My Reading Habits

I came across this meme several times. It’s about reading habits, and I think every book blogger ought to try it, so that we can get to know each other more personally. So, here’s mine:

Do you snack while you read? If so, favourite reading snack:

I think the more suitable question for me is, do you read while you snack? For me snacks are included in daily meals, so I always snack at certain time, and if I’m not working at that time, then I would certainly pick a book and read few chapters. My favourite snack is biscuits.

What is your favourite drink while reading?

Water

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

I always like my book to be as neat and clean as possible, so I never write in them, but would sometimes underline important passages by pencil if I did not find any paper around. However most of the times I insert a blank paper into the book, so if I need to jot down an idea I’ll write a brief note on the paper, or if I need to copy a sentence or a quote for making the review, I’d write down the page and the subject, so I can come back later when I need it.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?

I use bookmark. Actually I’m a bookmark collection J, so every time I finish a book (if the copy provides one), I will keep the bookmark in a certain place. When I want to read a copy that has no bookmark, I can always choose one of my collections. You know, sometimes I try to recollect my mind about a book from the bookmark. It reminds me that I have read it (and like or dislike it J). However in case of a bookmark is not available, I dog-ear the page lightly. Later on after I find the marked page, I will straighten it again, and after sometime, the dog-ear mark would hardly visible.

Fiction, non-fiction, or both?

Fiction is always my favorite, but if I need or want it, I’ll read non-fiction too.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of a chapter, or can you stop anywhere?

I don’t have fixed time to read—and don’t have much either L, I can read anywhere, anytime (that’s why I always bring book everywhere I go). The consequence is I must often stop abruptly anywhere.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?

Haha..! No, the worst I’ll do would be closing the book and put it in my “swap” pile J.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?

If I can continue reading without understanding the unfamiliar word, I’ll skip it, but if the unfamiliar word is a key one, then I will stop and search for it in dictionary or just google it if I’m online.

What are you currently reading?

The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

What is the last book you bought?

Ford County by John Grisham (translated version). Grisham is one of my favorite authors, and it would be interesting to read his short stories. What I admire from Grisham is that he can write almost everything—thriller, romance, young adult, action, and now short stories (of course they are all still related to law). The other one is Joshua Files #5: Dark Parallel (Psstt..I think I'm going to need this after reading Dickens!).

Are you the type of person that reads one book at a time, or can you read more than one?

It depends on the book I’m reading, if it’s a fast reading or if I’m quite absorbed in it, I won’t read anything else at the same time. However when I get bored with a book but still want to continue it, I’ll switch to another light reading, before going back to my main reading, and so on.

Do you have a favourite time/place to read?

As I have said above, I read anytime and anywhere, but if I’m at home, I love to sit on my bed .

Do you prefer series books or stand alones?

It depends on the author. J.K. Rowling created Harry Potter, and I enjoyed every series of it!

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?

Yes! And more than one… J. For classics, it’s To Kill A Mockingbird, I can’t imagine someone who won’t enjoy it, it’s really beautiful—in writing and in meaning, so if you haven’t read it…I encourage you to do it (see…, I can’t stop myself to recommend this book every time I get a chance J). Beyond classics, I’ll recommend Harry Potter (not for the fantasy but for the meaning). Believe it or not, even my 68 old father read Harry Potter too! (and he read it faster than me!!). Now you know where I inherited my love of books from… J. Agatha Christie and John Grisham are authors that I would love to recommend too because I just love both of them.

How do you organize your books? (by genre, title, author's last name, etc.)

I just arrange it by size of the books. The space of my book cabinet is limited, so I have to arrange it so that all my books can fit in.

That’s it, do you want to do it yourself? Please feel free to copy the questions and post it in your blog!

Togetherness: My Reflections on Old Curiosity Shop

This is my reflections towards the book I’m reading: The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. I am not planning to write about every chapter, but only now and then when I feel it necessary to put my thoughts or reflections about some passages.

From page 70:

Grandfather: “…If we are beggars—!”
Little Nell: “What if we are? Let us be beggars, and be happy.”
Grandfather: “Beggars—and happy! Poor child!”
Little Nell: “Dear grandfather, I am not a child in that I think, but even if I am, oh hear me pray that we may beg, or work in open roads or fields, to earn a scanty living, rather than live as we do now. … If you are sorrowful, let me know why and be sorrowful too; if you waste away and are paler and weaker every day, let me be your nurse and try to comfort you. If you are poor, let us be poor together, but let me be with you, do let me be with you, do not let me see such change and not know why, or I shall break my heart and die.”

They say: ‘What you don’t know doesn’t hurt you.’ It’s true sometime, but most of the time people misunderstand the true meaning of it. When we are in sorrow, we try to conceal it from others (many times from our families or they who love us) because we think that it’s better for them if they don’t know. Well, we are wrong! When I love someone, it’s not a sorrow if I can carry the burden together with him/her, for I really want to lighten it. It will be more painful to me if someone I love concealed his/her sorrow from me.

And that’s what happened with Little Nell. I think the conversation quoted above has reflected how Nell felt towards her grandfather. It’s not the loneliness which Nell suffered the most from, but that she saw how her grandfather suffered from sleepless nights and mysterious works he seemed to perform, which Nell knew nothing about. It’s not wealth that Nell needed, but togetherness. It’s OK to be poor, as long she can live it in togetherness.

Gone With The Wind Read Along 2012

Gone With The Wind is one of the “scariest” novels for me. No, of course it’s not a scary novel, but the total pages did make me think twice before buying it. Will I make it all the 1448 pages of it? However, being the Pulitzer winning price, Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With The Wind is certainly a must-read book. Thanks to The Classics Club Project by Jillian, I found that Bzee (book blogger fellow from Indonesia—like me) also put Gone With The Wind in her list. So, I asked her whether we could read this book together. Then…I have a better idea. Why not hosting a read-along? I think there are many of you who haven’t had chance (or courage J) to read Gone With The Wind, yet so eager or curious to read it, or you have read it but want to re-read it. To read it together is going to be fun!

So, this is it..The Gone With The Wind Read-along 2012 , which will take place from September 1^st to November 7^th 2012. I will host it, with Bzee as a co-host. These are the details:

The book

The following data is taken from Pocket Books, June 2008 edition, which I will read, but you are free to choose any edition (paperback or e-book):

Total pages: 1448

Total chapters: 63

Total parts: 5

- Part 1: page 3 - 191

- Part 2: page 195 - 397

- Part 3: page 401 - 717

- Part 4: page 722 - 1180

- Part 5: page 1184 - 1448

The participants

This read-along is opened internationally, anyone is welcomed to join. Participant must sign up via comment box in the participant list page. If you want to post about this read-along in your blog, you can add your post URL in comment box of the participants list page. I will update the list periodically, you may join the read-along anytime (even in the middle of read-along schedule), as long as you can catch up to finish the book by November 7^th 2012.

It’s not a must, but I would appreciate if you’d grab and put the Gone With The Wind Read-along button in your post. Or if you don’t write any post, you can put it in your sidebar, linking here, to let your followers know about this read-along.

Oh… and for my dear Indonesian fellow bloggers—before you ask the question—yes, you may post in Bahasa Indonesia, but personally I recommend you to post in English, to make it easier for other participants to read your thoughts and have discussions.

The update posts

To read along together with friends is my main purpose of having this event, so I prefer to have some discussion after finishing each part. Therefore I plan to open an update posts page during the read-along where you can share URL of your own update posts. These posts are not mandatory, you can skip it if you don’t have anything to say.

If you only want to say something brief about certain part but do not feel like writing a post, or else you don’t have a blog, you can just make a comment on the “update posts”. With the “reply” button we can have a discussion there as well.

There will be four update posts, for part one to part four, while nearly at the end of read-along I will publish a “reviews page” (there won’t be update post for part 5, we can directly write a review for the whole book).

The giveaway

This is the best part! For you who post your updates in your blog or in comment box, will be able to join my giveaway! Each update post/comment would be counted as one entry, and at the end of read-along, I will pick one (or—hopefully—more) winner. To anyone who would like to host his/her giveaway during this read-along, please feel free to contact me, so I can post about your giveaway in this blog.

Reading schedule?

There won’t be any strict schedule to read certain pages in certain days, everyone can have their own pace. Just feel free to add your link after you finish certain part, anytime. This way participants can check how others are going, or have discussion about certain parts.

The reviews

Please add the URL of your review in the “reviews page” after finishing the novel. The review post is mandatory, but if you don’t have a blog, you can use comment box to write your opinion.

Starting end of last year, I have a habit to post my classics book reviews on the birthday of the authors. It will work also for Mrs. Mitchell, whose birthday is on November 8^th. That means we can finish our reading and write the review anytime, but we will publish it only on November 8^th as a ‘special gift’ for Mrs. Mitchell.

So…that’s it..let’s conquer those 1448 pages beginning on September 1^st 2012! The Participant List is already opened now, you can sign up from today. Welcome aboard Scarlett O’Hara...  J

Literary Classics Challenge - Friday Progress (4)

I had spent the whole last week together with the witty and flamboyant Oscar Wilde in his ‘ThePicture of Dorian Gray’. Sipping the 256 pages and publishing chapter posts every day was quite a hard task, but I really enjoyed every moment ‘till the end.

Actually the next book on my schedule is The Old Curiosity Shop by Dickens, and I have started the first few chapters, however now I don’t feel very excited to continue on. I don’t know, perhaps it’s because I have spent my energy and emotion to finish Dorian Gray. So, now I’m still not sure what to read next. I have Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dumas’ Twenty Years After on my TBR, but Dr. Jekyll is too gothic (not after Dorian Gray definitely!), and Twenty Years After…hmm..it’s 600s pages..! On the other hand, I have in my Kindle several classics short stories, maybe I’ll pick few of them to cool my brain off J. Besides, several of them are Victorian authors too, so I can still read something for AVictorian Celebration anyway.

 I have here: Thomas Hardy, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Henry James, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Edgar Allan Poe. Which one do you think I should grab first? J. Should I go to America? Or should I stay at the city of the following image for a little while….. Can you guess where it is?

The north end of Drury Lane runs into High Holborn-Louise Rayner source

The Picture of Dorian Gray

 [conclusion in English is at the bottom of this post]

“Like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart.”

Meminjam sebaris kalimat dari Hamlet karya Shakespeare yang juga dikutip oleh Oscar Wilde di buku ini, kupikir seperti itulah keseluruhan kisah The Picture of Dorian Gray ini. Dorian Gray adalah seorang pemuda 20 tahun yang ketampanannya menyiratkan kemudaan yang menyegarkan dan tanpa dosa, seperti jiwanya saat itu—saat sebelum dunia mulai meracuninya. Dorian bersahabat dengan seorang pelukis terkenal bernama Basil Hallward yang segera terpesona dan memuja Dorian. Basil melukis potret diri Dorian sambil mencurahkan kecintaannya pada pemuda itu ke dalam lukisannya, yang kemudian menjadi sebuah mahakarya.

Sahabat Basil yang lain, Lord Henry, adalah seorang pria yang memuja kenikmatan, dan memandang dunia dan kehidupan lewat cara pandang yang sinis dan skeptis. Lord Henry inilah yang kemudian—setelah berkenalan dengan Dorian—menyuntikkan ide-ide yang meracuni pikiran Dorian sehingga si pemuda menjadi pemuja kemudaan. Ia lalu ‘berdoa’ agar lukisan dirinya lah yang akan menjadi tua dan lelah akibat beban hidup Dorian, sementara dirinya sendiri tetap muda dan tanpa garis-garis kehidupan di tubuhnya. Entah bagaimana, ‘doa’ itu terwujud, dan ketika jiwa Dorian—akibat pengaruh buruk sekitarnya—makin bobrok, ekspresi dirinya di dalam lukisan itu pun pelan-pelan berubah. Sementara itu Dorian berubah menjadi makin jahat, dan jiwanya makin ‘gelap’. Dari luar ia tampak tanpa beban, padahal di dalam jiwanya keropos dan ia tak sanggup bangkit dari keterpurukan. Pertanyaannya, akankah Dorian Gray sanggup bangkit dari keterpurukannya? Ketika jiwa manusia sudah tergerogoti demikian dalam, manakah yang lebih gampang, berusaha ‘kembali ke jalan yang benar’ ataukah malah jatuh semakin dalam?

Dorian Gray adalah kisah gothic tentang gelapnya jiwa manusia, dan semua itu gara-gara racun pengaruh buruk dari lingkungan sekitarnya. Oscar Wilde telah merangkai kisah ini dengan cantiknya, memadukan sisi artistik dengan gaya menulis flamboyant khas dirinya, membuatku sangat menikmati kisah ini dari awal hingga akhir. 256 halaman itu bak secangkir kopi, bukannya kuminum dengan beberapa tegukan cepat, melainkan kuseruput sedikit demi sedikit sambil menikmati setiap sensasi yang bisa kureguk darinya. Benar-benar perkenalan yang memabukkan bersama Oscar Wilde. J Kalau anda ingin turut mencicipi kenikmatannya, percikannya ada di chapter posts ini (dari chapter I hingga XVII)

Lima bintang untuk Dorian Gray dan Oscar Wilde!

Conclusion:

The Picture of Dorian Gray, I think, is Oscar Wilde’s allusion to the world for over-worshipping beauty and youthfulness. Through this book we are also invited to see the development of human spirit in general. I see the picture of Dorian Gray as a reflection of his soul. Dorian wanted to have barter with the devil to exchange his own soul with the physical youthfulness of the painting, and with that, he hoped he will forever be free and have fun without having to bear the brunt of his actions because the painting was the one who will bear it.

I see there are two factors which initiated the fall of Dorian Gray's soul. First, the excessive worshipping of Basil Hallward towards Dorian Gray, that is the starting point; then coupled with the influence which Lord Henry has injected into Dorian’s mind, led Dorian to worship his own beauty and made ​​a prayer to barter his soul with the youthfulness of his picture. It is also interesting that, as one slumped deeper into his sin, his conscience being increasingly unbearable to him. When his soul was beginning to corrupt, Dorian could encourage himself to make repentance, the picture could act as his soul barometer, but when he has drawn deeper in the mud of sin, he refused to see the picture and chose to cover and hide it, both from his own eyes and from other’s. However, it is not easy to run away from one’s conscience; Dorian tried to please himself in hedonism. He plunged himself deeper in sin, so that when the last effort of ‘the representative of his conscience’ tried to take him away from the darkness, he could not bear it and killed him. At the end…this is the question for us all:

“What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

Oscar Wilde has fascinated me with his paradoxes and artistic style in writing Dorian Gray. Just as Basil Hallward had left something of himself in the picture of Dorian Gray, I believe Wilde had also left his flamboyant personality and passion of aestheticism in his writing. As I already mentioned in one of my posts, if book was a drink, Dorian Gray were a cup of coffee; instead of drinking it in gulps, I took it sip by sip, while savouring the bitter-sweet taste, feeling the warmth liquid flowing through your throat and inhaling the sweet fragrance that come into my nostrils. There are many aspects in this particular ‘cup of coffee’ that I can enjoy, which, if I drink it in a hurry, I will certainly lose the sensation! That is how I have savoured The Picture of Dorian Gray in about ten days, having been busy with reading and posting chapter posts, but in the end it ‘s worth all the efforts J. I enjoyed Dorian Gray till the last drop.

Five whole stars for this book!

Title: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Author: Oscar Wilde

Publisher: Penguin Popular Classics

Published: 1994

Pages: 256

The Revenge Is Approaching: Dorian Gray Chapter XVI-XVII

(p. 212-228)

What interested me...

"It was a marvellous spotted thing, as effective as the seven deadly sins."

It's a fine specimen of orchid called Robinsoniana. Lord Henry had cut it to be placed in his buttonhole.

What it's all about...

With a burdened soul, Dorian took a hansom to the slum area of London, where people like him found 'heaven' in opium dens. There a woman recognized him as the 'Prince Charming', the nickname Sibyl Vane used to call him. Unfortunately James Vane—who at the same time was somewhere near the den—heard it and tried to kill Dorian to take revenge for his sister. However Dorian used his immortal youthfulness as an alibi (as Sibyl’s death was already 18 years ago but Dorian’s appearance was seemed to be in the twenties), and escaped the murder attempt.

Dorian held a tea party and invited several dukes, duchess, including Lord Henry. Oscar Wilde offered smart and interesting debate here, especially between Lord Henry and his cousin Gladys. And at the end of this chapter Dorian fainted at his own conservatory, because to his horror, he had seen the pale face of James Vane behind the window...

My random thoughts...

Several interesting quotes from Lord Henry, that after thinking about it, there’s truth there…

"Like all good reputations, every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity."

"Scepticism is the beginning of Faith."

"We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible."

Note:

This would be my last chapter post for The Picture of Dorian Gray, I would conclude all after finishing the third last chapters, and will post my review as a wrap-up post.

Basil Hallward on The Picture of Dorian Gray: Character Thursday (18)

Basil Hallward

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Basil is a young talented and well known artist who was fascinated by a rich beautiful young man called Dorian Gray. After they become friends, Basil painted a picture of Dorian. His passion towards Dorian reflected to the picture—which later become Basil’s masterpiece. After seeing his own picture, Dorian Gray wished to keep his youthfulness immortal, while the picture must bear all his corruption in flesh as well as in sins. The altered Dorian was now enthralled by the poisonous-mind Lord Henry, and neglected Basil. However, Basil kept taking good care of his friend. From the first time Dorian met Lord Henry, it was Basil who warned Lord Henry to not poisoning Dorian’s innocent mind.

I see Basil as a man with a strong morality. Every time Lord Henry or Dorian said of something cynical or immoral, Basil would say something like, ‘you know you don’t mean that!’, as if he trusted that his friends would not think such an awful idea. In many occasion Basil tried to prevent Dorian from moral degradation in the society, however he never forced his will to Dorian. No matter how Dorian has neglected him as a friend, Basil would always be patient to him. When Dorian did not let Basil see his own painting, Basil sadly accepted Dorian’s decision without arguing.

which one is Basil, do you think?...

When negative rumors about Dorian began to spread within the society, Basil always stood for Dorian. And after Basil knew that Dorian had changed completely and had done all the evils everyone had rumored about, Basil did not accused him nor said hard things in anger. Basil only asked Dorian to pray together with him, to ask for repentance from God. He did not mention about Dorian’s sins, but only wish him to be relieved from them. How lucky anyone who has a friend like Basil!

If there was any negative point in Basil’s character, it was perhaps his idolatry to Dorian. I mean, it’s normal to love and adore someone, but I think Basil had been over-worshipping Dorian, that had a bad influence to Dorian in the end. But overall, I like Basil Hallward, he is a friend who will always be there for us, no matter how bad we treated him sometime… Don’t you just love to have a friend like that?