She Blabbered On and On

The most uninteresting things in this world run like the longest hand of a clock.  You stare at them for an hour and they won’t go away. Sometimes you don’t stare at them, you feel them like a sharp knife with poisonous blade piercing through your existence and leaving a hole. The uninteresting things in this life steal your breath second by second.

She is alone.  She is always alone.

The people she sees they’re like the waves that kiss her feet only to leave seconds after. Why is life so full of goodbyes? If the world stays the same for every revolving of a clock, the world could have been a lot more easier to live in. No changes of hearts. The wind blows, we breathe. There will be no birth so that there will be no death, man only lives.

She wishes.  She is full of wishes.

She wishes she can paint how she feels about him like how Van Gogh painted the Paris skies. What she feels for him is beautiful and there is no great artist could ever express. Sometimes, she wants to kill herself for wanting him. No. She wants to kill that feeling. Shoot it with a bullet straight to its heart. That feeling is a viscous animal that needs to be silenced before it turns into a monster and eat her alive. To love is both a beauty and a curse.

She might be in love with him.

His comfort is the soft pillow she hugs at night. The four yellow corners of her room bear witness to the tears that were shed when the dreadful feeling was realized. He knocked on her door. She opened. But then he already left. Time screws everything up when it should have placed things in their right order.

She’s alone, wishing, loving and blabbering on and on.

Trapped by Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (Book Review)

 

Never have I read a book that made me cry with its first page. You may say I havent read a lot, which in a sense is correct but I’m pretty confident I’ve read a great deal of tear-jerker.

Norwegian Wood is a collage of chronologically scattered order of memories about grief, lost love and confusion. The book opens with the protagonist, Watanabe on an airport hearing Norwegian Wood and reminiscing about his love Naoko. After that scene the chapters goes on to build up a growing love that could move imaginary mountains. Naoko is the air that keeps Watanabe breathing. But like the air he can’t hold her. Naoko is in a world where the death of her sister and her ex-boyfriend keeps her confined. She is trying to break free for Watanabe. On the otherhand, Watanabe is struggling in the real world where he sees nothing but the incomprehensible human behaviors. One afternoon, a free spirited girl named Midori walks into his life. Watanabe finds himself drawn to her. And it goes on as a poignant realization of whom he truly love. He must choose between the love he breathes and the love that could make him breathe.

The plot is a little bit flat with no depth on it but series of struggle building a climax that couldn’t be reached. You’ll get hooked leaving through the pages as it hypes up an event. Then the event happens but you’ve already read past it. It’s like experiencing the whole process and feeling the thrill after it. You’ll get that conclusion after reading the last page and you expect another chapter to extend the read and give you an actual ending. I hate it when that happens to a good book like this. Or maybe I am just hoping Murakami would end it all differently.

The theme is pretty ordinary, its how the author carries it, that makes it compelling. Watanabe sounds like a sexually aware Holden Caulfield trying to act like he is Nick Carraway. The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby references doesn’t help the similarities of some of the character to the two earlier books. If you’re a fan of both novels the “any friend of Gatsby is a friend of mine” comment is surely going to amuse you.

If compared to Beatles songs, Naoko would be Penny Lane and Midori would be Blackbird. Both songs are mentioned on the book. Maybe they are actually based on those beautiful songs.

Overall, the book is a reminder of anybody’s youth. Whether they are from the 60′s or 70′s, whether we listen to The Beatles or Jim Morrison, whether we read F. Scott Fitzgerald or Marx, we all could feel sympathy to a person who has loved deeply beyond his sanity could handle. Some of us might have even experienced it.

PS:

Yes, as you might have guessed it, I’m trying to reference the this blogs title to the song.

30 Books A Year Challenge

Life is full of challenges some of them are documented on Goodreads.  So here I am finding myself facing yet another challenge of flipping through and understanding each word of 30 Books in 366 Days.

It’s not that much of a formidable opponent.  I have to consider my pace in reading, the available time, and procrastination attacks.

I have been an avid reader of any book except self help ones, sine I was a kid.  But I can say I’m the ordinary reader.  The preference changes as you get over a phase in your life.  You graduated from reading Sweet Valleys and the likes when you graduated from high school.  When you’re still poisoned with the idealism of the youth, you read a lot of socially impacting books, even the revolutionary journals, like Che Guevarra’s.  But what happens when everything that has been the source of all the excitement in your life runs out?  You end up reading people’s blogs.

Going half way of my goal, half way through the year should be ideal, but finishing two books is inexcusable.  I have started a few books but ended up shoving them on the shelf leaving them to gather dust.

Blogs stole my addiction to books.  Before, I could gobble up pages like I am eating M&M’s but now it’s like I’m just biting off a piece and leaving the books to rot.  I feel like a traitor inside.

Books had been my companion ever since, they took me to places, they introduced me to brilliant people, they made me a conqueror of knowledge.   If people refer to me as smart, it is because I read a lot.  But I don’t consider myself smart.  Opinionated maybe.

My favorite book as my friends would already know is The Catcher In The Rye and I scribbled “this is my statement” on its first page just like Mark Chapman did on his copy(the one he was holding when he shot John Lennon).  See I don’t just read a book, I read its history and the authors biography.  I believe you cant fully understand a book unless you dive into the authors mind.

That exciting part, blogs lack.

It also occurred to me that since I love reading off of the computer, I should read e-books instead, but no I keep on closing the window to talk to my friends on Facebook.  (As I write this I actually took a minute to check if someone posted a comment on my status.)

By the end of June I felt the urgency to get back on track and start running as fast as I can.  One of my office mates holds a mini-library at the office.  During writing breaks I sit down and force myself to get lost into the pages, but to no avail.  The bustle of the office environment makes it  impossible.  So I borrowed his books and took them home.

I started with easy reads, The Diary of A Wimpy Kid.  And it did not fail my expectations, I just cant get enough of Greg Heffley and his oddly familiar childhood.  I finished five books in five days, each took an hour to finish.  I am so proud of myself.  But it is a series made for children who doesn’t like reading.  I must not embarrass myself.

Booksale is a place I always visit whenever I find myself on a mall.  They sell second hand books and they have a wide collection.   I found a book I have been wanting to read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.  That fire of burning the ugly face of the world will always flicker inside of me.  I will always seek for a better change.  I surprised myself by reading the book in one sitting.  I only paused to wipe the tears in my eyes as I cry for Afghanistan.  Two days after, I finished his other book, A Thousand Splendid Suns.

As of writing time, I have seven out of 30 books.  Bridget Jones is lying in bed with me, Unfinished Tales of J.R.R. Tolkien is waiting to share their adventure with me and I am halfway of my The Hobbit journey revisiting.

I am officially back in business.

How bout you?  Have you started your own reading challenge too?