My Top 15

I was tagged by a dear friend in her Facebook note entitled 'My 15 Favourite Authors'.

I have always been an avid reader, and this excercise made me think for a while, for these reasons:

i) My God, I have read tonnes of books...but some of the most memorable ones are those I read as a child. When I started my primary school, I remembered how a well-meaning acquaintance came to me with a book in her hand to test my English reading skills. The book in question: 'Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes'. Humpty Dumpty? Cow jumping over the moon? Ridiculous, but fun indeed...

A steady diet of Enid Blyton's books marked my progress into bibliophile territory after that. Young boys and girls on holidays always have some mystery to solve, and they can be great sleuths too (Famous Five & Secret Seven series). In the Malory Towers and St Claire's series, girls learn English, French, and sports at the boarding schools, apart from manipulation and trickery to get what they want ...which never go unpunished, of course.

I also discovered Tolkien with 'The Hobbit'. My, he made Middle Earth so believable, it was pure magic.

ii) Nowadays, I pick books to read by genre rather than author. Crime, thriller, true accounts, horrors, biographies and espionage feature highly on my list. So that's why even if I only read one book from an author, I favour him/her based on my assessment of that particular novel (In this case, I'll name the book by the author's name to indicate it's the only book I read).

Here's my 15:

1. Enid Blyton
2. Jalaluddin Rumi
3. Tom Clancy (Executive Order)
4. J.R.R. Tolkien
5. Dominique Lapierre (City of Joy)
6. Thomas Harris (created the character named 'Hannibal Lecter')
7. Agatha Christie
8. Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
9. Roald Dahl
10. Mohd. Ismail Sarbini (author best known for children fiction in the '80s)
11. Clive Cussler
12. Mother Goose
13. Stephen King
14. Robert Maynard Pirsig
15. Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking)

ken follet's pillars of the earth

this is a fantastic read, no joke! the book is so thick my fingers ache from holding it up. and i couldn't put it down when i bought only 3 months ago. it's about the building of churches and the story follows a few families. their lives get intertwined but the church building, the architectural details, masonry stuff, and the history of Britain are what binds the lengthy, centuries-strong plot.
 i always liked that kind of historical novel. i didnt go for ken follet till this book landed in front on my eyes at, i think it was times bookshop. then he wrote the sequel, world without end. wah!  got that too. more aching fingers. fantastic read, following the family of masons and prerunners to architects today. thing is, i learnt a lot about architecture, the history of churches. god knows if it's all the gospel truth (the pun, the pun!). is there another, like a trilogy? mr follet has keen insight and a breezy style. he should lay off the sex bit in these stories, i think, cos it detracts from the energy of the characters. heh! but who am i to criticise this tale-spinning author.
and now, the series on pillars of the earth is out. can't wait to watch that, and hope i won't be disappointed.

readers' digest condensed

i fell ill with food poisoning over the xmas weekend. while spooning in my chuk (porridge), i went back to my vast (ha, ha) collection of reader's digest condensed books. i have been fixated on these tomes since i was a teenager. my dad used to get them. these books offer three to five novels, in a condensed form. i still think it's value for money, and today, i can only find these books in secondhand shops in amcorp mall, chowrasta in penang, garage sales, and flea marts overseas.
so, i picked one which i had bought for RM8 at a bookshop at the penang chowrasta market. i whizzed through dick francis who writes on horse racing but i got stuck on a war story, all about fighting. wasn't in the mood for that. and that's the beauty of these condensed books - different stories in one slightly heavy tome.
am better, after the chuck and beehoon soup, and a terrific read.