Anti-social networking

I disagree.

I have no use for Facebook.  I did explore it for a couple of days, found it useless and cancelled my account.  Call me a curmudgeon.

'Mah Jong' literally means 'the twittering of the sparrows' in Chinese, and it refers to the sound of the shuffling game tiles.  On weekend nights that lovely clattering sound wafts down from the Clan Association upstairs.  That's the only Twittering I need in my life.  So call me a Luddite curmudgeon.

I've reconsidered the idea of a blog, though, et voila -- I'm launching this one:  Bookface.

My face is stuck into a book -- either literally or figuratively, as I often listen to audio books -- for much of each day.  Like many readers, I underline passages that resonate with me, or fold over the corners of pages, or jot a few lines down on scraps of paper or on the kitchen wall tiles.  When I listen to audio, I most often just have the fleeting thought, Oh, say, that was profound, or eloquent, or clever... but I rarely take the time to stop and rewind.  Besides reading my own print and audio books, I'm recording audio books for the blind, which gives me another 6-8 hours per week of face-in-book.  I've tried keeping a notebook and pen with me when I read, but that has not worked well because my handwriting is slow and laborious.

My friend Charlene started her blog, the Life of Blackie007,  primarily to record the places that she and her husband have gone out to eat.  It's an historical record that they can return to when they struggle to recall where they had that fantastic char kuay teow or sumptuous lala beehoon.  I love that she's keeping this food diary in a blog, because the rest of us can benefit from her restaurant reviews, and it also gives me a glimpse at her life, as she sneaks in tidbits about her cats, her Adam Lambert fetish, and her frustrations with Malaysian politics.

In the same vein, I'd like to keep a record of what I've read, whether the entries are verbose or just a title and author when a book leaves me cold.  I could keep a private book diary, of course.  My purpose in making it public in this way is to invite comments, contradictions, recommendations and curses from other people whose faces are often buried in books.

So, welcome!