Bleah...

Been reading and reading and reading... Ain't too sure if reading is one of the ways which I try to fill up the emptiness within me or what... But... reading sure makes me feel more anti-social. Hardly make plans for lunch or dinners these days unless it's pretty impromptu. I think I need something new, something more, something enriching... =/

Anyway, finished "The Glass Palace". It's a historically and culturally enriching book and very very detailed. I would say that Amitav Ghosh is a little too detailed for my liking but that doesn't make him any lesser of a good author. There are some parts I really liked and some parts which I found draggy...

Anyway, I've since moved on to my next book (since it's been a week since I blogged). Am reading Haruki Murakami's "Sputnik Sweetheart".

To be frank, I wasn't too impressed with the writing when I first started. But 3/4 of the way into the book, I got really impressed with the versatile styles of writing that Murakami has. Sumire's (the main female character) diary entry was really 'rich'...

"In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.

Confusion, confusion.

Who can really distinguish between the sea and what's reflected in it? Or tell the difference between the falling rain and loneliness?

Without any fuss, then, I gave up worrying about the difference between knowing and not knowing. That became my point of departures. A terrible place to start, perhaps - but people need a makeshift springboard, right? All of which goes to explain how I started seeing dualisms such as theme and style, object and subject, cause and effect, the joints of my hands and the rest of me, not as black-and-white pairs, but as indistinguishable one from the other. Everything had spilled on the kitchen floor - the salt, pepper, flour, starch. All mixed into one fine blob."- Sumire

Another part of the novel that I liked - in the capacity of the main male character, K:

"She was far, far away. And most likely that was the future in a nutshell, Sumire growing ever more distant. It made me sad. I felt like I was some meaningless bug clinging for no special reason to a high stone wall on a windy night, with no plans, no beliefs." - K

Gonna finish this up real soon and alternate my next read with something light hearted? Trashy? - Like... 'FASHION BABYLON'... Hahaha.. thanks to Mark who bought it as one of the 3 for the price of 2 books at Borderrrrrrs.... lol... ________________________________________________________
P.S. Read this other part of the book during lunch, on my train ride... It's again part of Sumire's diary entry... I like...

"A question.

So what are people supposd to do if they want to avoid a collision (thud!) but still lie in the field, enjoying the clouds drifting by, listening to the grass grow - not thinking, in other words? Sounds hard? Not at all. Logically, it's easy. C'est simple. The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams, and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of the time.

In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites.

Reality, reality." - Sumire ________________________________________________________

P.P.S. King & I was quite disappointing... Borne Ultimatum was good and Ratatouille was cute.. =)