Random books from Banoo's library
The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
A Fan's Notes A Fictional Memoir by Exley Frederick
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
The Waste Land and Other Writings by T.S. Eliot
Arok of Java by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Dogs of God by Pinckney Benedict
Members with Banoo's books
Member connections
Friends: angrystarlyt, BeaverMeyer, bibliobibuli, bluesprinkles, deebee1, dtn620, liehtzu1, okupcu, websheer
Interesting libraries: angrystarlyt, bibliobibuli, dtn620
LibraryThing authors: Lance Carbuncle (Carbuncle), David Liss (davidliss), Deborah Smith (debbsmith), Lisa See (lisasee)
Member: Banoo
CollectionsYour library (496), To read (1), All collections (496)
Reviews176 reviews
TagsRead (278), Read 2009 (82), Nobel (77), Read 2008 (73), Read 2007 (26) — see all tags
Cloudstag cloud, author cloud
Groups1001 Books to read before you die, 50 Book Challenge, 75 Books Challenge for 2009, Author Theme Reads, Books that made me think, Group Reads - Literature, Reading Globally
Favorite authorsSamuel Beckett, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jonathan Evison, James Joyce, Ismail Kadare, Yasunari Kawabata, Orhan Pamuk, Walker Percy, Charles Portis, John Steinbeck, Leo Tolstoy (Shared favorites)
About meI'm a bayou-born Cajun from Cut Off, Louisiana (real name place and has nothing do to with cutting things off but more about things cut off). I've been in Singapore and Malaysia since 1989… a two year move just kind of dragged on. Though I love nasi-lemak, it's still not as good as jambalaya... luckily, thanks to my Dad, I know how to cook Cajun food. Here's my Gumbo Recipe.
I went through a period not long ago where all my reading was done using my hand phone. It was convenient. A mobile phone could be pulled out and looked at almost anywhere without question. And I could keep hundreds of books on my memory card… it was more a portable library than phone but I hated getting calls when I was in my library. So I’ve gone back to paper print. Yeah, the environment is important and we should save the trees, but the smell of a new book and feel of it’s lightly textured paper is a joy worth a tree or two… just be sure to replant a tree for every few books you read.
Problem with my reading is I don’t remember things too well. I’ve got multiple copies of books. It’s a costly problem. I think it may be an age thing, though I’m not fully convinced of that. My memory goes back a couple of weeks fairly well, before that…
I'm a landscape architect working at WDI Design Sdn Bhd. I’m paid to tell people where to plant trees so that I can read more books. I design swimming pools and fountains too because water is cool.
My sign is Cynic not Virgo. The charts are wrong… I should know.
About my libraryMy library is my current library. Not my library when I was younger... or older. I've gone through many libraries and my books of yesterday seemed to have vanished from my shelves. I'm not sure where they ended up, whether they just turned to dust or sneaked off to be with other books on other shelves. I need a book dog to keep my flock of books in order. I'm beginning to think books are wild beasts and cannot be tamed.
Also I've read almost all of the books listed in my library but since my memory is limited and getting less reliable I'm only marking 'read' the books I've recently gone through.
Currently Reading
• Teatro Grottesco, Thomas Ligotti
2009 Completed Books
• Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury
• Valis, Philip K. Dick
• Poachers, Tom Franklin
• The Confusions of Young Törless, Robert Musil
• Savage Night, Jim Thompson
• The Bells of Nagasaki, Takashi Nagai
• The Woman in Black, Susan Hill
• Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
• The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett
• The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
• The Following Story, Cees Nooteboom
• Magnetic Field, Ron Loewinsohn
• Nine, Andrzej Stasiuk
• The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, Matsuo Basho
• The Izu Dancer and Other Stories, Kawabata & Inoue
• The Hunting Gun, Yasushi Inoue
• Willard and His Bowling Trophies, Richard Brautigan
• Detective Story, Imre Kertész
• Novel without a Name, Duong Thu Huong
• The Eye, Vladimir Nabokov
• Salmonella Men on Planet Porno, Yasutaka Tsutsui
• Aimez-vous Brahms, Françoise Sagan
• Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan
• The Bread of Those Early Years, Heinrich Boll
• Letters From My Windmill, Alphonse Daudet
• Natasha: And Other Stories, David Bezmozgis
• Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges
• Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
• The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, Tim Burton
• The Haunted Dolls' House, M. R. James
• Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Broken April, Ismail Kadare
• Diary of a Bad Year, J.M. Coetzee
• The End of the Affair, Graham Greene
• Fire Ants, Gerald Duff
• In the Miso Soup, Ryu Murakami
• The Code of the Woosters, P.G. Wodehouse
• Quicksand, Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
• A Dog's Heart: An Appalling Story, Mikhail Bulgakov
• Almost Transparent Blue, Ryu Murakami
• Dante, Dante Alighieri
• Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed, Lance Carbuncle
• Gather the Weeds, Patrick Kilgallon
• Blind Willow, Sleeping Women, Haruki Murakami
• Seven Nights, Jorge Luis Borges
• The Ministry of Fear, Graham Greene
• House of Glass, Pramoedya Ananta Toer
• Diary of a Mad Old Man, Junichiro Tanizaki
• Dark Water, Koji Suzuki
• The New Life, Orhan Pamuk
• My Loose Thread, Dennis Cooper
• In Praise of Shadows, Junichiro Tanizaki
• Five by Endo, Shusaku Endo
• Audition, Ryu Murakami
• Footsteps, Pramoedya Ananta Toer
• Hauntings: Bangla Ghost Stories, edited by Suchitra Samanta
• Hell, Yasutaka Tsutsui
• Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo
• Ubik, Philip K. Dick
• The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
• Child of All Nations, Pramoedya Ananta Toer
• The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
• This Earth of Mankind, Pramoedya Ananta Toer
• Humpty Dumpty in Oakland, Philip K. Dick
• Bayou Farewell, Mike Tidwell
• The Lake, Yasunari Kawabata
• Karnak Café, Naguib Mahfouz
• Fever, J. M. G. Le Clézio
• The Tenant, Roland Topor
• Lost Paradise, Cees Nooteboom
• Prufrock and Other Observations, T.S. Eliot
• Terra Amata, J. M. G. Le Clézio
• The Nimrod Flipout: Stories, Etgar Keret
• 69, Ryu Murakami
• Shadow Family, Miyuki Miyabe
• Utz, Bruce Chatwin
• The Giants, J. M. G. Le Clézio
• The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
• Please Don't Call Me Human, Wang Shuo
• Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine, Stanley Crawford
• A Prescription for Love :P, Leeanne Marie Stephenson
• Stories of Anton Chekhov, Anton Chekhov
Books Read in 2008
01. The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky
02. The Successor, Ismail Kadare
03. Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, Henry W. Longfellow (read twice and loved it both times)
04. Snakes and Earrings, Hitomi Kanehara (my bad apple of the year)
05. First Love and Other Novellas, Samuel Beckett
06. War & Peace, Leo Tolstoy
07. The Futurist, James P. Othmer
08. Liquidation, Imre Kertesz
09. The Dog of the South, Charles Portis
10. The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, Yukio Mishima
11. The Master of Go, Yasunari Kawabata
12. The Box Man, Kobo Abe
13. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy (probably my second favorite book of the year)
14. Wonderful Wonderful Times, Elfriede Jelinek
15. Dusklands, J. M. Coetzee
16. Masters of Atlantis, Charles Portis
17. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino
18. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
19. Taras Bulba, Nikolai Gogol (more Gogol for 2009 is guaranteed)
20. The Waste Land and Other Writings, T. S. Eliot
21. My Name Is Red, Orhan Pamuk
22. Junky, William S. Burroughs
23. All That Is Gone, Pramoedya Ananta Toer
24. Zombie, Joyce Carol Oates
25. Candide, Voltaire
26. The Palace of Dreams, Ismail Kadare
27. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner (my favorite Faulkner this year)
28. Edith's Diary, Patricia Highsmith
29. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blurn, Heinrich Boll
30. All About Lulu, Jonathan Evison
31. July's People, Nadine Gordimer
32. Light in August, William Faulkner
33. Invitation to a Beheading, Vladimir Nabokov
34. Lamb to the Slaughter, Roald Dahl
35. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
36. Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
37. The 210th Day, Natsume Soseki
38. The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker (thanks Ben for this recommendation)
39. The Fugitive, Pramoedya Ananta Toer
40. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain (better than when I read at age 12)
41. Concrete Island, J.G. Ballard
42. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
43. Serve the People!, Yan Lianke
44. The Thief and the Dogs, Naguib Mahfouz (nice surprise of a find)
45. A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes (another great find)
46. The Stranger, Albert Camus (a re-read that reminded me of a Hal Hartley script)
47. Other Colors: Essays and a Story, Orhan Pamuk (my favorite book of the year)
48. Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather, Gao Xingjian
49. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut
50. A Personal Matter, Kenzaburo Oe
51. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
52. Three Elegies for Kosovo, Ismail Kadare
53. Thousand Cranes, Yasunari Kawabata
54. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson (nice surprise)
55. Piercing, Ryu Murakami (wicked good)
56. The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa
57. The Old Capital, Yasunari Kawabata (read while in the old capital)
58. The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe
59. Coin Locker Babies, Ryu Murakami (one of the best first halves of a book I've ever read)
60. Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges
61. Selected Short Stories from Contemporary China
62. Austerlitz, W. G. Sebald
63. Epitaph of a Small Winner, Machado de Assis
64. The Atom Station, Halldor Laxness (more Laxness in 2009)
65. The Ballad of the Sad Café, Carson McCullers (bought it for the cover but the contents were even better)
66. Classic Haiku: The Greatest Japanese Poetry from Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki and Their Followers, Tom Lowenstein
67. I Love Dollars and other Stories of China, Zhu Wen (funny stuff from China)
68. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
69. Berji Kristen: Tales from the Garbage Hills, Latife Tekin
70. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost, Ismail Kadare
71. The Bridegroom Was a Dog, Yoko Tawada
72. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys (will need to add more sci-fi to 2009… thanks you know who)
73. The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
Membership
LibraryThing Early Reviewers/Member Giveaway
LocationKuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Emailbrian_doucet
mac.com
Account typepublic, lifetime
Connection NewsConnection News
URLs
http://www.librarything.com/profile/Banoo (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Banoo (library)
Common KnowledgeSeries (56), Awards (201), Characters (2062), Places (338)
Member sinceFeb 27, 2008
Most recent activity
Banoo rated, reviewed:The Confusions of Young Torless (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Robert Musil (read review) |





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Mark and I have been discussing the possibility of another group read in November and want your input. We have narrowed it down to two books at this point. "The People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks and "The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield. So chat it up with friends or us and let us know if you are up for it and what you think. Probably the same plan as with "Pillars of the Earth" which seemed to work out perfectly for almost all of us.
Think it over and give one of us a shout.
hugs and looking forward to hearing from you,
belva
posted by nannybebette at 10:01 pm (EST) on Sep 8, 2009
You cannot imagine how very good it made me feel to read your post regarding John Steinbeck. To me, he is just the best. He never writes the same book twice. There is absolutely no formula to his writing. Each and every one is new and fresh no matter how many times I read it. And you are exactly right. It is his writing even more than his stories, even though each and every one of them is wonderful. His writing, the way he puts his words together, his very thought process is so special when comparing him to the other greats.
Thank you for that note. You made my day.
big hug,
belva
posted by nannybebette at 10:16 pm (EST) on Sep 6, 2009
Happy reading!
posted by nobooksnolife at 6:34 am (EST) on Sep 6, 2009
posted by Whisper1 at 8:28 pm (EST) on Jul 24, 2009
We will still be here reading when you return.
belva
posted by nannybebette at 8:53 pm (EST) on May 26, 2009
I've added Shirley Jackson to my favorite authors - I think she's sadly neglected.
posted by marise at 8:01 am (EST) on May 15, 2009
posted by Makifat at 4:56 pm (EST) on Apr 2, 2009
Was wondering if you'd be interested in reviewing my new novel and posting your comments here as well as a few other book-related sites. Saw you liked Butcher Boy, and I thought you might like my novel since it's also about a disturbed adolescent and a bit dark. I could e-mail you the novel in an e-book format if you'd like. Let me know if you're interested. Here's a link to a summary in case you're interested:
http://christophertusa.com/blog/?page_id...
Thanks,
Chris
posted by cmtusa at 8:38 am (EST) on Mar 25, 2009
posted by girlunderglass at 7:23 am (EST) on Feb 5, 2009
sorry for the late comment, i havent been on here for some time.
as for kyoto, i found the place astonishingly... disappointing. i was staying in osaka for awhile and took a day trip there, and first thing you do is exit the ultramodern train station. i just strolled around town... A LOT. but thinking: this is old kyoto?? there were some good old temples, sure, but the town was a typically japanese mostly concrete n'ugly affair. it was only later that year when i read alex kerr's depressing "dogs and demons" that my vague dissatisfaction with japan found more expression.
posted by liehtzu1 at 11:49 pm (EST) on Dec 18, 2008
I have enjoyed your reading list this year.
posted by marise at 8:24 pm (EST) on Sep 25, 2008
posted by liehtzu1 at 12:47 am (EST) on Sep 25, 2008
posted by judylou at 1:29 am (EST) on Aug 29, 2008
posted by judylou at 1:09 am (EST) on Aug 29, 2008
thanks for the offer of the lend of pramoedya's books - i have read the first two books of the buru quartet and i hav some others by him.
am a bad borrower but a good lender of books so if i have any you would like to read, do say. i am collecting out of print books about malaysia partic fiction titles and trying to read as many local books as i can.
posted by bibliobibuli at 10:45 am (EST) on Jul 24, 2008
posted by deebee1 at 5:59 am (EST) on Jul 21, 2008
posted by deebee1 at 7:46 pm (EST) on Jul 4, 2008
posted by Sniv at 10:06 pm (EST) on Jun 5, 2008
posted by Sniv at 11:29 am (EST) on Jun 5, 2008
posted by tloeffler at 11:52 am (EST) on Apr 25, 2008
posted by BeaverMeyer at 10:56 pm (EST) on Apr 9, 2008
Terri
posted by teelgee at 1:15 am (EST) on Mar 27, 2008