This month's books

- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Best book in the series, in my opinion. Enuff' said.

- Private Parts and Other Play Things. Some of Michael Chiang's earlier plays really quite bo liao, but it gets better. "Mixed Signals" is particularly good. "Army Daze" film version better.

- The Vagina Monologues. Definitely the strangest thing I've ever read.

- Something Happened On The Way To Hell. Enjoyed it.

- Much Ado About Nothing. Oh, a Shakespeare play I actually like! Think I've developed a taste for his comedies. Going by this book, he probably Father of Romantic Comedies. He already had that Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth thing going on in this play in the form of Benedick and Beatrice waaaaay before Jane Austen.

- American Gods. Still. Cannot. Finish. Decided that despite all the Neil Gaiman's goodness, this book is not my cuppa.

- Fast Forward MBA in Financial Planning. Don't ask.

- Fever Pitch. Nick Hornby yayness! So funny, so enjoyable. Like it better than "About A Boy", which incidentally I bought only because the cover very nice (yellow/black one with a photo of two pairs of legs).

- Lorca Variations. This is a re-read. And still don't know what the heck ethno-poetics is all about. Hate it.

- The Romantic Manifesto. Not Harlequin romance hor. I'll never be seen reading one. This is Ayn Rand's take on philosophy of arts and literature. Quite good except she seems to like repeating herself, like all good old respected philosophers of the past. And she clearly very pissed off with Dada nonsense and all the avant-garde movement. Not entirely sure if she opposes to post-modernism. Suspect she wouldn't have the sense of humour to appreciate post-modern wackiness. But otherwise, her views quite like mine, and so I like reading her. Her philosophy also more accessible, in that she doesn't write like Plato and Heideigger, who are the bane of my life even after death.

- Bridget Jones's Diary. Also re-read. And still funny as hell.

Reading Mark Darcy again made me realise that I have distinct fictional crushes. Let's see the recent ones. Mark Darcy from Bridget Jones's is one. Luke Brandon from Shopaholics Series is another. Going by these two fictional crushes, I apparently dig super-intellectual alpha males, and the type a bit snooty and holier-than-thou one somemore. If I meet them in real life, I'll probably detest them and have to resist urge to stick something up their arses, yet cannot help admiring that they really very smart, and then everything is just highly dysfunctional. Hmm, obviously need to review taste for men and crush on someone like Jason Hahn of 8Days column fame.

Anyway, Shilin just MSN me and say my blog takes 800 years to load. It's the tagboard, I think, so I'm taking it down for the time being. Tagboard site down, and I don't know why.