2015's First Litbox Was Here!

This is my second time of buying books through Litbox, which is curated by Ika Natassa. Actually, I order Litbox just because I have placed my reliance on Ika Natassa's good taste of books. Like one of my friend said (she's the one who fangirling Ika Natassa and her writings), "It's better to have books from Litbox than me buying books by myself, since these days, many covers, blurbs, and/or ratings are overrated and sometimes deceiving." Yeah, it's not absolutely true, but pretty true, since she has been dissapointed once before by a book from Litbox, which was I reviewed here.

The first Litbox in 2015 was coming into my book shelf at the end of March, which is 2 months ago. I ordered a Brewed Litbox, which contained of three books written by local writers. And, up to now, I have just read one of them, because there are so many books I have and want to read >,<

Let's check it out!

The first book in the package is Aruna dan Lidahnya, written by Laksmi Pamuntjak. Ika Natassa wrote that this is the perfect book to start my 2015 reading list. Uh-oh, I got Laksmi Pamuntjak's sign! 

Status: read, but I haven't posted the review yet. Through this book, I found many new things, about Indonesian culinary and a list of Indonesian words I've just known. Thanks to this book, which has enriched my vocabulary. 

The second one is A Beautiful Mess, written by Rosi L. Simamora, who is well-known as an editor, but now she becomes a writer too! Ika wrote, "I can definitely proclaim that A Beautiful Mess is the most entertaining Metropop book I've read in the last 2 years." Oh, may it works on me too! 

Status: not-yet-read.

Then, the last one is Rembang Jingga, a duet work by TJ Oetoro and Dwiyana Premadi. I'm not familiar with Dwiyana though... 

Status: not-yet-read.

Each of them tells a story about woman/women, and all of them are published by Gramedia Pustaka Utama. I'll post the review of Aruna dan Lidahnya soon ;).

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The Kind of Books I Read Recently

Recently, I have fallen deeply into reading short stories. It began when I started rummaging my e-book collection of Haruki Murakami’s works. I didn’t know exactly why suddenly I had an urge to open and start reading Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. (Actually, it was my first time reading Murakami’s work). When I take a time to think about it again now, it was maybe because the title had captured my attention. It just like had a series of mysteries inside it, which challenged me to reveal them. It took me relatively much longer time to finish reading it, compared to pop novels which previously I had finished in around a day for each.

Title                 : Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Author              : Murakami, Haruki

Genre               : Stories
Written             : 2006 (English edition)

Length              : 334 pages

Translator         : Philip Gabriel & Jay Rubin

Original in         : Japanese

This short story collection consists of 24 stories, which were written between 1980 and 2005. In English edition, Murakami added an introduction, where he introduced his way of writing short stories, and why he wrote them.

“...when I write novels I try very hard to learn from the successes and failures I experience in writing short stories. In that sense, the short story is a kind of experimental laboratory for me as a novelist.”

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