The Affair that I didn't want to end

WOW! I just wanted that out right off the bat. Wow to Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. Wow to Colin Firth's reading of the book. Just wow.

This audiobook is the version of "unputdownable" for audiobooks. I started listening to it on my way to work from school and I didn't want to stop. I had to because of work but I listened it on my commute home and finished it within that day. After finishing it, I wanted to listen to it again. I don't know what kept me more enthralled, if it was the narration of Firth or the text itself. Even now, I have to remind myself of the hundreds of books in my TBR list to keep myself from listening to it again. 

I find this book atypical from the other 1001 books because the prose is "simple" compared to the majority in the list. And yet the impact is there. In fact, it is the candor that draws the reader in. 

This novel is exquisite and beautiful. It is that kind of book that entangles you. I felt acute sadness when it ended and just wanted it to go on. I am going to try and find the movie they made with Julianne Moore and see how that holds up.

Opening: A story has no beginning or end, arbitrarily, one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

True Grit: Wading through Manila with Tartt and Portis

Last Thursday, my Action Research class was called off because of exceptionally heavy traffic due to flooding. It normally takes me 2 hours to get to class from Fairview but that day, it took me 4 hours to get to school. Good thing though that I had previously loaded a couple of audiobooks into my phone. That day, I started listening to Donna Tartt's reading of Charles Portis's True Grit. 

I have read The Secret History (Tartt) as part of 1001 challenge so I was pleasantly surprised that she is the one reading True Grit. At the end of the edition I have, there is an essay by Tartt on how important True Grit is to her family.

There is a part of me that is almost thankful that I got stuck in traffic that day. True Grit is not something I will pick up and read. Westerns just isn't my cup of tea. Listening to the audiobook, however, made me appreciate the book. Tartt is engaging as a reader and was able to give life to the different characters. The story and writing itself is simple but the simplicity adds to the experience, instead of detracting from it. 

People normally focus on the details of the story or the writing when they talk about a book. This book reminded me that every book I read is an experience. That apart from the story of the book, there is also the story of me reading it. I am therefore thankful for this book, not only because it was such an entertaining story but also because it kept me sane during that 4 hours of trying to get to school, despite hell or high water (literally, in this case).

Random post: Cramming

"Cramming" before class. Reminds me of my undergrad days. 

Weekend...what weekend?

So it was a pretty hectic work week and even though we technically had no classes last Thursday, that just meant more homework. The whole week, I felt like I was just reacting, fighting fires left and right. It's stressful but I realize that a big part of my new job will depend on how well I react to whatever is thrown at me.

This weekend, I plan to work on my life plan. It's a requirement for my Lasallian Leadership class and although it will only fall due two weeks from now, I have actually been thinking about my various goals so might as well use that.

If there was one life lesson I kind of wish that I learned when I was still young; it is that Time is a finite resource. I am not really a "Planner", my thinking being, if you make plans, you are closing yourself off to other opportunities. Back in HS or college, I would have crammed the lights out of this assignment (the irony is not lost on me). I think I will always be more of the spontaneous type but I also realize the importance of having plans and goals.

As they say, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

I have been giving my personal miss statement a lot of thought lately, and since one's goals and plans should be integrated with one's personal mission statement, I am actually looking forward to this project.

If that's the only thing I have for the weekend, I would have been a happy camper. Unfortunately, I have readings I need for my two subjects, a paper due on Thursday, and a group case study I need to start working on. I also desperately need to squeeze in some time for leisure reading.For my sanity's sake. 

I have come to accept that it will be a long time before I get a real "weekend". Oh well, it's the things we do for the things we are passionate about...

Bullets to fill up the blanks

Let's do this:

• I have read 262 of the 1001 books so far. (Actually, it is 1300+ books since I combined 2008, 2010, and 2012 lists.) 
• Of the original 96 books to be read, 16 remains unread. I have swapped out most of those for other books in the list. 
• Also read a number of "pop" books. Just wanted to mix it up.
• Yes, I read the  "Fifty Shades" trilogy. I am a firm believer that you can only hate on something if you've actually experienced it. The whole series feels like 2 1/2 books too long and made me seriously re-consider my commitment on finishing books I start
• Read (more on, plowed through) the 1st book of Mortal Instruments. Life is too short to bother reading the rest. 
• Dan Brown's Inferno is a disservice to Alighieri
• Last year, I was able to fulfill my challenge of reading 140 books. This year, I decreased it to 120 books in anticipation of my MBA classes. 1st week of classes made me realize I need to scale it down even further.
• Goodreads is the BOMB!
• Thank you Amazon for creating the Kindle. The Paperwhite is definitely one of my essentials in life.
• Special mentions: 1Q84, The Luminaries, The Sense of an Ending, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Fahrenheit 451, Sputnik Sweetheart, The Satanic Verses, The Savage Detectives, All Quiet on the Western Front, For Whom the Bell Tolls,The Plague, Hell by Henri Barbusse
• To call James Joyce's Ulysses as "challenging" doesn't begin to cut it. Took me almost 2 months to finish. 
• Currently reading: The Bonfire of the Vanities
• Book Challenge for this year: Moby-Dick 

Sidebar:

• Transferred work this year (lot of big changes this year). 
• Was able to travel to Budapest, Singapore, and Guangzhou for work.
• Not really into Big Bang Theory anymore. Still love Sheldon Cooper, though.
• The engagement did not work out. Shit happens.
• In a relationship for almost 2 years. Just goes to show that shit happens for a reason.

The Two Kinds of Freedom

A book about the dystopian future, Handmaid's Tale made me realize that there are so many freedoms that I take for granted.   Gilead is the end-product of an ultra-conservative group's destabilization and call for a new world order.  It tells of a world without choice, especially for women.  Women were stripped of all properties and all rights and were treated as chattels, judged according to their use in society.  We have the Wives, the Marthas, the Handmaids, etc.

"There is more than one kind of freedom...Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it."

 
Given the amount of freedom that I am enjoying today, it haunts me to think that there might come a time where I will only have freedom from choice, instead of the freedom to choose.  I hope it never happens in my lifetime.  I hope it never happens...Period.

"You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter."

Mao II: A Look on Terrorism and Mass Organization

Don DeLillo's 10th novel, Mao II deals with terrorism and mass media that were also the themes explored in his novel, Falling Man. 

"What terrorists gain, novelists lose.  The degree to which they influence mass consciousness is the extent of our decline as shapers of sensibility and thought."

Considering that the work was published in 1991, the novel is considered to be ahead of its time in foreseeing an age of terror and its effect on America.  One of the main themes explored in the novel is the "psychology of crowds" as seen in the mass cult wedding depicted in the first chapters.  I liked Falling Man more but I think the reason for this is because I will never forget watching on television the actual falling down of the two towers and I saw how this changed the world.

As to the title of the novel...

"Bill had his picture taken not because he wanted to come out of hiding but because he wanted to hide more deeply, he wanted to revise the terms of seclusion, he needed the crisis of exposure to give him a powerful reason to intesify his concealment.  Years ago there were stories that Bill was dead...they were not about Bill so much as people's need to make mysteries and legends.  Now Bill was devising his own cycle of death and resurgence.  It made Scott think of great leaders who regenerate their power by sropping out of sight and then staging messianic returns.  Mao Zedong of course..."