It's not about books but it's about books somehow...
When I was young, I used to cover all my text books and notebooks by color-paper or used calendar paper. Some kinds of monthly calendars were made of very good quality paper, they were durable, resistant and had colorful pictures on them. The book covers helped me keep the books as long as possible (longer than usual since I have this tendency keeping my books in very good sharp even though I often take notes between the lines). Later, I changed the covers into this kind of transparent plastic since the books and notebooks had more and more beautiful covers and I liked them too much to hide them.
Since graduation, I stop covering my books since I have no more text books and I love my fiction books cover and they now usually have this thin plastic layer on the cover to keep them from many kind of dust and all. And I also notice that nowadays, the publishing houses pay more attention to the cover art so most of recently published books have very good quality covers.
Today I stumble over this piece of ad on book cover. Hey, the cover is very simple and are made of this kind of brown paper (from the past, remember?). But I think that simple and the brown paper is exactly what drew my attention the first hand. Nostalgic? I don't know. I think I always have this thing with that brown paper. I think the problem with this cover is you can not keep yourself from scribbling something on it once you have it for your books. Wanna bet? Ok, check it out here.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher
It took more than 7 months since publishing to the day this book appeared on the bestsellers list of NYTimes. The book is strange in many aspects.
"Thirteen reasons why" is a story was told by 2 parallel storytellers, one on the way to find the truth about the death of a girl and the other is that deceased girl. At least, it's how it looks like from the beginning of the story, the day a mystery shoebox-sized package appeared against the front door with Clay's name scribbled on the wrapping.
Have you ever thought of "the other side of a story"? Have you ever wonder yourself what other people re-tell your same stories? Have you ever guessed what that boy/girl thinks about you in a particullar party in which you did wear a funny outlook? And have you ever thought about how your victim of picking-up at school suffer from your joke?
And have you ever asked this question "what if..."?
And what would you have done once 7 audiotapes appeared on your porch from a deceased girl who accused that if your were listening to the tapes, you were one of reasons why her life ended?
Runing away? From what?
Listening to the tape? For what? For making your life more miserable like hers? Or just to know? Or to make something better?
It's your choice. But once you start, you can not stop. The problem is the starting is not the day those tapes appeare on your porch. It was someday in the past... And you know that, you can not change what happened in the past...
I like the ending of this book and I like this whole book in common. It's more coming-of-age story than a romantic love story at the coming-of-age period of some teenagers in a small town. The story starts with a death of a young girl and close with hope for other lives. Even though it's like a very long journey from living to death, from ignorance to awareness about life, love, acceptance and - more important - self-awareness, the whole story is actually lasted some hours from the minute the box appeared to the end of the last tape. Somehow, I think that this story does not come to an end but actually is just the starting of a very new life for Clay. It likes the moment he opened the wrapping he also opened the door of his life, a life which is not bliss by arrogance anymore, but definitely happier.
I don't know if there is any publishing house in VN has the intention translating this book into Vietnamese or not. However, if you have the intermediate level of English, this book will make not much dificulty at all. The only problem reading this book is that you may feel a little bit confuse at first since you have parallel storytellers in stead of a traditional single storyteller one. However, after you make acquaintance with the characters, the whole book is really intrigued.
Highly recommended, especially for people with "what if..." problem and teenagers at the coming-of-age turnabout.
"Thirteen reasons why" is a story was told by 2 parallel storytellers, one on the way to find the truth about the death of a girl and the other is that deceased girl. At least, it's how it looks like from the beginning of the story, the day a mystery shoebox-sized package appeared against the front door with Clay's name scribbled on the wrapping.
Have you ever thought of "the other side of a story"? Have you ever wonder yourself what other people re-tell your same stories? Have you ever guessed what that boy/girl thinks about you in a particullar party in which you did wear a funny outlook? And have you ever thought about how your victim of picking-up at school suffer from your joke?
And have you ever asked this question "what if..."?
And what would you have done once 7 audiotapes appeared on your porch from a deceased girl who accused that if your were listening to the tapes, you were one of reasons why her life ended?
Runing away? From what?
Listening to the tape? For what? For making your life more miserable like hers? Or just to know? Or to make something better?
It's your choice. But once you start, you can not stop. The problem is the starting is not the day those tapes appeare on your porch. It was someday in the past... And you know that, you can not change what happened in the past...
I like the ending of this book and I like this whole book in common. It's more coming-of-age story than a romantic love story at the coming-of-age period of some teenagers in a small town. The story starts with a death of a young girl and close with hope for other lives. Even though it's like a very long journey from living to death, from ignorance to awareness about life, love, acceptance and - more important - self-awareness, the whole story is actually lasted some hours from the minute the box appeared to the end of the last tape. Somehow, I think that this story does not come to an end but actually is just the starting of a very new life for Clay. It likes the moment he opened the wrapping he also opened the door of his life, a life which is not bliss by arrogance anymore, but definitely happier.
I don't know if there is any publishing house in VN has the intention translating this book into Vietnamese or not. However, if you have the intermediate level of English, this book will make not much dificulty at all. The only problem reading this book is that you may feel a little bit confuse at first since you have parallel storytellers in stead of a traditional single storyteller one. However, after you make acquaintance with the characters, the whole book is really intrigued.
Highly recommended, especially for people with "what if..." problem and teenagers at the coming-of-age turnabout.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)