Book Haven

A HAT FULL OF SKY

2012-01-30T21:00:00.002+08:00

Title: A Hat Full of Sky
Author: Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fantasy
Type: Paperback (349 pages)
Price: RM20 (priced at Kinokuniya at RM35.90)
Condition: Yellowed pages
Status: Available

Amazon.co.uk Review

Pratchett's third children's novel set in the Discworld, and the second to feature wannabe witch Tiffany Aching and the Wee Free Men, is so ridiculously well written and consistently funny it makes you wonder how he can keep writing such superlative novels without cheating a bit. It would be reassuring to think that the Carnegie Medal-winning author of The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents and The Wee Free Men had his own small army of professional helpers, not unlike like a US sitcom, inventing and deliberating about which are the best jokes and plot lines to use to ensure the best quality quotient. But it's all his own work and that makes each brilliant novel more remarkable because of it.

A Hat Full of Sky continues the adventures of eleven-year-old Tiffany as she endeavours to become a proper witch. She's 'done' magic before, quite spectacularly and to great effect, but now she must be apprenticed to an established practitioner of the craft, the amazing Miss Level, in order to learn exactly how she did it. Unfortunately for her, there's a crazed and malevolent ancient spirit buzzing about, called a Hiver, who is looking for a convenient host to consume. Hiver's are attracted to greatness, and Tiffany hides an enormous talent that seems ripe for domination.

Still grateful for Miss Aching's past help, a crack team of several Wee Free Men, nature's funkiest, drunkest and bluest fairy folk, take it upon themselves to help Tiffany out. Hiver's, however, are unbeatable and it's a definite "sooey-side mission" to save the big wee hag from harm.

It's great to see writing of such quality in a children's novel, and it's further evidence that this sector of the publishing world is having a bit of a golden decade. Long may it continue! (Age 10 and over)--John McLay --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Other Reviews:

"The great Terry Pratchett, whose wit is metaphysical, who creates an energetic and lively secondary world, who has a multifarious genius for strong parody as opposed to derivative manipulation of past motifs, who deals with death with startling originality. Who writes amazing sentences."
--A.S. Byatt in "The New York Times"

"A passion for language, wordplay and puns bursts from the pages."
--Daily Telegraph

"A great Pratchett strength is the sense that if the jokes were dropped there would still be
a good, engaging fantasy thriller here."
--"The Independent
"
"Fantastically inventive and humorous fantasy adventure. Fans will be sky high."
--"The Sunday Times
"
"Pratchett's ear for dialogue is superb... His deep feeling for landscape, animals, kindness and courage make his adventures deeply satisfying as well as clever."
--Amanda Craig, "The Times"

Source: Amazon

LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER

2011-06-03T19:38:00.006+08:00

- Title: Lady Chatterley's Lover
- Author: D.H.Lawrence
- Genre: Literature
- Type: Paperback (314 pages)
- Price: RM25 (priced at Times for RM39.50)
- Condition: Excellent, lightly read, like brand new
- Status: Available

Review:

"A masterpiece, for its acute psychological insight, its complex relationships, and its intensity of feeling and expression. Beautiful and tender and frail as the naked self." Guardian

"No one ever wrote better about the power struggles of sex and love" Doris Lessing

ENGLEBY

2011-06-01T15:41:00.009+08:00

- Title: Engleby
- Author: Sebastian Faulks
- Genre: Fiction
- Type: Paperback (352 pages)
- Price: RM15.00
- Condition: Good, unread
- Status: Available

About the book:

When the novel opens in the 1970s, he is a university student, having survived a 'traditional' school. A man devoid of scruple or self-pity, Engleby provides a disarmingly frank account of English education. Yet beneath the disturbing surface of his observations lies an unfolding mysetery of gripping power. One of his contemporaries unaccountably disappears, and as we follow Engleby's career, which brings us up to the present day, the ready has to ask: is Engleby capable of telling the whole truth?

Engleby can be read as a lament for a generation and the country it failed. It is also a poignant account of the frailty of human consciousness.

Sebastian Faulk's new novel is a bolt from the blue, unlike anything he has written before: contemporary, demotic, heart-wrenching - and funny, in the deepest shade of black.

Reviews:

'Faulks is beyond doubt a master' Financial Times

'A novelist with muscle, with affinities to the great Europeans' The Times

'The best novelist of his generation' Scotsman

WOLF HALL (Winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize)

2011-02-25T14:00:00.005+08:00

Title: Wolf Hall (Winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize)

Author: Hilary Mantel

Genre: Historical Fiction, Fiction

Type: Paperback (652 pages)

Price: RM25.00 (priced at Times Bookstore at RM37.90)

Condition: Excellent, brand new!

Status: Available

About the book:

England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages. From one of our finest living writers, Wolf Hall is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion and suffering and courage.

About the author:

Hilary Mantel is one of our most important living writers. She is the author of eleven books, including 'A Place of Greater Safety', 'Giving Up the Ghost' and 'Beyond Black', which was shortlisted for the 2006 Orange Prize

Source: Amazon.co.uk

THE SHAKESPEARE BOOK OF LISTS

2011-02-14T12:23:00.006+08:00

Title: The Shakespeare Book of Lists
Author: Mike LoMonico
Genre: Literature, Humour
Type: Quality paperback
Price: RM20.00
Condition: Excellent, brand new!
Status: Available

About the Book:

The Shakespeare Book of Lists catalogues Shakespeare's life, his times, his use of language and choice of words, the best and most insulting lines from his plays and poems, the actors who have performed his plays and the theatres where they have been performed, the videos and films and spin-offs that we have all grown to love. This is a fun useful book of all things Shakespeare. Each chapter covers something different about Shakespeare and his works, with corresponding lists filled with interesting fun-filled facts and trivia. The book contains every imaginable topic relating to Shakespeare including: * The funniest and nastiest lines found in his plays * The top-grossing Shakespeare films * The best and worst comedies, tragedies and romances and reasons why * Favourite scenes from the most popular films like Franco Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet * The best restaurants, pubs, bookstores, scenic spots in Stratford-Upon-Avon * And much more The Shakespeare Book of Lists will undoubtedly settle some arguments, start some others and serve as an important reference. Plus, it will be a source of entertainment, amusement and amazement for Shakespeare aficionados as well as those who have just discovered the person recently selected as "Man of the Millennium".

Source: Amazon.co.uk

CAN ASIANS THINK?

2011-01-26T18:00:00.006+08:00

Title: Can Asians Think? (3rd Edition)

Author: Kishore Mahbubani

Genre: Current Affairs, Politics, Non-fiction

Type: Quality Thick Paperback (264 pages)

Price: RM20 (priced at Kinokuniya at RM41.80)

Condition: Good

Status: Available

About the book:

Can Asians think? Is Western civilization universal? Does the West promote human rights for altruistic reasons? Since 1998, Kishore Mahbubani has attempted to answer these questions in his provocative collection of essays entitled "Can Asians Think?" Now, in the third edition of this work, Mr Mahbubani includes two new essays which discuss the changing role and importance of the United Nations. As the Singapore Ambassador to the United Nations, Mr Mahbubani has a unique understanding of the inner workings of this organization. For two years he sat on the UN Security Council. In his new essay, "Power Without Responsibility, Responsibility Without Power?" Mr Mahbubani discusses the importance of the security council and the relationship between the permanent 5 and elected 10 members. In his second new essay, "The United Nations and the United States: An Indispensable Partnership", Mr Mahbubani addresses the fragile US-UN relationship that often made headlines over the past years. With his straightforward style and unique perspective, Mr Mahbubani's book is still as relevant today as it was in 1998.

About the author:

Kishore Mahbubani is the Dean and Professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) of the National University of Singapore. He continues to serve in the boards and councils of several institutions in Singapore, Asia, Europe and North America. His articles have appeared in a wide range of journals and newspapers, including The Washington Quarterly, Survival, American Interest, the National Interest, the Wilson Quarterly, Time, Newsweek and New York Times. He is also the author of Beyond The Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust between America and the World (published in New York) and The New Asian Hemisphere: the irresistible shift of global power to the East . More information on his writings can be found on http://www.mahbubani.net/.

Review:
"Interesting, provocative, and intellectually engaging." Henry Kissinger

Source: Amazon.co.uk

IN COLD BLOOD

2011-01-18T16:06:00.012+08:00

The movie "Capote" (2005), starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, is based on Capote's research for his seminal non-fiction thriller: In Cold Blood.

Title: In Cold Blood

Author: Truman Capote

Genre: Thriller, Non-Fiction

Type: Paperback (343 pages)

Price: RM15.00 (priced at Borders at RM22.95)

Condition: Very good. Brand new, not read.

Status: Available

About the book:

Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human. The book that made Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative.

About the Author:

Truman Capote was born in New Orleans in 1925 and was raised in various parts of the south, his family spending winters in New Orleans and summers in Alabama and New Georgia. By the age of fourteen he had already started writing short stories, some of which were published. He left school when he was fifteen and subsequently worked for the New Yorker which provided his first - and last - regular job. Following his spell with the New Yorker, Capote spent two years on a Louisiana farm where he wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). He lived, at one time or another, in Greece, Italy, Africa and the West Indies, and travelled in Russia and the Orient. He is the author of many highly praised books, including A Tree of Night and Other Stories (1949), The Grass Harp (1951), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958), In Cold Blood (1965), which immediately became the centre of a storm of controversy on its publication, Music for Chameleons (1980) and Answered Prayers (1986), all of which are published by Penguin. Truman Capote died in August 1984.

Source: Amazon.co.uk

RELATIONSHIPS, THE KEY TO LOVE AND EVERYTHING ELSE

2010-04-09T18:46:00.005+08:00

Title: Relationships, The key to love and everything else
Author: Dean Sherman
Genre: Relationships, Religious reference, Christian reference on relationships
Type: Paperback
Price: RM15/= (original price RM22.90)
Condition: Read lightly. Good condition.
Status: Available.

LOOKING FOR LOVE

2010-03-22T14:13:00.007+08:00

Title: Looking for Love
Author: George Bloomer
Genre: Relationships, Religious reference, Christian reference on relationships
Type: Paperback with teaching CD enclosed
Price: RM25/= (original price RM39.95)
Condition: Read lightly. Good condition. Comes with CD.
Status: Available.

INTIMACY & MIDNIGHT ALL DAY

2009-04-28T20:55:00.010+08:00

Title: Intimacy (a novel) and Midnight All Day (stories) - 2 BOOKS IN ONE!
Author: Hanif Kureishi
Genre: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Price: RM20/=
Condition: Good
Status: Available.

Book Description:

Together in one volume -- Hanif Kureishi's highly acclaimed and controversial novel, Intimacy, and, available for the first time, his latest collection of provocative short stories, Midnight All Day.

Jay, the narrator of Intimacy, tells his story on the night he is preparing to leave his lover, Susan, and their two boys. Stripping away all posturing and self-justification, Hanif Kureishi explores the fears and desires that drive a man to leave a woman. Midnight All Day is an astonishing, darkly comic collection of new stories, in which Kureishi confirms his reputation as one of our foremost chroniclers of the loveless, the lost and the dispossessed. The characters are familiar in the cultural landscape of the nineties: frustrated and intoxicated, melancholic and sensitive, yet capable of great cruelty, and if necessary, willing to break the constraints of an old life to make way for the new.

Review:

"Kureishi is a fluent, socially observant writer whose sentences move with intelligence and wit." The New York Times Book Review

"Kureishi does time and again that which very few writers of even the highest caliber dare attempt: he writes very funny works about serious topics." San Fancisco Review of Books

"Kureishi is, simply, a wonderful writer, and Intimacy is a work of dark beauty." Harper's Bazaar

About the Author:

Hanif Kureishi won the presitigious Whitbread Prize for his first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia. He received an Oscar nomination for his first screenplay, My Beautiful Laundrette. Kureishi's other screenplays include Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, which he also directed, and My Son the Fanatic, adapted from a story in his collection Love in a Blue Time. His most recent novel is Gabriel's Gift. He lives in London.

Source: Amazon

ALL-NEW AUSTRALIAN JOKES

2009-04-16T22:48:00.007+08:00

Title: All-New Australian Jokes
Author: Philip Adams & Patrice Newell
Genre: Humour
Type: Paperback (480 pages)
Price: RM15/=
Condition: Yellowed pages
Status: Available

CONTEST

2009-03-31T21:21:00.008+08:00

Title: Contest
Author: Matthew Reilly
Genre: Thriller
Type: Paperback
Price: RM15/=
Condition: Ok. Slightly yellowed pages
Status: Available.

Synopsis:
The New York State Library looms as a silent sanctuary of knowledge: a hundred-year-old labyrinth of towering bookcases, narrow aisles, and spiral staircases. But for Dr Stephen Swain and his eight-year-old daughter Holly it is a place of nightmare. Because, for just one night, this historic building is to become the venue for a horrifying contest, a contest in which Swain must compete, whether he likes it or not. The rules of the challenge are simple: seven contestants will enter, but only one will leave. With his daughter in his arms, Stephen Swain is plunged into a terrifying fight for survival. The stakes are high, the odds are brutal. He can choose to run, to hide, or to fight - but if he wants to live, he needs to win. For, in this particular contest, unless you leave as victor, you do not leave at all.

Source: Amazon

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED

2009-03-15T23:27:00.013+08:00

Title: Everything is Illuminated (made into a movie starring Elijah Wood)
Author: Jonathan Safran Foer
Genre: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Price: RM15/=
Condition: Yellowed pages
Status: Available

Book Description:
"An astonishing feat" THE TIMES A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into bizarre new forms; a "blind" old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis Jr, Jr. What they are looking for seems elusive -- a truth hidden behind veils of time, language and the horrors of war. What they find turns all their worlds upside down.

Review:
"pulses with life and is haunted by vilest madness. It is outrageously ambitious, extraordinarily moving, utterly successful." Financial Times

Source: Amazon

A LONG WAY DOWN

2009-02-23T11:36:00.008+08:00

Title: A Long Way Down
Author: Nick Hornby
Genre: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Price: RM20/=
Condition: Good.
Status: Available.

About the Author:
Nick Hornby is the bestselling author of High Fidelity, About a Boy and How to be Good, as well as two works of non-fiction, Fever Pitch and 31 Songs, and the editor of Speaking with the Angel. In 1999 he was awarded the E. M. Forster Award. In 2002 he won the W.H.Smith Award for Fiction and in 2003 was honoured with the Writers’ Writer Award at the Orange Word International Writers Festival. He lives in Highbury, North London.

Book Description:
‘Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block?’ For disgraced TV presenter Martin Sharp the answer’s pretty simple: he has, in his own words, ‘pissed his life away’. And on New Year’s Eve, he’s going to end it all … But not, as it happens, alone. Because first single-mum Maureen, then eighteen-year-old Jess and lastly American rock-god JJ turn up and crash Martin’s private party. They’ve stolen his idea – but brought their own reasons. Yet it’s hard to jump when you’ve got an audience queuing impatiently behind you. A few heated words and some slices of cold pizza later and these four strangers are suddenly allies. But is their unlikely friendship a good enough reason to carry on living?

Source: Amazon

BARREL FEVER

2009-02-12T15:21:00.012+08:00

Title: Barrel Fever
Author: David Sedaris
Genre: Humour
Type: Paperback
Price: RM20/=
Condition: Good, slight yellowing of pages
Status: Available.

Book Description:
In David Sedaris's world, no one is safe and no cow is sacred. A manic cross between Mark Leyner, Fran Lebowitz and the National Enquirer, Sedaris's collection of stories and essays is a rollicking tour through the American Zeitgeist: a man who is loved too much flees the heavyweight champion of the world; a teenage suicide tried to incite a lynch mob at her funeral; and in his essays, David Sedaris considers the hazards of rewards of smoking, writing for Giantess magazine, and living with his scrappy brother Paul, aka 'The Rooster'. With a perfect eye and a voice infused with as much empathy as wit, Sedaris writes and reads stories and essays that target the soulful ridiculousness of our behaviour. Barrel Fever is like a blind date with modern life - and anything can happen.

Review:
'This is a man who could capture your heart and lift your spirits while reading out the ingredients of a rice cake.' Observer 'His best, funniest, most satisfying book.' Time Out

Source: Amazon

SHAKESPEARE THE COMPLETE WORKS

2009-02-01T23:02:00.008+08:00

Title: Shakespeare, The Complete Works
Author: William Shakespeare
Genre: Classics, Literature
Type: Paperback
Price: RM35/=
Condition: Excellent. Brand new.
Status: Available.

Synopsis:
Gathers all of Shakespeare's plays, sonnets, and poems.

MRS DALLOWAY

2009-02-01T23:00:00.009+08:00

Title: Mrs Dalloway
Author: Virginia Woolf
Genre: Classics, Literature
Type: Paperback
Price: RM8/=
Condition: Yellowed pages
Status: Available.

About the Author:
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is now recognised as a major 20th century author, a great novelist and essayist, and a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist.

Book Description:
On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway, the glittering wife of a Member of Parliament, is preparing for a grand party that evening. As she walks through London, buying flowers, observing life, her thoughts are in the past, and she remembers the time when she was as young as her own daughter Elizabeth; her romance with Peter Walsh, now recently returned from India; and the friends of her youth. Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is being driven mad by shell shock. As the day draws to its end, his world and Clarissa's collide in unexpected ways.

Featured in the movie, The Hours, starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore & Meryl Streep

Source: Amazon, Wikipedia

THE FUNDAMENTALS & PRACTICE OF MARKETING

2009-02-01T22:46:00.005+08:00

Title: The Fundamentals and Practice of Marketing
Author: John Wilmshurst
Genre: Reference
Type: Paperback
Price: RM10/=
Condition: Yellowed pages
Status: Available.