 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
4 The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
3 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
1 Middlemarch by George Eliot

I've personally managed almost a quarter of them. 24 out of 100. Mostly classic choices on the list but some odd ones - Waiting for the Mahatma by R.K Narayan? The Savage Detective by Robert Bolano? Strangely, it is those odd ones that I want to seek out first, if only to slake my curiousity as to why they were included!

100 Things

Yet another of those dastardly memes. It's random but fun though. Those I have managed are highlighted in Bold.

1. Started your own blog: Fairly obvious this one, though I have more trouble keeping to repeated new year resolutions to keep updating it regularly.
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii: I even walked on dried lava after a recent eruption
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity (you can always afford to give more)
7. Been to Disneyland: All of them except the ones in Tokyo and Hong Kong
8. Climbed a mountain: Several, including a 6,000m one in the Andes mountain range.
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped (I would love to, though!)
12. Visited Paris:
13. Watched a lightning storm
14. Taught yourself an art form from scratch: folding paper airplanes doesn't count does it, not that I was even any good at that?
15. Adopted a child: surely having a child is the more common.
16. Had food poisoning: once after having ten oysters at a buffet that had clearly gone off, and for half of a holiday in Indonesia when I was 9.
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty (went there, but it's still closed post 9/11)
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa (American tourist in front of me: "My Gawd, it's so small!")
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort (and a snow man, who promptly melted the next day)
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a marathon (I did manage a half marathon)
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset (on Mount Sinai, Manchu Picchu.....)
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person (at least half a dozen times)
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors (I guess China counts right?)
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa (but only Egypt)
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie (I have been interviewed on TV and been on televised gameshows)
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business (given my lack of entrepreneurial inclinations, this is not likely to happen)
58. Taken a martial arts class (Army unarmed combat - hated it)
59. Visited Russia (I really want to do this)
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies (I sold cookies for the Canadian equivalent - The Beavers)
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason (Hah! Fat chance!)
64. Donated blood, platelets, or plasma
65. Gone skydiving (Again, I would love to!)
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp (I want to visit Auschwitz, if I have a chance)
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter (though I have flown in a military transport plane, and a small four-seater)
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone (Surprisingly, this hasn't happened yet, touch wood)
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle (riding pillion in Vietnam and Cambodia)
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book (One day, perhaps)
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox (I'm now vaccinated, so no chance of this now!)
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury (Again, not likely to happen, given Singapore doesn't have juries)
91. Met someone famous (depends on how loosely you define famous)
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one (grandparents)
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a mobile phone
99. Been stung by a bee (a wasp actually, during army training)
100. Read an entire book in one day

A clean 50 out of 100, which is not bad at all.

25 Things

I succumbed to the rampant Facebook meme. So here are 25 things you may or may not know about me.

1. The sport I think I am best at is ice skating. (Unfortunate given that I am Singaporean)

2. I am not actually a 12 year ACS boy. I spent Primary 1 studying in Canada where I lived for five years.

3. I tend to like people very quickly, though I have come to realize that falling into like is not falling into love.

4. I wanted to be a Paleontologist and dig up Dinosaur bones when I was 5 years old.

5. I applied to Trinity College in Oxford after going on a school trip to the UK and visiting Oxford on one of those perfect summer days (of which I realized there are only 10 every year). Trinity was recommended by the person showing us around because his girlfriend went there and he said it had nice lawns.

6. I vacillate over making important decisions but I ultimately finally make my call mainly based on my gut instinct (and not reason).

7. I am a terrible procrastinator, and I often like the randomness of doing something at the spur of the moment.

8. When I travel, I prefer to backpack and I prefer to do so on my own. (Though I am on the lookout for good travel companions!)

9. I am probably one of the only people to shed a tear during the sequence where Gene Kelly dances and sings in the rain in Singin' in the Rain, which is one of the most joyous scenes in cinema. (Why? Ask me and I might tell you)

10. I like staying up late, and I am not a morning person by nature or inclination.

11. I still haven't learned how to drive a car.

12. I think that more guys than girls tried to hit on me when I was at University.

13. I have appeared on 4 televised quiz shows in my lifetime, and competed for my University in quizzing. (Yes, there is such a thing as quizzing tournaments!)

14. I sometimes wonder if coming back to Singapore was the right decision and if I should have stayed in the UK. In many ways, Oxford will always have my heart.

15. My dream jobs include writing for the Economist, becoming the film critic of the New York Times, a professorship at a top US University though I would settle for winning $20 million dollars and then being able to do what I want.

16. The first crush I remember having (other than a really sweet and quiet girl whom I always wanted to sit next to when I was five) was when I saw Natalie Portman in Leon (The Professional) when I was 13.

17. I probably have more than 2,o00 books in my bedroom. If a fire were to start, I would be in deep trouble.

18. Caleb actually means "dog" in Hebrew though it also means "Brave one". And I am born in the Chinese year of the dog.

19. I loved waterfalls when I was younger. Visiting Iguazu Falls (in South America) and Victoria Falls (in Africa) remain lifelong dreams. My family visited Niagara Falls a half dozen times when we were in Canada.

20. I attended an American high school for 3 months when I was 13.

21. Reading Science Fiction and Fantasy is one of my guilty pleasures which I picked up when I read Dune and The Lord of the Rings respectively when I was 14.

22. I think it would be wonderful to own a bookshop, a pub, or a cafe, or why not all three

23. I am inherently less competitive now than I was when I was younger, but I still dislike losing.

24. I once met the Sultan of Trengganu's wife in person (a sultana, I have been informed) when I accompanied a close friend on a holiday there. His family knew the Royals personally, apparently.

25. I am a closet romantic at heart despite my somewhat harder more cynical exterior. I call this being an M&M (hard on the outside, soft and gooey inside).

AFI Top 100 As Inspired by Rachel

Inspired by Rachel I am checking off all the movies on the American Film Institute 10th Anniversary Top 100 Film list that I have seen. The list is as follows, films I have seen are in bold:

1. Citizen Kane (1941)
2. The Godfather (1972)
3. Casablanca (1942)
4. Raging Bull (1980)
5. Singin' in the Rain (1952)
6. Gone with the Wind (1939)
7. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
8. Schindler's List (1993)
9. Vertigo (1958)
10. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
11. City Lights (1931)
12. The Searchers (1956)
13. Star Wars (1977)
14. Psycho (1960)
15. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
16. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
17. The Graduate (1967)
18. The General (1927)
19. On the Waterfront (1954)
20. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
21. Chinatown (1974)
22. Some Like It Hot (1959)
23. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
24. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
25. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
26. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
27. High Noon (1952)
28. All About Eve (1950)
29. Double Indemnity (1944)
30. Apocalypse Now (1979)
31. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
32. The Godfather Part II (1974)
33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
34. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
35. Annie Hall (1977)
36. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
37. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
38. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
39. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
40. The Sound of Music (1965)
41. King Kong (1933)
42. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
43. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
44. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
45. Shane (1953)
46. It Happened One Night (1934)
47. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
48. Rear Window (1954)
49. Intolerance (1916)
50. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
51. West Side Story (1961)
52. Taxi Driver (1976)
53. The Deer Hunter (1978)
54. MASH (1970)
55. North by Northwest (1959)
56. Jaws (1975)
57. Rocky (1976)
58. The Gold Rush (1925)
59. Nashville (1975)
60. Duck Soup (1933)
61. Sullivan's Travels (1941)
62. American Graffiti (1973)
63. Cabaret (1972)
64. Network (1976)
65. The African Queen (1951)
66. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
67. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
68. Unforgiven (1992)
69. Tootsie (1982)
70. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
71. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
72. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
73. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
74. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
75. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
76. Forrest Gump (1994)
77. All the President's Men (1976)
78. Modern Times (1936)
79. The Wild Bunch (1969)
80. The Apartment (1960)
81. Spartacus (1960)
82. Sunrise (1927)
83. Titanic (1997)
84. Easy Rider (1969)
85. A Night at the Opera (1935)
86. Platoon (1986)
87. 12 Angry Men (1957)
88. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
89. The Sixth Sense (1999)
90. Swing Time (1936)
91. Sophie's Choice (1982)
92. Goodfellas (1990)
93. The French Connection (1971)
94. Pulp Fiction (1994)
95. The Last Picture Show (1971)
96. Do the Right Thing (1989)
97. Blade Runner (1982)
98. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
99. Toy Story (1995)
100. Ben Hur (1959)

That makes 33 out of 100 films that I have seen in total or exactly one third of them. At this point I have to say, in all incredulity Titanic and The Sixth Sense on the list? Don't get me wrong, they are good enough films, but among the AFI's top 100, that really is quite stunning.

Movies high on my to watch list: The Searchers (a classic Western - I have been watching quite a few modern Westerns recently and it would be good to watch a seminal example of the genre), On the Waterfront (I coulda been a contender..... but I might save it for my movie appreciation group and Kris and Vern), Annie Hall (had the DVD for ages, Woody winning Best Picture), M*A*S*H (I have a growing appreciation of Altman after watching Gosford Park and Michelle has recommended this most highly).

Movies that rank on the whaddya mean you haven't seen this??! E.T The Extraterrestrial (I clearly had a deprived childhood), Rocky (I could have watched Rocky Balboa last year when it opened in cinemas but I refrained - Balboa was released thirty years after the original, goodness me), Jaws and King Kong (I loved the Peter Jackson remake and I really should watch the original).

Update (end Feb 2009): I have since added four movies to the list bringing the total to 37 - 2001: A Space Odyssey, Annie Hall, The Treasures of the Sierra Madre and MASH.