just minishorts.

September's issue of The Bookseller has an amazing reproduction of the cover for Greg Iles's Blood Memory, scheduled for release, according to Amazon, in mid-Feb 2005. That's just one of the next books on the list, after Foucault's Pendulum and Getting Over It. Or maybe I should try out Iles's Black Cross first, then again, the themes of WWII don't appeal too well to this girl here. Yes, yes, the book binge is still rushing along at top speed, and I'm doing very well, thank you. I'm not sure if I'll end this gluttonous fest soon, but really, it's been such a long time since I last drank in so much literature just for the heck of it.

'Just for the heck of it' is a bit much, eh, since I minored in literature and contemplated a Master's degree in the subject. Behold this leakage of pure honesty: no, I don't read that much, even though I produce *gasp* books. I have in possession, most of the defined books of the 20th century… but I haven't read them all. And I've given away tonnes of books (a stupid Ex ran off with 40 of my books, including the entire Tom Clancy series that was produced up to 2002, none of which I have read, and half of my Clive Cussler books, again, none of which I have read). I have a spanking neat set of the Lord of the Rings, and because I *gasp again* don't like fantasy really, I haven't read it yet, even though I'm quite good at telling you what happens in particular chapters. I'm not too sure whether I ought to snigger at the sight of the chic lit revolution that seems to have expanded exponentially these days, you know… So far for me, Meg Cabot and Sophie Kinsella are pretty much overrated, and The Shopaholic series has yet to catch my interest.

I find it amusing really, because when I was in CHS I decided to become a librarian for just one purpose: to binge on books. And that library had a whole load of good books, I tell you. It had Ian Fleming's entire series, also every other month or so, some PTA generous philantrophist would give tonnes of money and we would be buying more books. We had Christopher Pike and LM Montgomery sitting on separate bookcases, even the Malaysian National Library didn't have as good a Fiction selection as we did. Each morning, shabbily dressed in pinafore and khaki ties, we would be climbing the metal shelves just to shove books into their neat compartments. It was tedious work, the arrangement of books, but justifyingly so. Librarians had the privilege of an extra book a week, plus we sat behind the counters the whole day, swallowing in new books that came in, and sometimes, before the books were put on the shelves, we had read them first and decided, 'No, not meant for the masses.'

That was where I met my first crush anyway. Librarians in CHS were mostly girls, and men were a scarcity in the exclusive top floor sorority (the CHS library was then on the highest level of Block C, THAT haunted building). So when I met The Filmmaker, we hit off like two colliding bullets. Friends ever since, because of our 'disadvantage' of growing up in English-speaking households and studying in Chinese congested SRJK(C)s, we decided to do many things together, including forcing ourselves to go to the same class every year… after which, joining the Editorial Board together (he was interested in features, I was more interested in The News), and the real papers together (we decided to head off to the same Star BRATs camp).

More importantly, The Filmmaker was an avid reader, and because I had an unadmittable crush on him, I struggled to keep up with his indulgences. And my, was it an expensive struggle.

First of all, The Filmmaker collected Manga. He had shelves and shelves of it in his house. His bedroom was surrounded by wall-to-ceiling shelves, and they were all double, no, triple-stacked with sets of Chinese-translated Manga. I had the luxury of not buying anything for a while, but after a few years, I thought it was horribly one-sided… so when Ranma 1/2 came out on the market, I decided to get my hands on it… and started collecting the series, if only to be the one who would be lending the books to him first. It kind of worked, and Ranma became a hot topic for the two of us in all of its 37-book run. That's almost two years!

Unfortunately, my stupid ex has taken half of my precious Ranma, and my mother thinks the naked drawings of Akane and Shampoo are just too obscene to be left around the house. So its gone now.

Secondly, The Filmmaker collected thick novels. Previously, I was infatuated with the Mills and Boons series (I found my aunt's entire set hidden inside her closet and stole the whole box home)… but then, Mills & Boons is quite an embarassing hobby to cultivate. So when The Filmmaker and I watched Jurassic Park together, I lied to him that I had read the book before. Now he was excited, he sort of loved Michael Crichton a lot, but he had never read the book about cloning dinosaurs before. Naturally, he asked for the book.

I was a poor girl then, my money had been dedicated to other things (such as Manga and fried chicken)… but this was an opportunity NOT TO BE MISSED. Fortunately, Mum believed that reading was a good habit, so she bought the book for me. That was when I started to learn how to read really fast (you see, I lied that I had read the book before , so obviously I had a show to perform). And I sort of yellowed the book to make it look dated. You know, splashed tea drops in places, dog-eared some pages… that sort of thing. It sort of worked… we had another book to continue our discussions over… and this went on.

12 years have passed since I met The Filmmaker, and we're now reduced to mutual, meet-up-once-a-year kind of friends. But I can confide in my innermost secrets to him, and we'll be there at each other's weddings one day. 4 years ago I told him I had been infatuated in him for ages, and he actually reprimanded me for not ever telling him.

'We could have been something.'

Could have been, but looking back, and accumulating my memories of my life up to now, you know what? I'm perfectly happy with how it turned out to be. Right now, what I have is perfect. And yes. Thanks to The Filmmaker, I have cultivated a ravishing appetite for the written word and got myself into the exciting world of publishing. Thanks to him. Thanks to him.