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| National Geography Cafe in London |
I am addicted to books. I go to a bookshop looking for a specific read and I go to a bookshop even when I do not have any purchase in mind. Whenever I walk into a bookshop, I habitually browse through the shelves and pick up books at random.
I love the concept of serendipity. Somehow I have a knack in coming across books which happen to resonate with my thoughts at the time. Of course we only pick up books which resonate with our thoughts and what interest us at the time, what I meant was I literally walk right into these books. A classic example: one Sunday afternoon, my husband and I got into a heated argument about some issues and I was feeling very misunderstood and had to get out of the house. I drove to a shopping mall ten minutes away from my house. After having a cup of coffee at Starbucks, I decided to place an order for a book called “ Alone Together” by Sherry Turkle at the bookshop located on the first level of the shopping plaza. When the woman was filling out the order form taking down my particulars, I turned and look to the shelf on my left. The book entitled “ The Meaning of Wife”, a book written by Anne Kingston was staring right at me. How surreal! Just as I was pondering about to what extent a wife’s loyalty lies, there it was the book to be read with a view to find some enlightenment.
How I ended up placing an order for MIT Professor Sherry Turkle’s book “Alone Together” was rather serendipitous too. For months, I had been thinking about how the virtual world where we were sharing information and pictures in could pose all kinds of possibilities as well as untruths about who we really are. I was thinking about how the internet had made communication easier and how often I find an easier way out to send instant messages instead of picking up the phone and speak to the person directly hence avoiding any possible unpleasantness of declining an invite or delivering some piece of information which would not be welcome by the recipient. Personally I cannot live without the internet and connectivity is a factor which is high up in my priorities when booking accommodation away from home. I was inspired and wrote a short story about how a young woman posted her twin’s family photographs to make up her on line identity on facebook. Indeed prior to reading about the existence of the book written by Professor Turkle, “while we rejoice about the birth of the internet and instant messaging to enable us to stay connected, we are far from being connected at all” had been the theme running through my head hence my earlier post for my blog entitled: Do Not Forward. Then early this year, I was catching up with books update from NY times.com and came across the review on the book by MIT Professor Sherry Turkle and prompted me to ring around books stores in town to check if the book was available in their stores however to no avail. As the title “Alone Together Why we expect from Technology and less from each other” indicates, Professor Turkle in her book analyzes our increased dependence on technology and the desiderata for electronic interaction.
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| Art House Gallery Cafe in Southampton |
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| Red Roaster Coffee House in Brighton |
In March this year, my daughter told me that she had started a music blog and the first artiste she featured in her first post contacted her through his manager via email and enquire if she would like to do a post on the artiste and she ended up preparing some interview questions for which the artiste provided the answers. Subsequently after she had posted the article, the artiste himself also wrote and thank her and suggest ways to improve the traffic to her blog. When my daughter wrote to me and share her excitement, I was half way through reading the novel “ I Think I love you” by Allison Pearson. The book was a romantic story about a woman as a young girl had a teenage crush for the teen idol, David Cassidy and a guy as a new college graduate who did the ghost writing for all the letters from David Cassidy to his fans. So here I was reading a fiction about David Cassidy’s ghostwriter who wrote beautiful letters to the fans of the teenage idol when my own daughter had received a thank you message from the artiste and his manager for posting his music on her music blog.
Early this month during my day trip to Kuala Lumpur for work, I swinged by Kinokuniya before dropping by friends’ new garden café near Sri Hartamas. During my ten minutes’ visit to the bookshop to pick up a book I had reserved, I noticed the memoir by Stephanie Staal out of the corner of my eye. “ Reading Women” such a befitting title immediately struck my attention and in a blink I knew I had to get the book. The displeasure of appearing at the receiving end of all the unsavoury remarks made by the appellate court judges about my clients’ case immediately vanished into thin air. I rejoiced when I read that the author turned to books when she struggled to make sense of love, life, marriage and motherhood. The sentiments struck such a chord in me that I had to devour the book with an urgency. In fact as a working mother of two daughters who are coming of age in this decade, I have been thinking about feminism and contemporary issues about gender roles and at times wonder if we can truly have it all.
My colleague and I diligently make our fortnightly lunch visits to Borders at the shopping mall which is about ten to fifteen minutes drive from our office. We grab our drinks from the Starbucks outlet located inside the bookshop and plonk ourselves at an empty table and scan through books and magazines we randomly pick up and I would carefully read through the sypnosis to see if I wish to own them. During one of such visits in the month of March this year , the book on 'Coffee- Philosophy for Everyone: Grounds for Debate’ was amongst the books on display as we walked into the bookstore. As there was an offer to get one copy of the book for full price and the second copy with a discount of 50%, I bought two copies of the book. During my subsequent visits, I no longer saw the book on display there. In fact last week, when a friend and I were at the same bookshop, I wanted to show the book to her as she recently started a café and had just returned from a trip down under learning about coffee beans and the art of coffee making. I was told that there were no more copies left. I enjoy having an espresso as much as I enjoy reading. I need my coffee to kick start my morning and it is the cafe culture which makes France the top destination for my travels. In Penang, coffee shop culture is a way of life and a popular place where people gather for their drinks and food and coffee talks but the traditional coffee shops here is not of similar genre as that you find in Europe or Australia . However in the past decade, apart from Starbucks and Coffee Bean which had made inroads into this region, there are some small cafes in the inner city which I frequent as I prefer Arabic beans to Robusta beans and also espressos to kopi-o. Consequently, as a coffee and book lover, I was most delighted to stumble upon ‘Coffee- Philosophy for Everyone: Grounds for Debate’. Another sheer coincidence indeed. |
| Books glorious books! |
I love to read and be engaged in the thoughts of the ingenious writers and through reading I hope to get a little insight or be reminded about the psyche of the human race, its despair and its hopes. Even in this era of 24/7 communication, birth of advanced robots (the latest robot is one tasked with storing luggage in lockers for guests at a hotel in New York) , blurred gender roles and new attitudes to sex and dating, the need to belong is primitive as we are social beings and as humans we probably experience the same emotions and the same dilemmas as our predecessors regardless of our colour and background.
A well written fiction can galvanize or soothe one’s emotion and a well written non-fiction can rouse, stimulate and fortify or change one’s thoughts and perceptions of things. All we need is an open mind as too often it is a matter of perception. Enough of rambling since I have all these books to devour and digest in between my work, my coffee , catching French Open on Astro television ( may not be possible as one of the televisions is not working) , writing, replying emails and reading an engaging fiction by Marian Keyes , The Brightest Star in the Sky , a definite page turner before I stumble upon a new set of books .
(1) Alone Together Why we expect from Technology and less from each other by MIT Professor Sherry Turkle
(2) Ben & Me From Temperance to Humility Stumbling through Ben Franklin’s Thirteen virtues, One Unvirtuous day at a time by Cameron Gunn
(3) Coffee- Philosophy for Everyone: Grounds for Debate
(4) Reading Women by Stephanie Staal
(5) The Meaning of Wife by Anne Kingston
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| A Garden Cafe in Sri Hartamas http://coffeewego.blogspot.com/ |
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