Cheese Day/Old Maid's Day/Tailors Day
2008-06-04 @ 10:36 p.m.

Have been reading Gordon Dahlquist’s The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters. The central idea is interesting, if not stunningly novel. To summarise, the titular glass books are made from indigo clay, and through a scientific method known as the Process, are able to store the memories of a living person, thereby allowing others to experience them. As one reviewer commented, it sounds like Dahlquist could be making a point about virtual reality, doesn’t it? Undeniably, the writing is lushly evocative, but the plot unfortunately crawls along too much for my liking. Not that there’s anything wrong with a slow unfolding of events, of course, just that I think more judicious editing would have improved the pace of this sprawling novel. Lest you think I’m passing judgement after having read a handful of pages, let me state for the record that I’ve read more than 150 pages so far, and that only brings me to the third chapter. I do like how the story unfolds from a tripartite perspective, and I’m waiting to see how the three protagonists’ paths are going to cross. It seems the sequel, The Dark Volume, was just published last month in the UK, and is reportedly more tightly edited. Have also been reading Daren Shiau’s Heartland, and a few days ago, I re-read Tim Burton’s The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy & Other Stories. I think the first time I read it, it was because Shirley had mentioned it and I happened to see it on the shelves in Kinokuniya but I was too cheapskate to fork out money for such a thin volume. Re-reading it, I kind of think Burton’s a bit weird, but in a funny way. It’s not everyone that can make macabre rhyming so poignantly funny...