Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato' Hamid Adventures

Finished Kam Raslan's Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato' Hamid Adventures that has been lying around the house.

I will say upfront that I don't read Off the Edge (which I would if I don't have to pay for it), hence I have never read the columns the book is based on. To be fair, even if I had read the magazine and the column, there's a chance I wouldn't have bought the book for myself anyway and would have read someone else's copy of it. So it wasn't a bad thing that my Dad bought it, although I'm not sure if he knows that Dato' Hamid is not real..

The book and the column also reminded me of Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie (which I've not read and don't really care to), for some reason - where some younger dude writes down the stories told by an older gentleman, except... Dato' Hamid is not real. He is a figment of the author's imagination.

The Dato' Hamid character was so fleshed out no wonder people thought he was real. I already knew that going in, but that didn't stop me from being confused once or twice. But honestly, I think Dato' Hamid only appeals to baby boomers and Gen X-ers... I think lah. I can't think of anyone of my generation reading this, but that's probably just me.

Barely read through the story, Ariff and Capitalism, because it sounded like a different vein of the Malay teledrama that's been done ad nauseum. But the book-only story, Murder in Parit Chindai, was a bit of a page turner... and reminded me of those old school murder mysteries where one or more people die in a house cut off from civilization with a cast of characters who have reason for wanting that person dead... you get the gist.

If nothing else, it was great light reading.