打劫 - Dymocks IFC clearance sale

老實說, 以往到 Dymocks IFC 都是看看有什麼新書, 看的居多, 購買的則少之又少.  多是看了之後上Amazon 購買 kindle version。

也許我這類 '客人' 太多, Dymocks IFC 終於捱不住要閉店.
臨閉店前當然要來個大割引。

先在全店七折時購入五本，放了在家，沒拍照。

怎知翌日竟然變了五折!!!
當然立即趕去掃貨。

整間Dymocks 像被打劫一樣， 貨架有書的不過20個， 餘下的大多不是最熱門的選擇。

搶劫成果:

各位書迷，有買趁手啊!

Kindle 的字典及highlight 功能

有天向朋友推薦Kindle, 拍了以下短片解說內建的字典及highlight 功能.
也讓有興趣的朋友看看.
個人覺得這兩個功能十分易用, 對想學習英語的朋友會很有幫助.

在看書的過程中，如果你遇到任何不懂的字，只要按住它，那個字的解釋就會自動跳出來．看完解釋後可以按 highlight 記下來．　

淘寶買物17 - COOKBOOK AGAIN

今次又介紹COOKBOOK.  這次是印度菜的COOKBOOK.淘回來的. 看到書那個桃紅加黃色的封面已叫人心花怒放.
Fucshia is one of my favourite colours!

這本印度菜譜是三個印度裔的姊妹的作品, 介紹的菜式不太複雜, presentation 也較modern.

我最喜歡的是, 她們在書的開始列出了書中會用到的所有香料, 總共有十多款.

這三姊妹還出了一個spice box, 在英國有售, 裏面已有齊各樣香料, 不用自己找. 價錢也不貴.
我就襯上次到吉隆坡, 專程到小印度執齊了所有香料. 買齊了各樣香料, 再加三盒 saffron, 才RM100, 即 HKD250.

書內有各類菜式, 從湯到甜品也有:

現在已開始陸續試做.
之前做過雞和蘑菇的菜式.
那個雞的菜式已忘了名字, 只記得用了很多香料, 有 cumin seed, cinnamon stick, garam masala, ground ginger, cardamon pods, cloves, bay leave, ground chilli... 味道真的很正宗, 而且香氣還飄很遠. 隔壁一定以為那裏來了個印度人鄰居!

前幾天則做了龍脷柳.
不過沒有 garnish, 賣相一般. 但味道很好.
用了ground tumeric, ginger, chilli 幾種香料. 算是比較清淡的了.

Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick-Part 2

At long last, here comes the second part

Please click here for part 1

Kim Hyuck

The fifth defector Kim Hyuck had lost almost the whole family due to starvation.  As his father could not afford to raise him any longer, he was sent to an orphanage.  Kim Hyuck eventually left the orphanage when it was unable to feed him any longer.  Though living a life of extreme deprivation, he survived by his wits.  He later became an adventurous young man and began a relatively profitable career, stealing and smuggling goods between China and North Korea .

Dr Kim

The last defector was a dedicated North Korean doctor who had been forced to helplessly watch children die of illnesses or starvation as there was no medicine and food.  With nothing to cure the patients, Dr Kim and many other doctors in North Korea could only scour the mountains for herbs to be used as medicines. There was a set quota and if the doctors did not collect enough, they were sent out for more.

When famine descended, housewives in North Korea had to add weeds and leaves to soups to fake vegetables.  To further create the illusion of a half-full stomach, they added husks, stems and cobs, too.   But they were too hard for children to digest.  What the doctors could do was to discuss this problem among themselves and gave the mothers “cooking advice” viz. if one uses grass or tree bark, they should be grinded very finely and cooked for a very long time so they become soft and easy to eat.

During a terrible famine in the 1990s, it was estimated that over two million people died in North Korea, which was about 10 percent of the population.  To this date, North Koreans are still malnourished.  According to Demick, the army had to lower its five-foot-three minimum height requirement in the early 1990s because most recruits could not meet it.

Propaganda

Many people would think that the people in North Korea would blame the Kim Jong-il regime for their suffering.  However, due to the regime’s propaganda apparatus, the people in North Korea largely blamed the United States for the agony.  

Absurd stories were drilled into every North Korean from birth through state-run schools and propaganda outlets.  Children did not celebrate their own birthdays, but those of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.  Even the math problems in schools were worded as propaganda, e.g . “Eight boys and nine girls are singing anthems in praise of Kim Il-sung. How many children are singing in total?”.  Every North Korean must wear pins of Kim Il-sung and display portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il on the walls of their houses, and they must clean the pictures daily and keep them spotless.  Television sets which were seldom available were rigged so only one official propaganda station was streamed. Secret police conducted random checks to make sure all those rules were enforced in houses.  Community organizations called inminban required neighbors to spy on each other.  The massive propaganda campaign molded most North Koreans into thinking that they had “Nothing to Envy”, but for the minority who had any slight doubt of the regime, either because they were suffering from immense pain of having lost their families or starvation or because they had a glimpse of what the outside world was really like, propaganda forced them to at least appear to be a loyal follower of the regime.  Masses of North Koreans bubbling like they were having a 'who can cry most impressively' competition, fearing of not being seen to be energetic enough in their mourning, is an example.

It is startling to learn that in the 90s, millions of North Koreans were still scraping tree bark and eating sawdust to survive.  When people talk of famine in the 90s, one will usually think of skinny child with a bloated stomach in Ethiopia, but rarely will one associate nationwide tree bark scraping in North Korea!  Think of what you were doing in the 90s!  Still enjoying your carefree university life?  Already started your working life and began to savour what the world has to offer?  This book is a very sad book, but viewed from another perspective, it makes me very grateful for having been born in Hong Kong and having what I have today.  I would invite all aggrieved angry HongKongers to read this book.  I am sure you will start counting your blessings in life the minute you finish 10 pages!

淘寶買物13 - cookbooks

近來淘了十多本書, 又在book depository 訂了兩本回來. 前後共花了仟多元. 在香港買的話以這個價錢大約只可買到三本!
當中有幾本喜歡得不得了, 一定要在這裏介紹一下.

第一本是很實用的The Cook's Encyclopedia.
2010年 英國出的. 共有768頁, hard cover.
淘回來的.

Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

I have always been interested in reading about North Korea - one of the countries George Bush labeled the “axes of evil”.  The author of “Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea ”, Ms. Barbara Demick, was the Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times.  After interviewing about 100 North Koreans who defected to Seoul and visiting North Korea herself nine times, she wrote this book about the poignant stories of six North Koreans who once lived in Chongjin, a poor industrial town in the northeast.  The book is so absorbing from start to end and I am going to write in some length to introduce to you the tragic experiences of the six defectors.

The darkness

Demick began her book with a striking satellite photo of the Korean peninsula at night – prosperous South Korea lit up by cities and commerce, in stark contrast with the total darkness of North Korea.

Photo Source: 

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2006/10/061011-d -6570c -001.jpg

Mi-ran and Jun-sang

Mi-ran and Jun-sang were once lovers.  Mi-ran is the daughter of a kaolin miner, a South Korean prisoner of war and the ‘tainted blood’ has disqualified Mi-ran from moving up the social ladder.  On the other hand, Jun-sang came from a high-ranking family.  They took advantage of the complete absence of electricity and had romantic walks in the pitch black night, the only time the police in Chongjin could not locate them.  Had they been caught holding hands in the daytime, Jun-sang could have lost his job prospects.  According to Mi-ran’s recount, “It took us three years to hold hands. Another six to kiss.  At the time I left North Korea, I was 26 years old and a schoolteacher, but I didn’t know how babies were conceived.”

Jun-sang eventually went to a college in Pyongyang to study science and continued the romance with Mi-ran from afar.  However, the situation became far worse after the famine was at its peak in the 1990s.  Mi-ran witnessed her once cheerful students eaten away slowly by malnutrition-their limbs became bony, stomachs blown up, heads disproportionate to their bodies.  Fewer and fewer students showed up in class each month.

Compared to Mi-ran, Jun-sang had lived a relatively better life.  As a future scientist, he enjoyed more and better food at school.  He also had access to pirated broadcasts from the South.  However, as he had always been, like other North Koreans were, so isolated from the outside world all his life, when he first saw or heard reports of the lives of South Korean, he was skeptical about them. 

Despite the truth being laid out before the bare eyes of North Korean, the government assured its citizens that all was fine.  Officials accused the “American imperialist bastards” of creating the shortage by imposing on North Korea a blockade of food and oil.  In 1998, Mi-ran fled across the northern border to China and then flew to Seoul . She split with her lover and left without a word fearing that he would tell the secret police.

Devastated, Jun-sang followed her six years later to South Korea .  But it was too late: by then, she had married a South Korean.

Mrs. Song and Oak-Hee

Two defectors were a daughter and mother.  Mrs Song was a good communist housewife and head of the block’s inminban. Oak-hee, was her rebellious and enterprising daughter.  

In most part of her life, Mrs Song was committed to the cult of Kim Jong-il. She polished his photograph daily.  Family members who expressed the faintest sign of doubt about the regime were severely scolded by her.  She kept her job in a local factory till the very end even with no wages. When her husband died of starvation in their marriage bed, she still told herself that the country's misfortune was the fault of the American devils.

About Mrs. Song’s daughter, Oak-hee, I recalled her narratives of how North Koreans’ food rations were exchanged with a bucket of human poo.  The fields in North Korea were fertilised with human excrement.  Oak-hee was required to produce and bring to a barn a bucket of poo every week so that she would receive a chit for their food rations.  When nobody was watching the buckets of poo, Oak-hee would steal one and pretend it was her family's. 

However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea ’s frail economy also collapsed and the country ran out of money, goods and most importantly, food.  All the frogs in the country had disappeared into frying pans.  Dogs, which are traditionally on the Korean menu, had even less chance.  Half-dead from hunger, Mrs Song saw on sale in the market place rare sacks of rice stamped with Stars and Stripes, which were of course American food aid but sold for personal profit by the North Korean military.

Oak-hee’s hunger and hard life at home eventually sent her on a dangerous flight across a river into China.  She discovered from television the truth about her homeland when she crossed the border.  She later tricked her mother into visiting China and then lured her to South Korea.

With the deaths of her husband and son from slow starvation, and the flight of Oak-hee, Mrs. Song decided to leave North Korea and seek a new life with her daughter.  With Oak-hee’s arrangement and refugee smugglers’ assistance, Mrs Song went across the border into China.  One of the first things she saw was a dog being fed on a bowl of rice and meat.  The fact that dogs in rural north-eastern China ate better than the people of North Korea crumbled what Mrs Song had known and believed into dust.

Demick met with Mrs. Song regularly for dinner after she had settled into South Korean life.  According to Demick, Mrs Song said one night as they sat around a pot of shabu shabu, “When I see a good meal like this, it makes me cry,” “I can’t helping thinking of my husband’s last words, ‘Let’s go to a good restaurant and order a nice bottle of wine.' And when it came to her son, she was unable to speak.

(to be continued)

Hannah's Dream by Diane Hammond

The book was written by Diane Hammond,
the spokeswoman for the famous killer whale,
 Keiko of Free Willy.

It is a story about the bond
between human and an elephant Hannah. 

Hannah was the only elephant in a privately-owned zoo,
which understandably was in dire financial straits,
and its manager had developed a publicity scheme
to showcase Hannah as a star
in an attempt to bring the zoo
back to its old glorious days.

However,
the isolated Hannah’s mental health was deteriorating
and it worried her handler Samson Brown,
who was suffering from his own sickness
but could hardly take any rest
because of Hannah’s clinginess to him.

 

Realizing the problem of Hannah was
the lack of socialization with other elephants,
the newly recruited vet Neva ,
together with Samson,
embarked on a secret plan to raise money and
relocate Hannah to an elephant sanctuary
and the story had a happy ending.

I would say that this book does not belong to
the ‘not to be missed’ category for me.  
But I do enjoy reading the very visual portrayal
of the love between Samson and Hannah. 
Animal lovers are more likely to find this book interesting.

 

And Thereby Hangs a Tale by Jeffrey Archer

I picked up this book on the recommendation of blogger 金仔.

It is a collection of 15 short stories,

some fictional and others inspired by real life incidents.

 

I enjoyed reading most of the short stories.

What I like about them most is that

often when I have just settled in the flow of the stories,

something changes and I find the stories heading to an unexpected direction.  

So you will be constantly pondering what will happen next.  

And once you’ve finished with the one you have been wrestling with,

you will want to explore the next one right away and see what’s the twist at the end.  

The fact that most of the stories are only a few pages long added extra delight.

 

My favourite is “A Queen’s Birthday Telegram”,

a funny story about a little secret an old man discovered about his wife

when he questioned the Queen’s office about

why the telegram from the Queen to congratulate her 100^th birthday never arrived.

I also like the hilarious "The undiplomatic diplomat". 

A third generation diplomat who always did things out of place

got demoted to work in a library and got himself well-versed with every statutes. 

On discovering a not very well-known statute about territory,

he ‘captured’ a remote island

hoping to do honour to his great diplomat forefathers

only to find what he ended up with

was embarrassment to the nation instead.

 

And there is also the funny “No Room at the Inn ”,

 which is about a poor young traveller’s juicy encounter

with a pretty Italian front desk staff of an inn.

 

"Politically Correct" is another exemplification of

how Jeffrey Archer is good at twists and turns. 

The story is about a man suspecting a neighbour to be a terrorist. 

It’s very captivating and the end so unpredictable

that it dropped my mouth open in surprise!

The Return Journey by Maeve Binchy

 

 

This book is a very easy and delightful read

consisting of a series of short stories about people taking trips.   

 

For example, the journey of a secretary with her boss whom she secretly admired

but found out during the trip how wrong she was,

how two travelers who got each other’s suitcases by mistake

entered the live of the stranger the moment they opened the wrong suitcase,

how two young people who seemed to have everything in common, 

interests, background & lifestyle, etc.

 realized their differences during the preparation for a trip together,

and the bittersweet story of a daughter making every effort

to persuade her Paris-loving dad

to get out of the house and visit Paris with her once again.  

 

Several of the stories are particularly heartwarming. 

 

My favourite is "A Villa for Four",

which is about a girl on holiday in Greece,

instead of joining her three friends dancing all night in discos,

helping a café drum up business

by sharing with the owners her passion for cooking.  

 

The other one is "Victor and St Valentine",

which is about a young and kind electrician

accompanying an old lady client living alone in the UK in a trip to Australia

so that her family abroad was convinced that she would be taken good care of

during the journey to see her grand-daughter

and how at the end it developed into a love story

between him and the grand-daughter.  

 

" Excitement" is an interesting story about a bored wife and her married neighbour

planning for and taking a secret trip together 

just to bump into her mum and his sister-in-law on the way. 

 

This is my first Maeve Binchy book,

gather that I will have a look at her other books soon.

East of the Sun by Julia Gregson

          

           

     The backdrop is colonial India in 1928.

The story follows the experiences of three young Brithish ladies

on their way to India ,

all with vivid characters.

Young and beautiful Rose is to leave her very sick father in the UK to marry a British Army Officer in India whom she barely knows.

Her bridesmaid the bubbly Tor, eager to get rid of her domineering mother,

is an enthusiastic member of the "Fishing Fleet"

hoping to find herself a husband on board or in India .

And Viva, a strong and independent girl who has lost the whole family at young age and went back to India to get back a trunk of her parents,

became their inexperienced chaperone.

There is also Guy Glover, an unstable sixteen-year-old,

whom Viva took care of in exchange for the fare of the ship. 

Guy has mental problems and developed affection for Viva which later became the cause of some very dangerous and frightening events.

The depiction of India in the book is highly visual,

many a time evoking my memories of traveling in Mumbai

and other more laid-back regions in India .

Though I don’t quite like the latter part of the book and

found it hard to believe that Rose and Tor would like to befriend a person

as icy as Viva,

and it was rather unconvincing that

as principled as she has always been in her whole life,

Viva will decide to compromise all her believes abruptly at the end,

overall the book is a great holiday read.

 

Born Under a Million Shadows

This book is the first novel of a British journalist who has been living in Afghanistan for many years.  While offering glimpses into the Afghan culture in the post-Taliban era, the book revolves around the love story between a British NGO worker and a rich and powerful Afghan warlord.  I would have enjoyed it more if there are more depictions of the Afghan lives, as I am not very fond of romance fiction.

Ford County by John Grisham

I like short stories. 

But not this one.  

 

I grabbed this book

during the final call for boarding a flight for a short vacation,

believing that a short story = a light-hearted read

and written by John Grisham = a page-turner. 

 

I was wrong.

 

Most of the stories in the book are sad:

lawyer abducted by family of adversary,

a single mother with her two prison-frequenter sons

visiting a third son to be executed,

an AIDS patient abandoned by family and

left to die in a small town full of discrimination…

 

And it lacks the surprising twists typically present

in the lawyer series of John Grisham.

So pick something else for your vacation!

Love in a Torn Land

An easy to read book that not only tells you the true story of how a brave woman survived attacks and war in Iraq, but also introduces what really happened to Kurds in Iraq in the Saddam Hussein's era.

Too Close To Home by Linwood Barclay

Having read "No Time For Goodbye", I have very high hopes for "Too Close to Home" by Linwood Barclay.  The start is catchy, like No Time for Goodbye.  But this is the only good thing about this book!  After that, it gets downhill right away.  A huge dissappointment!

 

Blood Stain by Peter Lalor

Not very well written and extremely horrific!  The contents are really disturbing but I had no other choice as this is one of the only two English books found in the hotel swimming pool magazine rack when we had a vacation in Phuket (the other is something like the 'Pride and Prejudice' type)  It's a true story about the only woman serving life sentence in Australia after having stabbed her bf more than 50 times with a butcher's knife and then skinning him and cooking a meal with his body parts for his children.   She's as powerful as a man and her ex-husband and bfs had all been severly assaulted by her. 

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words

Attracted by the storyline about how a poor mother married to an alcoholic struggled to raise 10 children in 1950s by winning all sorts of contests, I bought this book.  The only thing is the poetry the brave mother wrote is too difficult for me.  I will love the book much more if my English is as good as my old boss's.

How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill

As a coffee lover, I had no hesitation in buying this book.
I finished it briskly, ironically not because it struck me, but for my TV had a breakdown.  Described as 'a candid, moving and inspirational memoir about a high-flying businessman who is forced to re-evaluate his life and values when he suddenly loses everything and goes to work in Starbucks.'  It may be a candid memoir, but the inspiration aspect does not live up to my expectation.

No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

Once I started reading this book, I could not put it down, even at the night before my exam.
I was the only person reading a non-text book at the exam centre!
The story plot at the very beginning is simple but shocking, and it bewitched me from the very first page!

Have you ever done something bad and ended in a fight with your parents,eg, returning home late on X'mas eve and your mum was mad at you?  Just imagine, you wake up after the storm, and find everyone in the house missing!  Everyone!  Not a note!  You can't find your brother in the school either!  And you are the only one left!

I was suctioned into chapter after chapter, trying to figure out what happened.  Was it because they were so mad and  left her for a while as punishment?  Was it a murder?  But why the murderer spared the girl?  The narrative by the spared girl's husband was intertwined with dialogues of unknown people.  Were they dialogues of the spared girl with her dead parents? Was it a ghost story? Or was the girl illusional and talking to imagined characters?

Read it yourself.  I recommended this book to a colleague and she finished it in one day!!!