There are people everywhere who form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones! They come in all colours. They can be Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or pagans or atheists. They can be young or old, men or women, soldiers or pacifists, rich or poor. They may be patriots, but they are never chauvinists. They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding. When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not glaldly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean. They are not inhibited by fashion, public opinion, or political correctness. They are exiles in their own communities, because they are always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it. It is the nation of nowhere. – Jan Morris
Tukar Bukumu di Bali
Tukar buku alias book swap itu menyenangkan karena sering kali saya terkejut dengan buku yang saya dapatkan. Hari Sabtu lalu misalnya, saya berjanji temu dengan dua rekan goodreads Bali, Mia dan Sekar di Dijon, sebuah cafe di daerah Simpang Siur. Dijon mengadakan book swap di Bali sejak 11 tahun yang lalu namun baru beberapa bulan belakangan ini saya turut serta. Bersama lima buah buku, saya datang, memilih dan tiga puluh menit kemudian, membawa lima buah buku baru dalam beragam kondisinya. ‘Baru’ tentu saja istilah yang relatif. ‘Baru’ disini lebih menunjuk ke saya, sebagai pemilik baru, daripada kondisi buku-buku itu sendiri. Tapi siapa yang peduli?
Berikut temuan saya:
Beauty and Sadness (Yasunari Kawabata)
The Siege (Helen Dunmore)
An Absolute Scandal (Penny Vincenzi)
Women of the Silk (Gail Tsukiyama)
Sons of the Yellow Emperor: The Story of the Overseas Chinese (Lynn Pan)
dan tambahan pinjaman dua lagi dari kawan saya:
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Roald Dahl)
The White Gardenia (Belinda Alexandra)
Book swap berikut akan diadakan pada hari Sabtu, minggu terakhir bulan Januari 2012, pukul 11.00 – 16.00 sore. Syarat buku yang bisa ditukarkan: berbahasa Inggris dan dalam kondisi layak baca. Sampai jumpa!
manusia yang bahagia…
“The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others.” — William Phelps
(Hopefully) on My Tomb
“She was the opposite of parochial. Nothing for her, was outside the pale: she wanted to know about everything and everyone, and every place and every word. She relished life and language hugely and reveled in the diverse”
Angela Carter’s obituary in The Observer, 1992.
This is the exact same thing I’d like someone to write about me when I die.
Recent Treasure Acquisition
1. In Cold Blood (Truman Capote)
2. Living to Tell the Tale (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
3. Pompeii (Robert Harris)
4. The Bonesetter’s Daughter (Amy Tan)
5. Cafe Scheherazade (Arnold Zable)
6. Smile When You’re Lying: Confession of a Rogue Travel Writer (Chuck Thompson)
7. Sexing the Cherry (Jeanette Winterson)
8. The Sultan’s Seal (Jenny White)
Djakarta: Unexpectedly Read
These were the youth brigades, who thought they could save the revolution with patriotic murals and inflammatory doves. Alba went up to them and pointed to the mural on the other side of the street. It was stained with red paint and contained a single word printed in enormous letters: Djakarta.
“What does that mean, compañero?” she asked one of them.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
And none of them knew why the opposition had painted that Asiatic word on the walls; they never heard about the piles of corpses in the street of that distant city.
-from The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende page 362
burn, burn, burn
They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
