A Book under the Sun

Image taken from Besgroup.org .  I awoke with a start. The bird was staring at me with one of its bulbous eyes. And I was staring back.  “I am asking you, what are you staring at?” the bird repeated. That was what awoken me from my trance of staring at the flock gathered in front of me.

by Jeff Grubb The impression of a Jedi being someone brandishing a lightsaber and hurling Force this or that is hard set on most die hard's mind, especially if the aforementioned is a Jedi Master. A show of his mastery of the Force along with wise words to his apprentice are almost always expected from a Star Wars novel featuring such character.  So imagine my surprise when the presented protagonist was a Jedi Master who was anything but. Welcome to the world of Scourge .

by Joe Schreiber A long long time ago, there was a ship filled with the living dead in a galaxy far far away. The captivating story of a ship full of Imperial dead shambling around was novel in the sense that the popular sci-fi franchise never tried to accommodate horror elements into it. At least never did it seriously. That was Joe Schreiber's Death Troopers  (which was also another book shared in my previous article). But the fact that this horrifying disease of living dead only struck on a ship full of Imperial mortals raised an interesting question, one which will eventually surface sooner or later: what if those weren't your usual bunch of mortals? What if those were Force wielders? Well, zombies carrying lightsabers is really a sight to behold, isn't it? Whether Schreiber is a Jedi/Sith in disguise who can read minds or he has the foresight granted by the Force, he had came up with that story. The outcome: Red Harvest . And no, only Sith were affecte...

by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow In memory of Randy Pausch This familiar book floated past my glancing sight when I browsed the shelves of a bookstore. The Last Lecture . It wasn't the first time I saw the book in other shelves, which were in other bookstores. I even remembered the synopsis on the front and back flaps. Somehow I held back from buying the book until yesterday. And I did not regret reading through the slightly over 200 pages of advises, thoughts and opinions.

by Wylie Overstreet Hur!!?? I wasn't sure how to treat this book. I wasn't even sure under what category this book should go. Should I be incredulously surprised that something on this topic could ever become a book at all or to be equally surprised that I would pick it up and flip through every page? Nevertheless, if that fella Overstreet could whip up a book just by collecting fictional status updates from history, I shouldn't be too concern about trivial things such as this.  From Pictures to Book of Pictures Overstreet is not an author of any book, at least not yet, except for The History of the World According to Facebook . According the website Cool Material , it started out as a thought: what if the popular social website started out on Day One, and everyone and everything has a profile in it? What would Abraham Lincoln would have written on his status update? Out came a few edited pictures featuring famous people and events, all portrayed in hil...

If one were to go to Singapore to shop, then shopping for books back to Malaysia may not prove to be a cost effective idea unless one were to shop in Bookmart for their used books. The popular Japanese bookstore which buys back used book and sells them back out has set up shop in The Central located in Clarke Quay. Learners of the Japanese language will be thrilled to find shelves of book in Japanese as well as used English books still in good condition even though they are not new. A detailed sharing of the bookstore as well expected experiences within is available from I Walk the World . Book lovers should definitely drop by to browse through the treasure trove and see if one could find his love at a discounted price. With the book still in tip-top condition and price slashed to almost half of the original, it is definitely a much sought-after place for people looking for a bargain in book purchase.

by Albert Jack What does either a Red Herring (a false or misleading clue) or a White Elephant (something useless, usually pointing to public buildings, that becomes a burden, much like our country's facilities...) has anything to do with their respective meanings? Just as the foreword of the book implied, such sayings are part and parcel of the everyday English and most native speakers are familiar with them, seldom giving them a thought. Unfortunately non-native English learners will most probably be confused, even perplexed, by the choice of words. Although the usual response from teachers are to 'learn by heart', it does help to know the origins of such phrases and have a laugh at it while closing the distance between the learner and the phrases. Even native speakers who apply such phrases will almost certainly at a time or another have thought of why certain sayings sound so ridiculous and how did it get to become as such.  Red Herrings & White Elep...