Books of Note

It's interesting the things we find on the bookshelves of shops.

On one hand, Robert Jordan's long-awaited installment of his multi-book epic fantasy (Knife of Dreams, book 11 of The Wheel of Time) is now available on local shores. I know a lot of people have gotten pissed at the deteriorating quality of Jordan's writing (or were never in to Jordan in the first place). Me, I just want to know how he's going to end this massive 12-piece sucker.

What's amazing is the fact that there's going to be a book launch at the Powerbooks branch in Greenbelt this coming Tuesday. Yowza. This ain't no Harry Potter, baby, so someone's definitely been pushing for this thing. However, as I've already mentioned, Powerbooks in Edsa Shangri-la is already selling this so what's the point of having a book launch?

On the other hand, a weird thing I've seen on the shelves of Powerbooks is a copy of The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, reputedly called "the most beautiful book in the world"(link). Of course, this book got a lot of free press from one of the more intelligent spawn of The Da Vinci Code, Ian Caldwell's and Dustin Thomason's bestselling novel The Rule of Four.

As the New York Times article states, "The book was published in Venice in 1499, and there are perhaps 260 copies in existence, among them one in the rare book library at Princeton University." Good thing it had been translated and published internationally in 1999, yes?

Still, I shouldn't be surprised by what I find on the shelves especially when I see a lot of Spanish translated books like El Codigo Da Vinci or El Profeta. I mean, who reads Spanish in this country nowadays? Aside from the Spanish, of course. *grins*