Book Lists - Part III

So, this was in August and we had a handsome (not manageable, but handsome, nonetheless) list that we might have made a dent in by year's end. When lo and behold, there descended upon as as the Mighty Fist of Justice those purported friends who think they'll make use of our copious spare time by — yeah, you guessed it. Lending or giving us books.

This is what the list looked like in August after additions:


Book List 2008, Revised

1. A History of Cambodia - Chandler
   
2. A History of Modern Indonesia - M.C. Ricklefs
   
3. A Point of Light - Zhou Mei
   
4. A Will For Freedom - Romen Bose
   
5. Agnes Smedley - J.R. & S.R. MacKinnon
   
6. Anathem - Neal Stephenson
   
7. Asian Labour In The Japanese Wartime Empire - Paul H. Kratoska, Ed.
   
8. Baumgartner's Bombay - Anita Desai
   
9. Between Two Oceans - Murkett, Miskic, Farrell, & Chiang
   
10. Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
    
11. Bitter Lemons - Lawrence Durrell
    
12. Blood on the Golden Sands - Lim Kean Siew
    
13. Broca's Brain - Carl Sagan
    
14. Chandranath - Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay
    
15. Chinese Customs - Henri Dore
    
16. Clay Walls - Kim Ronyoung
    
17. Daniel Deronda - George Eliot
    
18. Dictionary of the Khazars - Milorad Pavic
    
19. Famous People of PNG: Bishop Sir Louis Vangeke - Eric Johns
    
20. Famous People of PNG: Lady Carol Kidu - Eric Johns
    
21. Famous People of PNG: Dame Alice Wedega - Eric Johns
    
22. Famous People of PNG: Dame Rose Kekedo - Eric Johns
    
23. Famous People of PNG: Tui of Gorendu - Eric Johns
    
24. Famous People of PNG: Maino of Moata - Eric Johns
    
25. Famous People of PNG: Pipi Gari of Elevala - Eric Johns
    
26. Famous People of PNG: Ligeremaluoga of Kono - Eric Johns
    
27. Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce
    
28. First Person Singular - Joyce Carol Oates
29. From Pacific War to Merdeka - James Wong Wing On
    
30. Grass - Sherri S. Tepper
    
31. How I Adore You - Mark Pritchard
    
32. In The Time Of The Butterflies - Alvarez
    
33. In Pursuit of Mountain Rats - Anthony Short
    
34. In The Grip of a Crisis - Rudy Mosbergen
    
35. Kempeitai, Japan's Dreaded Military Police - Raymond Lamont-Brown
    
36. Kempeitai:The Japanese Secret Service Then And Now - Richard Deacon
    
37. Krait:The Fishing Boat That Went To War - Lynette Ramsay Silver
    
38. Kranji - Romen Bose
    
39. Labour Unrest in Malaya - Tai Yuen
    
40. Lest We Forget - Alice M. Coleman & Joyce E. Williams
    
41. Life As The River Flows - Agnes Khoo
    
42. Living Hell - Goh Chor Boon
    
43. Malay Folk Beliefs - Mohd Taib Osman
    
44. Malaya and Singapore During the Japanese Occupation - Paul H. Kratoska, Ed.
    
45. Memory in Mind and Brain - Norton Reiser
    
46. Modern Japan, A Historical Survey - Hane Mikiso
    
47. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
    
48. My Island in the Sun - Khor Cheang Kee
    
49. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Vols. 1-4 - Hayao Miyazaki
    
50. Niels Lyhne - Jens Peter Jacobsen
    
51. No Cowardly Past - James Puthucheary
    
52. Operation Matador - Ong Chit Chung
    
53. Orientalism - Edward Said
    
54. Orlando - Virginia Woolf
    
55. Outwitting the Gestapo - Lucie Aubrac
    
56. Padma River Boatman - Manik Bandhopadhyay
    
57. Palli Samaj (The Homecoming) - Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay
    
58. Patchwork Shawl - Shamita Das Dasgupta
    
59. People's War, People's Army - Vo Nguyen Giap
    
60. Power Politics - Arundhati Roy
    
61. Primitive Art - Franz Boas
    
62. Raffles - Maurice Collis
    
63. Raising the Stones - Sherri S. Tepper
    
64. Red Star Over Malaya - Cheah Boon Kheng
    
65. Rethinking Raffles - Syed Muhd Khairuddin Aljunied
    
66. Revolt in Paradise - K'tut Tantri
    
67. Rosie - Anne Lamott
    
68. Satyajit Ray - Andrew Robinson
    
69. Screenwriting 434 - Lew Hunter
    
70. Shadow's End - Sheri S. Tepper
    
71. Shanghai Refuge, A Memoir of the WWII Jewish Ghetto - Ernest G. Heppner
    
72. Sherpas Through Their Rituals - Sherry Ortner
    
73. Shut Up, I'm Talking - Gregory Levey
    
74. Sideshow - Sheri S. Tepper
    
75. Singapore & The Many-Headed Monster - Joe Conceicao
    
76. Sisters in the Resistance - Margaret Collins Weitz
    
77. Six Moon Dance - Sherri S. Tepper
    
78. Soldiers Alive - Ishikawa Tatsuzo
    
79. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, I - Anthony Reid
    
80. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, II - Anthony Reid
    
81. Strangers Always A Jewish Family in Wartime Shanghai - Rena Krasno
    
82. Stress and Mental Health in Malaysian Society - Tan Chee Khuan
    
83. Taming the Wind of Desire - Carol Laderman
    
84. The Art of the Novel - Milan Kundera
    
85. The Bengal Muslims - R. Ahmed
    
86. The Birth of Vietnam - Keith Weller Taylor
    
87. The British Humiliation of Burma - Terence Blackburn
    
88. The Companions - Sheri S. Tepper
    
89. The Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan
    
90. The Double Tenth Trial - C. Sleeman, S.C. Silkin, Eds.
    
91. The Dutch Seaborne Empire - C.R. Boxer
    
92. The Emergence of Modern Turkey - Bernard Lewis
    
93. The Family Tree - Sherri S. Tepper
    
94. The March of Folly - Barbara Tuchman
    
95. The End of the War - Romen Bose
    
96. The Eye Over The Golden Sands - Lim Kean Siew
    
97. The Gift - Lewis Hyde
    
98. The Gravedigger's Daughter - Joyce Carol Oates
    
99. The Malayan Union Controversy, 1942-1948 - Albert Lau
    
100. The Margarets - Sheri S. Tepper
     
101. The Nanking Massacre - M.E.Sharpe
     
102. The Origins of The Second World War in Asia and the Pacific - Iriye Akira
     
103. The Pacific War - Ienaga Saburo
     
104. The Phor Tor Festival In Penang:Deities, Ghosts, and Chinese Ethnicity - Tan Sooi Beng
     
105. The Plague - Albert Camus
     
106. The Price of Peace - Foong Choon Hon, Ed.
     
107. The Prince - Machiavelli
     
108. The Rabbi's Cat - Joann Sfar
     
109. The Rape of Nanking - Iris Chang
     
110. The Remembered Village - M.N. Srinivasan
     
111. The Right To Die - Humphry & Wickett
     
112. The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
     
113. The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie - Malu Halasa & Rana Salam
     
114. The Tin Drum - Gunther Grass
     
115. The Vintage Book of Indian Writing - Salman Rushdie, Elizabeth West, Eds.
     
116. The War in Malaya - A.E. Percival
     
117. The Way of All Flesh - Samuel Butler
     
118. Three Came Home - Agnes Newton Keith
     
119. Till Morning Comes - Han Suyin
     
120. To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
     
121. Tokyo Rose - Masayo Duus
     
122. Tumbuna Stories 1, The Creation of Animal Life/As Bilong Animal - Thomas H. Slone and Jada Wilson
     
123. Tumbuna Stories 2,The Origin of People and Society/As Bilong Manmeri Na Sosaiti - Thomas H. Slone and Peter Leo Ella
     
124. Twentieth Century Chinese Stories - C.T. Hsia
     
125. War & Memory in Malaysia & Singapore - P. Lim Pui Huen, Diana Wong, Eds.
     
126. Witness to an Era - Frank Moraes
     
127. Women in the Holocaust - Dalia Ofer, Lenore J. Weitzman, Eds.
     
128. Women, Outcastes, Peasants & Rebels - Kalpana Bardhan
     
129. Writers' Workshop in a Book - Cheuse and Alvarez
     
130. You'll Die in Singapore - Charles McCormac
     
131. Your Memory: A User's Guide - Alan Baddeley
     
132. A Choice of Evils - Meira Chand
     
133. Force 136:Story of A Resistance Fighter in WWII - Tan Chong Tee
     
134. King Rat - James Clavell
     
135. Murder on the Verandah - Eric Lawlor
     
136. No Dram of Mercy - Sybil Kathigasu
     
137. Rehearsal for War - Ban Kah Choon, Yap Hong Kuan
     
138. Singa, Lion of Malaya - Gurchan Singh
     
139. Singapore The Pregnable Fortress - Peter Elphick
     
140. Sinister Twilight - Noel Barber
     
141. Sold For Silver - Janet Lim
     
142. Syonan - My Story (The Japanese Occupation of Singapore) - Mamoru Shinozaki
     
143. The Fall of Shanghai - Noel Barber
     
144. The Jungle is Neutral - F. Spencer Chapman
     
145. The War Of The Running Dogs - Noel Barber
     
146. You'll Never Get Off The Island - Keith Wilson

This is what the list looked like yesterday.

So, friends? Acquaintances? Beloveds? I know I'm a book-pig but we already found that last year's experiment, wherein I was reading every second of every day that I wasn't doing something requiring both hands yielded a pretty pathetic result. Admittedly some of that was the pain pills. It's hard to read when your eyeballs are describing circles in differing directions. But let's not forget that surgery + PT will take up 17 weeks this year. That's 17 weeks on different drugs during which I will undoubtedly be asleep half the time and non compos mentis the rest. So bag the books, OKAY? At least till 2010. Even if I beg and grovel and promise to read them only under the covers with a flashlight (C'mon you believe that story?).

At any rate, I did get some of them read. I'm putting out last year's book reviews and this year's reading list next.