Mar 03
This is the website where people from all walks of life gather under the interest in literature. It is the place to show our works and wait for comments from fellow members. It is the place where we can discuss about hottest issues in Indonesian literature. It is also the place where we get news about book launches, literary contests, and so on.
Today, with its 1,300 something members, we can find bunches of poems everyday, lots of short stories in a week, tons of literary reviews monthly.
The good news is, members don’t stop here. Sometimes, whenever necessary, they go on their discussions in Yahoo Messenger chatrooms, personal correspondence. Continue reading »
Mar 02
Jim Lynch’s The Highest Tide is actually on the same wave length with Mark Twain’s The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. Both of them are “Literatures” (mark my capital L) and interesting and for kids and also mature reader-friendly.
It tells about the protagonist’s conflicts during three summer weeks. During t his time, he has to struggle with his parents’ pre-divorce relationship, his hidden love to his ex-baby sitter cum neighbor who prepares herself for college, and he also faces his sudden fame after finding a dead giant squid and another giant fish and attracting media’s and people’s attention with his mastery of marine biology as he reads from Rachel Carson’s works. Continue reading »
Mar 01
Master of the Jinn by Irving Karchmar, in my opinion, is a new thing in the tradition of sufi. If to this day we’ve only known about sufi poetry, such as that by El Jalaluddin Rumi (as translated by Anne Marie Schimmel), following your reading of Master of the Jinn you’ll know the so-called ’sufi novel’. Well, is this labeling appropriate? Prove it later sooner or later. I won’t bother concluding its decorum too soon. I don’t have a deadline to meet, right? I’ll just try to peel the novel layer by layer. Soon enough, when I feel sure enough, I’ll tell you what I’ve got to say about the labeling.
Reading the first half of the story, I can’t help comparing this novel with that written by Tucker Malarkey, Resurrection. Continue reading »
