Favourite Quote from Your Favourite Book

I am still in the mood of reading, reviewing and favouring Agatha Christie’s book, so I’ll pick up a quote from my first favourite book – The ABC Murder. Yes, this is the first real book that I really like and it spurs me for the love of Agatha Christie’s book.

So here’s the quote:

Words, mademoiselle; are only the outer clothing  of ideas.

Sorry for being missing last week, been busy with work and got no real mood to update about the books. Anyway, let’s continue this so that I can complete this meme and move on with some other nonsensical posts. LOL.

Question for today is: Favourite Female Character

Okay, I can name a few heroin out of the books I like, e.g Annabeth Chase of Percy Jackson series or maybe the stereotypical heroin like Hermione Granger of Harry Potter, but nahh… I like those characters when it comes as a movie.

There’s one female that I’ve always been impressed though – Miss Marple. So here we go – my favourite female character is Miss Marple, even though she is nowhere near the hotness level (she’s old and a spinster, is that hot for you? )

Why do I think she’s impressive?

1. She’s motherly and a very.. normal old woman. But with her observation, she can think and know the mystery or the real character of the victim or the murderer.
2. She has an unmatched understanding of human nature, and most of her solution are based on her instinct.
3. Even though with her sharp logical mind, she’s still an old woman; sometimes confused and fluffy.

Well you can read more about her in this Wikipedia entry.

Favourite Male Character

Favourite male character in a book eh? Hmm… that’s quite hard since mostly when I read, I remember the story, and not much on the character. Yeah sometimes I can also got quite confused with the character name making me rereading one or two page back. Sometimes is the keyword there

Since I’m a big fan of Agatha Christie, two characters popped into my head – the eggheaded hero detective named Hercule Poirot, or his sidekicks Arthur Hastings.

I think I’ll go with Arthur Hastings.

In most book of Agatha Christie (mostly is the keyword here), the story will be narrated by Arthur. And in comparison to the Sherlock Holmes, Arthur will be the Doctor Watson.

He might be slow to understand the clues, or even sometimes biased to the victim or even some girls (who also sometimes turned out to be the criminal), but he’s pure British, so Agatha Christie wrote him speaking in fluent English, suavely.

I think I always have a soft spot for British customs for no reason. I just find it, interesting.

Comparing him to Hercule Poirot, the character of Hercule Poirot is Belgian and talked in French — which sometimes annoys me so much. Sometimes I can’t understand his remarks in French!

Well, for these two reasons, I think I choose Arthur for my favourite character is a right decision. You can read about him at this wiki.

No picture though, this is a fictional character, remember?

Of course… it would be:

Favourite book of your favourite writer.

I haven’t bought the fourth book of Sam Bourne (The Chosen One), so I am not sure if that book is the best book ever written by him or not. But from the other three books, I would choose..

The Final Reckoning

The Final Reckoning is a thriller that interweave it’s storyline with the Jewish, Nazi, World War 2, and the Holocaust event. It started with how an old man was shot in the public at UN, suspected to be a terrorist. However, upon further inspection, he is not a terrorist; only a tourist, and the UN seems to shot him wrongly.

So the top people in UN deployed their man in other to cover up the story, find the old man family, and try not to receive the blowback.

But does the old man really is innocent? Or was he had some secrets to hide?

That’s how the story unravelled.

What I like about the book is how the history is being told in a third person flashback, where he or she suddenly dreaming or remembering about the old story or events that was once happened to him or her. Add that with some sugar (read: use Facebook to help investigation), and you know you can be hooked to this book.

Overall, a good book, even though I am not sure on how accurate the history facts are. Heck, I am not reading a history book by the way, so I don’t bother about that.

Your Favourite Writer

Hmm. I can actually named a few writers that I love, but apparently the question asked me to choose one. I usually bought books from familiar writers, and only bought some books from random one. Hmm… Let’s start by writing down some of my favourite writers, shall we?

1. Agatha Christie (I love almost all her books – Hercule Poirot, Miss Marples. Not the M & N series though).
2. Dean Koontz (his thriller can make you went nightmare)
3. Sam Bourne (I think he’s the best competitor for Dan Brown, and I haven’t read his fourth book – The Chosen One).
4. Jodi Picoult (one of the master of drama)
5. Rick Riordan (who has successfully sparked my interest again towards Greek myths)

Now, out of this five, which one should I pick?

Hmmm…..

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Okay let’s pick Sam Bourne; just for the reason I haven’t featured or review any of his book in this meme yet.

Now, do you know that Sam Bourne is actually a pseudonym? His real name is Jonathan Freedland and the reason he used a pseudonym is to distinguish his own work in fiction and in journalism.

He has written four books up to now, which is:

And I have three out of four (I still haven’t bought The Chosen One – anyone wanted to give it to me as a gift? *wink*).

Err do I need to explain about the author? Well why don’t you go and read about him in Wikipedia here.

A book you used to love but don’t anymore.

Let’s start the thinking cap with some dots… shall we? You know what this means. It means a long staring to the collection of books in the boxes.

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Can I get a little personal about this?

When I say I want to get a little personal, I mean that I love this book previously (including the owner), but now I don’t love it anymore. It’s….

Stephen King – Gerald’s Game.

I am not a big fan of Stephen King, actually. In fact, I think Stephen King’s books are quite bizarre, full of stupid supernatural that doesn’t make sense sometime and some of the books are downright mental (remember IT the clown? That’s what I mean by downright mental). This book is no exception.

It tells a story where Jessie, a wife accidentally killed her husband Gerald during a bondage sex game, where she was cuffed to a bedpost. It looks like an accident, because while she’s aroused during the game, suddenly she doesn’t want it anymore when he started climbing up onto her. So she kicked his groin, and he got a heart attack.

Kinda duh.

Then the story continues on how she got hallucinated, attacked, and escaped. Well that’s so Stephen King.

I love this book previously because it contains some sex scene, and the mental thoughts of Jessie is quite eerie. It’s not a bad book. It’s quite good in the sense of mind boggling book. But reading it again, I think the story is quite meh and duh.

Guess who was the owner of this book?

The most hated ex I ever had. LOL Oh yes, when we broke up, I didn’t returned the book. It doesn’t look like she mind it at all, so here, off to the bottom of the box you go again.

Now you do understand why I previously loved but not anymore, do you? Told ya it’s a bit personal and not much about the book itself. HAHAHA

Question for day 11:

Book you hated.

I rarely hate books. Maybe there are some books that I don’t finished reading, two or three of them, but usually that happened because the story got slow, and then I’m bored, and then I forgot to continue. But rarely I hate the books.

Not this one, though.

The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason.

I cannot read past the first chapter. Maybe I put too high of a hope on this book? Since this book rides on Dan Brown “archeology-mystery” genre, I was expecting that this book will have a gripping start, an ascending plot, and a twisted end.

But it feels like reading a history text book. So it is a big turn off.

And yes, I read the first chapter only. Even that takes me more than five days. Five freaking days! Reason being I always fall asleep after two or three pages of reading it. It is like reading a history text book. So, that’s it.

Off to the bottom of the box you go.

Okay today’s question is:

Favorite classic book

Hmm… now that’s a hard question. I rarely read classic book. Well in term of classic book = those book like “Killing a Mockingbird” or “Shakespeare Romeo or Juliet” kinda thingy.

So can I define classic book as… some oldest book that I have / read?

In that case.. I got to be thankful to the first ever Agatha Christie book…

The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie

This is the first edition cover. Obviously mine is not this one.

The A.B.C Murder has been written by Agatha Christie and published in UK on January 6, 1936 (so I think this can be considered classic). I stumbled upon this book when reading some comics (cannot remember whether Detective Conan or Penyiasat Remaja comic) and this book is mentioned in the comics.

Imagine how delightful am I when I found this book on the shelf of a bookstore. Straight away buy, read, and from there on I am hooked with Agatha Christie book. My earliest book collection is mainly Agatha Christie books.

This book is peculiar and unique on its on way, since it combined different point of view into one book. It combines the first person point of view and the third person point of view, and it might be confusing for those who are not familiar with the book style.

And the ending is twisted. EPIC!

P/s: As usual, the series of meme will be continued next Monday. LOL!

A book you thought you wouldn’t like but end up loving

Aha. When I first saw this question, I already know the answer. This book was bought on impulse. I saw the cover and it look too cool, and when I read the summary behind, it seems like something intriguing… but I thought – “yeah, maybe this is just a normal book“.

Yes, I thought the book is sooo not interesting. How wrong am I when I read it.

Presenting…

Mirrorscape by Mike Wilks

The cover looks cool, no?

The story revolves around a mystical world where arts are everything. People buy and sell arts, people make arts for their living, and whoever that can draw is in a high position in the country. Artists are like kings.

So as usual story goes, there is a kid named Mel who learns how to draw from the famous institute in the country, and discovered a secret about their master. Their master can draw a living portrait and make it another world! He can travel around using his drawing that is scattered and hung around the country.

So an adventure started for Mel and his newly found friends; exploring arts, portraits, and picture.

The story is good although it is not as good as Lord of The Ring or Harry Potter. I can still remember bit and pieces about the book, so yes, that’s a sign that this book is not as what I expected.

Of course, the question for today will be: The Most Overrated Book.

Which somehow I feel a bit easier to answer compared to yesterday’s question.

Okay, my answer would be:

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

A bit of disclaimer: I do not say that this book is bad. It is one hell of a good book, but it is overrated.

It all started when this book somehow become popular out of nowhere. When I first read Dan Brown, I didn’t read The Da Vinci Code. I read Angel and Demon first, even though I bought this two book at the same time (I still remember this because at that time I was at my second year in UTP, and instead of buying the next model of Gundam which is the rave at that time, I bought these two books instead).

And my opinion still stays the same – I like Angel and Demon better than The Da Vinci Code.

What happened after the popularity rises is what I termed as “overrated”. We can see that the rise of “DVC genre” books suddenly polluting the bookshelf. Too many poseurs trying to copy the success of Dan Brown. Books like, The Book of Four? Hell I hate that book.

While it is a good book and subsequently made into a movie, the movie doesn’t deliver justice for the book. The movie was poorly directed, and was poorly adapted. Comparing the movie Angel and Demon with The Da Vinci Code, personally I believe that the Angel and Demon movie is more successful.

So this book is sooooo overrated even though it is one hell of a book.