Dear Self, Happy Birthday!

Dear Self,

You’re another year older but things are continuously changing for the better, right? Though you’ve faced too much challenges this past year and your patience was tested and run out, you were able to make it! Hopefully, the tough moments will soon stop. Focus to maintain the happiness you’ve attained. Take better care of yourself because it won’t be easy growing old. 😉 Appreciate life more and continue to be grateful for everything, always.

Now get ready for the hugs and kisses, birthday wishes and birthday shenanigans. It’s going to be a hell of a day.

Cheers!

~Self

WWW Wednesday 29-Jan-2020

Hello there! Welcome to another WWW Wednesday, hosted by Sam from Taking On A World of Words.

As usual, just answer the three W questions:

1. What did you recently finish reading?
2. What are you currently reading?
3. What do you think you’ll read next?

 

 

Recently Finished:

Currently Reading:

Up Next:

Have you read any of these books? What are your thoughts about it?

Also, I’d be glad to know what you’re reading, what you’ve just finished and what you plan to read next so drop a link of your WWWs so I can check them out or you can share them on the comments section.

Happy reading, homo sapiens!

A Six-Word Story

She has been secretly falling apart.

Quote of the Week

Be the one who nurtures and builds. Be the one who has an understanding and forgiving heart. Be the one who looks for the best in people. Leave people better than you found them.

~Marvin J. Ashton

Breaking

She

always asks

if everyone’s okay

when she’s the one

breaking.

Quote of the Week

To be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, in the right way – that is not easy.

~Aristotle

Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa

Hotel Iris is a story about the friendship between an elderly man only known as the translator and 17-year-old Mari. After a scandalous event that happened in Mari’s mother’s hotel between this elderly man and a prostitute, things started to change for her. Mari was strongly drawn to this man’s voice and has gotten very curious. They eventually became friends and things got much deeper and darker in this friendship.

Mari’s monotonous life changed. She started telling lies to her mother in order to excuse herself from working in the hotel and be able to meet the translator until finally, she found herself in his place on the island which made her explore the nature of desire and pleasure but also of pain and humiliation.

This is my second Yoko Ogawa read, next to The Housekeeper and The Professor. The author’s writing talent is quite evident in every line and I love how she portrays her characters.

Hotel Iris is not something I’d recommend to everyone but if you want something that will make you feel and think, this book is for you.

Quotable Quotes:

“I beg of you to go on living in this world I inhabit. I suppose you find this a rather ridiculous request, but to me it is of the utmost importance that you simply exist.”

“He had undressed me with great skill, his movements no less elegant for all their violence. Indeed, the more he shamed me, the more refined he became — like a perfumer plucking the petals from a rose, a jeweler prying open an oyster for its pearl.”

“I was confused and afraid, and yet somewhere deep inside I was praying that voice would someday give me an order, too.“

Rating: 3/5 stars

 

A Six-Word Story

Wishing there’s someone willing to listen.

Turning the Page

Turning

the page

is sometimes the

best feeling in the

world.

WWW Wednesday 15-Jan-2020

Hello there! Welcome to my first WWW Wednesday this year, hosted by Sam from Taking On A World of Words. The last time I did this was a month ago, I was, and I am still, very busy at work and life that I  only get to read on whatever little free time I get. By the way, happy new year homo sapiens! I hope you all started the year great! Anyways, let’s get started.

As usual, just answer the three W questions:

1. What did you recently finish reading?
2. What are you currently reading?
3. What do you think you’ll read next?

Recently Finished:

I enjoyed A Christmas Carol and I really think this story is Christmas. Wonderful read. Kitchen is my second Banana Yoshimoto work, The Lake being the first. Character-focused and great writing. The Setting Sun is a first for me from Osamu Dazai. A very interesting read despite the absence of action. Lastly, The Driver’s Seat, another first, from Muriel Spark. I’ve got mixed feelings on this one, it was suspenseful and funny, but there’s something ugly about it, I don’t know. Let’s see when I write a review later. 😉

Currently Reading:

It’s taking me too long to finish The Russian Concubine. It’s an interesting story but it gets slow on some part that I somehow lose interest reading. I’m 80% through it, though, so hopefully, I could finish it this week. I’ve also started with a few pages of Half of a Yellow Sun and I think I will greatly enjoy this book.

Up next:

I’m supposed to include A Dance with Dragons here as I plan to resume reading it but thought it better to put it on hold for now. Maybe I’ll get to it around the second quarter of the year. One of my reading goals this year is to read at least 5 non-fictions because I seem to neglect this genre. And so I think, The Story of My Life by Helen Keller is a good start. Also, I am looking forward to another historical fiction (my favorite genre), The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris.

I’d be glad to know what you’re reading, what you’ve just finished and what you plan to read next so drop a link so I can check them out or share them on the comments section.

Happy reading, homo sapiens!

Quote of the Week

You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.

~Winston Churchill

A Six-Word Story

I can’t stop thinking about you.

Scars

aren’t always

visible and more

often way harder to

heal.

Quote of the Week

Who can remember pain once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see.

~Margaret Atwood

A Six-Word Story

I really miss talking to you.

The Assault by Harry Mulisch

I have never heard of Harry Mulisch before I saw the title on Goodreads. I enjoy reading historical fictions the most and so I was hooked right away after reading the synopsis.

It was winter of 1945 in occupied Holland, the last dark days of World War II. Anton Steenwijk and his family live in one of the four rows of houses and while playing a game together, they suddenly heard gunshots. Peter, Anton’s brother reached for the window and saw a dead body lying in front of their neighbor’s house. To their surprise, their neighbors moved the dead body in front of their home and before they could do anything, the Germans retaliated fiercely. As it turns out, the dead man was Fake Ploeg, an infamous Nazi collaborator.

It is a great read about how the war has affected Anton since that winter night whose family died in the hands of the Germans. It is a great read about chance and fate and about memory and how memory shapes life. The interesting twist in the end made perfect sense.

Quotable Quotes:

“A man who has never been hungry may possess a more refined palate, but he has no idea what it means to eat.”

“Besides, whoever keeps the future in front of him and the past at his back is doing something else that is hard to imagine. For the image implies that events somehow already exist in the future, reach the present at a determined moment, and finally come to rest in the past. But nothing exists in the future; it is empty; one might die at any minute. Therefore such a person has his face turned toward the void, whereas it is the past behind him that is visible, stored in the memory.”

“Boundaries have to be continuously sealed off, but it’s a hopeless job, fore everything touches everything else in this world. A beginning never disappears, not even with the ending.”

Rating: 4/5 stars

 

Happiness

I’ve tasted

on your lips

now can’t live without

it.