Fighting spirit.
07 October 2008 @ 00:59 ; 0 CommentsDangerous minds of the freedom writers.
Before I started embarking on my quest to expand my reading list, there was a time when I would constantly be thumbing through chick lit. Yes, chick lit. Feminists would argue that this genre typifies women nowadays into hapless damsels in distress who are seemingly caught in situations (mostly of the love variety) wherein they "just happen" to land themselves in. Throughout the book that's all they ever deal with. Well, aside from bitchy rivals, evil colleagues and perhaps a mishap or two.
Personally, I've never looked down on them. True, they may be frivolous reads and we should all be better off having our brains consuming more "heavy" stuff, but who really wants to read things that would just put you in a funk? Chick lit may not be anything substantial, but reading is reading, and the materials presented are in some way or other an escapism that most of us would willingly volunteer to be in, only to get away from our own less than stellar realities.
So anyway! mini diatribe over. Earlier in the day I made my way down to Borders at Wheelock Place to bear witness to an event that I have never partaken before:
Isn't it just the coolest! One of the more interesting things to have happened to me this year. It was really gracious of The Queen Bee to invite me along to this shindig since 1) collectively we've read (most of) her stuff, and 2) she doesn't want to be left facing Ms Cabot alone, anddddd, more importantly- 3) because I'm a good friend and we haven't seen each other almost the entire Ramadhan. Hah.
Alright so I was there by a quarter to six. And - surprise, surprise - there was already a queue by the time I stepped into the building. I was a little taken aback, to be honest. But I shouldn't be, right? As I overheard a few boys who were circling the bookstore's entrance as I looked around in a slightly dazed state before joining in the fray - "It's Meg Cabot lei. She is like a big fuck." Yes, bad English and all still retained, despite the slight paraphrasing... I think. My recalling skills are slowly being limited as the days go by, how sad!
The front.
The tail end.
The throngs of people waiting in line for a chance to see Ms Cabot in the flesh... who knew, eh? Although not surprisingly there were more girls than guys. As expected. As I stood there waiting for her royal highness to join me, I felt slightly embarrassed. Though mostly excited, of course.
As we both continued waiting for our special guest to arrive, we started passing comments about all the books Ms Cabot has written, drawing up a little comparison list between some of her works and the pop cultures that it closely resembled. Of course, that is not to say that she plagiarised her works. At least, I don't believe so. It's hard to be truly original these days, yeah? I mean, in some infinitesimal form or another, your works may or may not have some semblance of other previous works out there. Since we were both so caught up in our own little world, we didn't really pay attention as to what time it was when the queue finally started inching along.
As we moved closer and closer towards the designated table, I started getting more jittery. I mean, of course you would be too, right? This is only my second time being face-to-face with someone who's rather well-known so of course, of course, understandably I would be nervous (if you must know- my first time was with Bardot. YES yes, the defunct girlband from Australia. And that was... seven years ago, I think? Wow. I know. ANDDDDDD... I still have the compact disc that the five of them signed. Haha!) The two of us planned out what we intend to ask Ms Cabot herself, before proceeding to talk of the more nonsensical stuff once again, just to calm those nerves. Before long, we were already a couple of heads away from the esteemed guest herself.
I swear, if you were there yourself to witness what happened when we reached the table, you would probably howl aloud with laughter. We flanked her table - like literally, shove ourselves at the little space that was between the pillar and the table - and talked animatedly to Ms Cabot after shaking her hand (oh yeah, I was supposed to not use my right hand to eat or wash it after the handshake. Oops.) "Your hand is cold!" she exclaimed. Well duh, what do you expect. We are meeting face-to-face with you. So anyways, we started asking if she's working on anything at the moment. "Why yes I have some books that I am writing... blah blah blah... adult novels..." That was when we cut her off (politely, of course. We waited for her to finish. There was a period somewhere after her sentence) and, ahem, made our move to ask her to write a book about a feisty female who is best friends with a flamboyant guy (hmmm, that sounds utterly familiar, isn't it?) She seemed to accede to our suggestion quite well, because she was laughing along as we pressed on with our jabbering.
It was after that point where I seemed to have hyperventilated, according to The Queen. Apparently Ms Cabot was pretty taken with us, and declared that we make good writers. Or something to that effect. Yes, I'm paraphrasing again. My brain just switched off after that little nervous request. Perhaps she'll go back to the US of A and work on our idea, perhaps not. But at least, we managed to snag a consolation:
YAY! She was extremely nice, super polite, had on a really nice top (The Queen commented her on that the first thing she got to the table), shares the same set of teeth as Madonna (rofl okay I'm being mean here. But it's like terpangpang in my face, yo! I remember one time someone made a comment about Madonna not being Madonna if she closed that spacebar gap. Oh dear. Hmmm. What say you? Hmmm. Hey... digression!); although I think her hand's probably getting a little dead from signing all the previous books, the poor dear. As we left her table I felt slightly faint haha. Oh god. It's only an author, for crying out loud! Granted, a chick lit author, but yeah. It was cool.
"For Sufyan - you rule!"
According to The Queen, we were the only lucky ones who got personalised messages from her. I didn't really pay attention; I was just basking in the entire experience (:
So yeap, that's about all there is to it, kids. I now plan to read up on Meg Cabot books as an upsize, as they call it, to this full meal. What a day, man. What a day indeed.
