Taylor's University Book Club

Do join us for this Charity Event this September/October!

We are looking for donations of books, clothes and non-perishable food items to Rumah Shalom.

There will be a box outside the Student Life Centre everyday on Monday - Friday (26th September - 7th October 2011) from 10:00AM to 5:00PM. Do drop the items into the box.

Anyone is welcome to join the trip to the orphanage held in mid-October. 

For more information please email bookclub.tlc@gmail.com.

This is an initiative by Taylor’s Book Club and supported by Student Development Hub and Taylor’s University Lakeside Campus.

Short Story Competition

Competition Period:
20th September 2011 - 20th October 2011

Winners will be announced TWO weeks after competition.

Email your entry to bookclub.tlc@gmail.com and stand to win attractive prizes!

Dear all,

Taylor’s University Book Club would like to extend an invitation to all Taylorians to come join us for a scripting talk with Khairil M. Bahar.

Here’s a little background info regarding the speaker:

Born in the Philippines and raised in England, Khairil has been in love with the movies since he first saw ‘Back to the Future’ and made his name on the local indie film scene with his debut feature film ‘Ciplak’ which was shot on a shoestring budget of RM10,000 and won him the Anugerah Skrin in 2006 for ‘Best Alternative Film’.

Since then Khairil has worked on television shows such as ‘Dark City’ and ‘Ghost: Season 2’, shot music videos for a number of local acts such as Dragon Red and Soft Touch and is currently in post-production for his next feature film ‘Relationship Status’ starring Gavin Yap, Davina Goh, Susan Lankester, Daphne Iking, Tony Eusoff, Baki Zainal, Ruzana Ibrahim, Amanda Ang, Adeline Ong, Alfred Loh, Shuba Jay, Benji Lim, Will Quah and Pete Teo. The film is due for an early January release.

When not making films he plays guitar in blues rock band ‘Rollin Sixers’ who recently released their debut album which he produced and engineered and has also been involved in the local theatre scene in shows such as ‘Jambalaya’, ‘Short and Sweet’, ‘Lost and Found’, ‘Life Sdn Bhd 6: Abuse’ and ‘Bars and Bedrooms’.

Details of the talk:

Day/Date: Wednesday, 28th September 2011

Venue: LT 3 (tentative)

For more information about Khairil, you can check out his website here.

The objective of this event is to expose Book Club members as well as other students to the world of writing and in particular, scriptwriting. We would like to invite you to an hour-long sharing session with Khairil in producing a script and what are the methods and processes that he usually uses when writing a script or any piece of written work.

With that being said, we hope to see y’all there! :) We assure you that this talk will be extremely insightful and you will definitely learn something out of it. Now, you wouldn’t miss such a golden opportunity, do you? ;)

Write 8 lines to form the most creative short story continuing from this sentence:

The princess heard the prince coming…

L1: and she said, ‘Oh my God!’ gaily.

L2: She looked out the window and saw him sparkling and she was attracted to him like the moth attracted to light.

L3: As the prince approached her, he saw a Basilisk slithering behind the princess.

L4: So he yelled heroically, “Princess, get behind me”.

L5: The princess instinctively ran and hid behind the glittering prince.

L6: The Basilisk saw his own reflection on the prince’s glittering visage and tragically fell to its untimely demise.

L7: The princess, acting quickly and unknowingly to the prince’s command, suddenly shrieked in terror, saying, “Nagini! What have you done to my pet snake?”

L8: “You stupid glittering, good-for-nothing prince!”

Congratulations Safinaz, Syazana, Muhammad, Priya and Tzu Ging! Hope you will enjoy the vouchers!

Hello Bookworms, 

We will be having a general meeting next week to welcome all the new members and have a little fun with everyone.

Meeting will be held at: Lecture Theatre 6 (Wednesday (10/8), 12:00pm)
*Venue is subject to change, so do look out for this space for further updates! 

Be on the look out for more exciting activities coming to you soon!

THE LAST WISH (The Witcher Series) 

 Review by Matthew Chong

 Author: Andrzej Sapkowski

 Genre: Fantasy fiction - Sword and sorcery 

 This is a very peculiar book. 

  It doesn’t feature a dashing hero who kills some
  warlord or gigantic dragon and lives happily ever
  after. The setting is based on medieval Poland
  (pre-gunpowder era) but unlike other fantasy worlds
  that makes everything look ideal and nice to live in
  (I’m looking at you Harry Potter) the universe here is a
  very troubled place which is actually based on our own reality!

Racism here is rampant. Humans are the top dogs while elves, dwarves and hobbits are low class individuals. You have kings with ambiguous personalities (one king has an incest problem) and political back-stabbers. There are even druids and mages who complain about ecological problems all the time (like environmentalists today). Poland author Sapkowski is a very sarcastic author and he’s very skillful at injecting the dark realities of our life in a fantasy setting. You will see many other references to our real world as you coast through the book.

The Last Wish is a pretty short book. To establish the universe to a new reader, it comes in the format of an anthology with the sequels being full fledged novels. The main character is Geralt of Rivia. the book takes place in a temple where Geralt is recovering from a near fatal injury and during the healing process, recounts past events of his life to his doctor. The past events are then written for our convenience in the form of short stories.

Geralt is a mercenary monster hunter called a “witcher”. Monster infestations grew worse after the wars, so some hunters took it upon themselves to experiment with poisons and magic to alter humans into biological killing machines. The death rate among candidates is very high, but those who survive become faster, stronger and resistant to special blends of performance enhancing drugs.

The witchers succeeded in reducing monster population but in peaceful times, the number of witchers are reducing due to low demand of their skills and also the fact that they are frowned upon by society. Geralt is arguably the most successful among witchers but the book depicts his struggles against the prejudice people have against his kind whilst trying to make a living, working for people who shun him and in a world that is slowly losing its need of witchers. Stuck in such a dark world, the reader can’t help but pity the situation Geralt is in.

The most interesting concept in the book however, is gray morality. Geralt is extremely cynical and views the world in shades of gray rather than black and white. Geralt is not a hero and is sometimes pushed into making immoral decisions to survive, choosing the lesser evil when the moral and ethical choice is not present. In contrast, Andrzej is very talented at writing chuckle-inducing dialogue that pokes fun at the ironies the world operates on (which is sometimes relate-able to real life).

From time to time, Andrzej lightens the mood with some comedy and it really helps because otherwise, this book can be extremely depressing. A short story involving Geralt brawling with a sand devil is extremely funny but doesn’t seem at odds with the dark mood of the story at all. Sapkowski is very talented at balancing the dark aspects with levity.

I don’t have much criticisms for this book but I might have to mention that due to its dark nature, the book is quite violent. Geralt is also quite a promiscuous guy so there are many references to his sexual activity with random women. Mature readers won’t have a problem but this is not a book you should lend to your 10-year-old cousin.

This is a VERY good book and I highly recommend it. Since it started out as a Polish book, it’s free from the evil influences of Hollywood in fiction today. Translation of the series is very slow but after you finish this book I have no doubt that you will want to grab the sequel The Blood of Elves right away. I’d write a review for that book if you guys are interested but I might have to re-read the book first.

Cheers.

Image source: http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n34/n174718.jpg

Here are some photos taken at our New Members Meet & Greet and Movie Screening of 127 Hours. We had a great time meeting new friends and enjoying the (somewhat gory) movie together. If you didn’t know, 127 Hours is an Oscar nominated film based on the true story of Aron Ralston who wrote about it all in his book ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place’.

We’re thinking of having another (longer and fun-ner!) session of Meet & Greet, so do keep in touch through:

Our new facebook page at http://facebook.com/bookclubtlc
Tweet us @tuc_bookclub

Email us at bookclub.tlc@gmail.com 

Please make sure you are in our mailing list to avoid missing out on any important news and updates.

See you soon!

-Samantha

To, of course, welcome all new members of Book Club! :) Our second recruitment drive or rather the Clubs & Societies Day was held on 2^nd and 3^rd of March. The response received was pretty overwhelming.

This time round, we gave out fancy balloons to those who have registered to be a book club member. Hope y’all had fun popping playing the balloons. :P Not to forget, our very own ‘mascots’ for the book club are Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin have made a comeback and as always, never fail to attract attentions from fellow students.

Here’s a little teaser for all: we have pretty massive plans that have almost been sorted out. Do anticipate it, wait for updates/announcements and lastly, join us for all the events because I believe you wouldn’t want to miss out on such exhilarating events. :D

To those who missed out on this recruitment drive, FRET NOT! Because now you can register online via Taylor’s Online Portal. Only difference is that, you don’t get to see the faces of the EXCO. But s’okay because you can head over to the Ask Us to check us out or if you have any queries, do not hesitate to Contact Us. ;) Besides, there will be another recruitment drive coming up. We will definitely keep you updated on the dates. So, do check out our Facebook page and also this blog for updates ;)

Speaking of the Facebook page, I am not sure how many of you are aware of this but we have created a new page: Book Club at Taylor’s University. So, would you please do us a favour by ditching the old page and join us at the new one? :) Kindly click HERE to join! Thanks in advance and so sorry for the inconvenience caused!

Regards,
Mei Hsuan

Here are the books which Ju Enn recently read:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: Bought in November 2010 in Popular Warehouse Sale in Summit. A pleasant surprise, because I just happened to be there, and found out there was a book sale! For half of normal retail price. I am halfway through the book, and am amazed at how different it is from the movie directed by Garth Jennings. But the satire, metaphorical language and humour are all still present. Try picturing a sci-fi book with inundated references as to how complicated and messed up our real world is. An imaginative book, that dares you to process information and dialogue on an intuitive level. And not to mention, with hilarious characters to tell help tell the story.  

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut: Bought in Popular Warehouse Sale, Summit as well. Loved Vonnegut’s most famous work, Cat’s Cradle, therefore was intrigued and wanted to read his second most famous work. To sum it up, it’s an anti-war book told in a language that is filled with dark humour. I like Vonnegut’s style of writing brief sentences and short paragraphs. Terse, yet impactful.  
 
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Laarson: One word: wow. If you are a mass communication student, you would be able to relate to this book. It’s a political and journalistic thriller. Centered around a quirky, unconventional female character. Reading it makes me feel so excited to know what is going to happen next. Quite the page turner. And I bought it from a sale that was held outside Taylor’s student life centre (I didn’t even know what event it was and who organized it, million apologies! It was sometime around October 2010 I think). 
 

by Ju Enn @juenn_ng

Hello all! 

Hope you are having a great NYE day! I bet most of you would have interesting plans tonight to celebrate the passing of the old year and the coming of the new? (Yes I’m long-winded that way ) 

Just some quick information before you get on your party hats…

We’re on a break until March 2011 because many of us are on holiday, but don’t fret as we still update our facebook page with random ramblings and interesting links that you might want to check out. Also you can tweet us any interesting books that you have read and want to share!

Also we’d like to say goodbye to a few of our EXCO members: Firstly to our lovely and hardworking secretary Ju Enn, who has graduated from Journalism. We hope you’d be a great success in life and inspire many. Next, to our intelligent webmaster Bryan who is giving up his job due to lack of time (we understand; it’s not an easy job, this one!). So Yoong Jian is now our responsible secretary, and we are looking for an Assistant Secretary & Webmaster. If you want to gain experience in helping organising events and learn to be responsible for all the important details, do apply for the former. (Don’t worry, you’ll be mentored by a very capable YJ!) If you have a passion for social media such as twitter, facebook (I know all of you do, don’t lie!) and blogging, do apply for the latter.

We have an awesome guest speaker coming up early next year (March or April) so be on the lookout for announcements on the Taylor’s Portal, our facebook page, Twitter, blog or posters around school. Trust me, you won’t want to miss this!

Alright I don’t want to take up your time so Blessed New Year to you. Stay safe and be merry! Until next time…

Image from here