Another book

Now there are a total of 5 books in my current reading list:




a) The 19th Wife
b) Mozart's Ghost
c) Midnight's Children
d) World Without End
e) The Know-It-All


Just after I've done with Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry, the expectation was higher before I read it, and doomed after ending it. I did not skip a page; it was very heart wrenching and I could not put that book down until the last page, unexpectedly with a disappointing ending. While "The Time Traveler's Wife" was no.1 bestseller, it was said to be a highly original first novel won the largest advance San Francisco-based MacAdam/Cage had ever paid, and it was money well spent. Heart wrenching, funny, adventurous, romantic, poignant, and readable! Unlike this, "Fearful Symmetry" portrays a young historian who falls in love with his late lover's niece, who's much younger than him (he's 35 and she's 21). Dazzling with smart nerdy look, the historian characterized guilt and shame cannot be replaced with outwit smartness of his lover's ghost which reincarnated into the body of her niece to be with him at last. Confused? Elspeth, the ghost (and also the historian late lover), communicated with her living niece through some spiritual contact (Ouija board?), and thus making the book not an eerie ghost buster series but a rather ironic unpopular medium in between the life and death. Saying so, Elspeth discovered that her lover has fallen in love with her niece. Pathetically enough, her niece wanted to be apart from her own twin to live a fuller life with the historian. Being apart by the connotation of temporary death. But Elspeth made it a lil further. She made her niece died by abstracting her soul into a thin cup of air. That's it! That's the end of her niece's life and nothing was said about her after that. To cut it short, Elspeth went into her niece's dead body to be reincarnated; the historian found out that the soul is not the niece's but Elspeth's; Elspeth was alive again and became pregnant; the historian cannot forgive himself for the guilt and trap; and so, he parted with Elspeth.




It seems like I'm reviewing Niffenegger's works. No, it's just that now I've changed my style of reading from reading only a book to reading a few, one while waiting for the coffee, another while drying my hair; one inside my bag with me wherever I go; and maybe another during my lunch break. Page gripping as it seems, reading only a book at a time may sound normal but I find that a few books do no harm. In fact it does not stay put in my mind to finish that particular book I'm holding.


Now as these few books settle in their own place, it finally resulted that such fine writings occur by one's intuitive of being challenged, being broadened the liking towards more books, and finding that books afterall, is the best way to get away from any distaste of life.






My next quest? More books to come!