i just found out today that when you like someone - why does this sound so juvenile? it does sound like the sort of thing a 13 year old girl would say, doesn't it? - you turn other advances to you off, even anvil-sized ones. i guess one of the few things i truly regret is the fact that i once chose a clearly unsustainable relationship over a possibly much more fulfilling one due to naivete.

it's (all) sort(s) of depressing, really, when you think of what could just have been.

my dad's been asking me as to why i haven't blogged for a bit, and it is true that i have neglected my blog for quite a bit, so i guess i shall make atonements for it this evening.

there's actually a really bad joke i have with regards to atonement, and it is directly relevant to (if not actually lifted verbatim from) dan brown's new book, but it is really bad and icks me out so i think i'll give it a pass. it really is that bad and i don't think it was meant to be a joke in the first place, but you know how mr. brown is when it comes to writing - it's a whole lot of garbage and improbable circumstances that become believable only after you've had 5 pitchers of ice-cold beer. as it turns out, logic is optional in a dan brown novel.

let me just say that i am glad i paid nothing for the book. just the other day i was at our terribly-understocked fishing village bookstore and saw it sitting on the rack for a rather hefty rm99.90. for perspective, i can get a meal for rm5. dan brown's book was not worth 20 meals then, and now that i have actually read it, i think i should have been paid instead for the time i wasted and the horror i endured scuffling with his almost unreadable prose. if this was the uk i'd have returned the book to border's the next day, but such policies do not exist where i live, so thank god for michelle, who gave me a link to the e-book.

there is a decent twist in there, but half the plotlines were rather predictable; also, i found the Ultimate Evil Plan (as in "I Will Destroy The World Ha Ha Ha") in the book to be somewhat unfulfilling. i like my bad guys to have actual tangible plans. i want them to engineer the imminent destruction of the world in a very concrete sense. buildings must fall and people must run helter-skelter as if they were chased by a pack of wildebeest. i don't care how intelligent or ironic or spirited or spiritual the plan is, i want something incredibly palpable as a potential consequence if i'm reading your sunday kitsch.

otherwise supply me with characters which are at least as thick as a cardboard cut-out and imbue the storyline with a modicum of emotion instead of bucketfuls of ineffective melodrama. (you know what, i don't even know how anyone can fail at creating melodrama.) maybe have your characters be slightly circumspect not only to the obvious fallouts of their actions, but the nuances that lie behind an incident as grievous as abandoning a child.

and don't even get me started on what the fuck a camera is doing undetected in a blonde wig.

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i bought khaled hosseini's a thousand splendid suns the other day, and that was quite alright. i can't say it's amazing, because at some points the fishing lines between mr. hosseini's pen and my heartstrings and the vigour with which he was tugging at them were about as subtle as being slapped in the face by a trout or being dunked into a pool of sludge.

i don't know, man, but if one of your main characters loses her education, and then her best friends, and then her parents, and then her dignity by getting married off to a sadistic radical, i don't think you should have the other protagonist suffer almost exactly the same fate.

not that it was a bad book, really - i found it stronger than the kite runner, quite possibly because the protagonist in that one was a bit of an impenitent asshole. but then again here i am running my mouth off, especially since i delight in pointing out that i like my characters when they have that duality to their personalities, that they're good and bad, and that they're sometimes assholes and they're sometimes saints because i find that that makes them human.

so maybe it's to do with how you take your books. i take, perhaps unfairly and unnecessarily, hosseini's works as extended fairytales, replete with exotic localities and moustache-twirling forces of evil and on that basis decide that i prefer his second novel to his first.

all which i find arbitrary, really, although to be fair hosseini's a far better writer than You-Know-Who.

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oh my god, i am doing booktalk again. i know people hate it when i do booktalk but i can't help myself. i love books and i love films and while i realise that people are slightly more receptive to the latter when i drone about them, i cannot neglect that i grew up on the classic tales of enid blyton and the novelisations of disney movies (um... what?).

there was originally a joke here regarding the people i know and the books they read during the formative years of their lives but i shall refrain from any of them, apart from pointing out that one of them had to do with you, rashid karim.

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everyone i know knows that i love meiyin, bless her kind soul, but i do think she has some kind of a confidence in me and i really appreciate that.

actually, many people do. they tell me things like "you'll be fine" and "if you can't do it, no one can," and it all sounds so supportive and positive and nothing like what some other people have told me. some people say things like "you can't choose" or "you can't be picky" or "just take whatever comes your way right now" and while i get that they are technically right, they are also somewhat negative.

it's a bit like saying "don't expect such good grades for your examinations" or "maybe you should be prepared for expulsion" in response to i hope i score well this time round.

sometimes it really is good to give someone (false?) hope.

if i could do anything in the world, at this point i'd probably open a boutique hotel in barcelona and spend the rest of my life running it.

i think rashid's mom calls this escapism.