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Text of the page (random words):
f me the second book i read last month was the dog who dared to dream by sun mi hwang and translated from korean by chi young kim i had a really pleasant experience reading a previous book by this same author the hen who dreamed she could fly and i perhaps made the mistake of going into this book with expectations that were placed too high i remember what it felt like after finishing the one about the hen i remember thinking how odd it was that i could somehow relate to that hen with this one about the dog however i found myself constantly stuck floating about above the characters in the story i was unable to get down to the ground go deep into their thoughts and it was frustrating it wasn t a bad story but it most definitely didn t have the same impact on me as her previous book did as for the other books on my nightstand desk currently reading pile i ve given up on neil gaiman s american gods for now i had left it on the side for far too long and i had lost track of the thread i know i ll pick it up again one day maybe when the time is right instead i m reading into thin air by jon krakauer it s a non fiction book a personal account and recollection of a disaster that struck when he was climbing mount everest it came highly recommended to me by a friend who is a keen hiker it s a really good read so far and i expect i ll be finishing it before the month comes to an end sum up q1 2021 april 1 2021 leave a comment ah it is frustrating and increasingly so every year when i find that i have once again let my reading slide to the sidelines to give way to other things happening in my life other things that i m adamant to deny yet is so shamefully true i simply place in a position of higher importance over my reading time during the two months after january 2021 i have only managed to somehow squeeze in one book one book it s frustrating i ve made multiple attempts to read or to start reading again i read the first ten pages of neil gaiman s anansi boys while i was waiting for a friend to pick me up i read maybe a few chapters of aaron thier s mr eternity while having some coffee out one day and i still have gaiman s american gods and salman rushdie s midnight s children sitting there simply adding burden to my already heavy desk waiting for me to miraculously find the time or mood or motivation to pick them up it s extremely frustrating but still i look back on this first quarter of 2021 and i also feel blessed blessed that despite all the challenges we face in terms of health and economy i am both healthy and working blessed that despite being alone at home during this time of semi lockdown i have friends to talk to and the occasional cafe visits to stay in touch blessed that i am spending so much more of my time writing creating stories and having meaningful conversations with characters to find out what it is that they truly want deep down in their little fictitious hearts it s a constant cycle a battle that never really ends or begins this frustration with what hasn t gone right and this gratitude for all that has been right they replace each other they co exist they wipe each other out and they validate each other it s a little bit like night and day there really simply isn t one without the other so back to that one book that i ve managed to read so far it s danzy senna s you are free which is a collection of short stories that revolve around being different about being coloured in this world that for so many is overwhelmingly a white one but their colour does not take center stage it feeds into the story into how their lives unfold around them before them after them it s in the details and yet it may or may not be important it s a dynamic that i ve seen countless times on screen and on pages this feeling of otherness because of the colour of one s skin because it is not white and while this dynamic is so so familiar it is also not so familiar i was born and raised in malaysia a country blessed with its multiracialism and multiculturalism we are nothing if we are not coloured white is the other we are not but at the same time we are also such racists in our cores we see shades with a kind of sensitivity that westerners will probably find rather unfathomable without batting an eye we know if you re local if you re one of us if you belong in our group or not yellow white yellow beige and yellow brown are different light brown medium brown and dark brown are different black is different white is different every shade and hue is different should we really care what colour our skins are maybe we shouldn t but then again maybe we should maybe we need to because our stories though they may be similar are really so so different it is in the way we experience the world a slight twist of the lens filters creates a world of difference maybe this is what danzy senna was trying to show us in her collection of eight stories that felt almost as if it could happen to anyone and yet could really only happen to those exact characters in her stories sum up january 2021 february 3 2021 leave a comment malaysia is currently under extended lockdown again our daily covid 19 cases have been increasing in the past couple of months reaching our all time high of more than 5 000 just about a week ago the slight optimism with which i had ended the year with in december 2020 is fast evaporating the overall vibe of the world is not an encouraging one and it affects me rather deeply still i try don t we all reading wise i started the year quite well with my third keigo higashino book i had written about my thoughts on this earlier following that i chose my wish list by grégoire delacourt i had high expectations for the book mostly because it came highly recommended by a friend whose taste i trust perhaps i set them too high but while it was not the best book i ve read in recent times it did have its charms on the cover it reads if you won the lottery would you trade your life for the life of your dreams how intriguing i had thought it was a complex question one that felt so simple on the surface yet packed so many layers of meaning and contemplation beneath and it boasted of a type of burning soul searching to get to the core and that s where i thought the book fell a bit short there were moments of course where i felt the pain jocelyne felt the things that she yearned for and the things she lost her relationship with herself with her husband with her children and those moments do stay with you for a while afterwards i then read charlie jane anders s six months three days five others it is a collection of six short stories that are out of the world literally these stories explore some pretty out there scenarios i did think that i would enjoy this collection more than i did after all i thought i had would have enjoyed the absurdity in actual fact though perhaps this book showed me how far i could actually go or enjoyed going not my best choice of read so far i ended the month with matthew quick s forgive me leonard peacock absolutely loved this it was a simple book but there was also an underlying tension that was going on throughout the story and i was genuinely surprised when we got to a point in the story when i felt tears streaming down my cheeks i was not expecting that at all we followed leonard around on his 18th birthday and this was also the day he decided that he was going to shoot his ex best friend and then kill himself after he doesn t tell us why because obviously he already knows and we are the ones who are joining him only today but when we do find out it hurts us like it hurts leonard and yet it is not the most painful thing we are to experience yet how important and crucial those small things become when we suddenly realise that we have them and how painful when we realise that we take them for granted this book as an afterthought reminds me quite a bit of a man called ove it was like getting to know a guy from the inside out learning about what he would do on the day he thought would be his last day the hurt we carry around with us our history our secrets our burdens we may not all have the same ones but we each carry with us something we might never want to reveal to anyone sometimes even to ourselves malice keigo higashino january 13 2021 2 comments first published in japanese in 1996 translated into english by alexander o smith with elye alexander in 2014 i ve been having a hard time finding my focus and inner calm to do much reading in the past month or so that s more or less the story of 2020 to be honest for most of the year at least so to get myself started on the right foot i knew i had to find a book that was by an author i was familiar with whose style i knew i would be able to grasp and follow quickly and for that i chose keigo higashino s malice i ve read two of his books in the past year and his writing style was one that made for easy reading that and mystery crime thrillers are always page turners for me malice is written from two points of view both in the first person both as notes or accounts of what events have occurred in the first chapter osamu nonoguchi takes us back to the day the incident took place though he doesn t immediately tell us what that incident is he introduces us to his friend kunihiko hidaka who he visits at his home for the last time before hidaka moves to canada he tells us about a stranger he meets in hidaka s house even when hidaka s not home he then discovers as do we that this stranger is a neighbour whose cat has recently died he shares with us the shock he felt when he learns that hidaka was actually guilty of poisoning the cat himself then 20 pages in we finally know what that incident was hidaka was found murdered in a locked room in his locked house what follows is the classic cat and mouse story where detective kyoichiro kaga tries to figure out exactly what had happened that day and how nonoguchi who is the murderer in his mind managed to get himself an alibi there is of course a twist in the middle of the book which to me is just classic higashino publishers weekly called this book fiendishly clever which i agree to wholeheartedly there was this feeling that i constantly got as i was reading the book like there was something just at the corner of my eye that i can t really see but if i turn to look at it proper it disappears yet its existence cannot be denied and when higashino shines a light at the end of the book to what the truth of the incident really is that feeling was immediately rewarded i m glad i decided on this book to start the year summing up 2020 december 31 2020 6 comments this has been a difficult year to completely understate the obvious at the same time i also somehow feel like i can t believe today is already the last day of 2020 i want to ask where has all that time gone and within that same time what have i actually done and achieved i take a look at my reading goal at the beginning of the year and i feel sort of shy to see how far i am from that initial goal 52 books a year that was my aim one book a week and i told myself that if at any time i feel overwhelmed maybe i could go for shorter books novellas in between then some time in july i realised i was not going to make that goal in any way or form so i cut it down to half 26 books a year that s one book every two weeks no matter how i looked at it it felt completely doable i am after all a fast reader surely i could read one book in two weeks and then today i look at the list of books that i ve read and it is at 15 not shameful but that s only slightly more than one book a month given all the time that we ve had to spend indoors this year one would have thought there would be more reading not less but as the universe has constantly been showing us who can truly say just because i am physically at home does not mean i m in the right frame of mind to do meaningful reading and if the act of reading is not meaningful then why do it at all in fact this applies across the board if we re to do anything at all it had best be meaningful so here s where we take a closer look at the books i managed to read this year i started the year on a high note with the beautifully written novel by tan twan eng i had wanted to read it before watching the film they made but after reading it i no longer wanted to watch the film the prose and descriptions in the book were so beautiful that i didn t know how i would feel if the film couldn t live up to it that book was followed by two haruki murakami books he s a favourite author of mine and it s been some time since i ve last indulged in his wacky quirky world and while the worlds he create are still as bizarre as always i have found it easier and easier to dive in and immerse myself completely to suspend reality and believe every single word murakami puts on the page that s the best way to read his books i feel just let him take the lead there were a couple of books that didn t quite hit the mark for me this year both black chalk and the fire gospel were not as good as i had wanted them to be meanwhile the other books scattered throughout the year were either just right or fell a little below expectations that doesn t make for a bad reading year i think what this year has given me in terms of books is that i have read outside of my comfort zone and it is precisely because of this that i ve had some mishits which comes with the territory of reading what i m not used to there are also a couple of books that have been on my nightstand since the start of the year neil gaiman s the american gods and david mitchell s cloud atlas both are huge books heavy in content and prose both are brilliant but my frame of mind has been kind of on and off especially during the latter part of the year moving into the new year i m really hoping to finish both books and get started on some good ones as well i don t know what this year holds for me or for us but i ll keep doing what i do i ll still plan to read as much as i can but my focus will be less on how many books i read but how meaningful my reading is 52 books a year one book a week is not impossible it is still the goal the only difference now is that i know better than to be ashamed of not achieving what i set out to do because after all in this unpredictable world that we re living in who can say older entries to find me michyms at gmail dot com recent thoughts sum up may june 2021 sum up april 2021 sum up q1 2021 sum up january 2021 malice keigo higashino summing up 2020 past thoughts past thoughts select month july 2021 1 may 2021 1 april 2021 1 february 2021 1 january 2021 1 december 2020 2 october 2020 1 september 2020 1 june 2020 1 may 2020 2 april 2020 2 march 2020 1 february 2020 2 january 2020 4 december 2019 3 november 2019 1 october 2019 1 september 2019 4 august 2019 1 july 2019 2 may 2019 2 april 2019 2 march 2019 6 february 2019 3 january 2019 1 december 2018 1 may 2018 1 march 2018 2 february 2018 2 january 2018 1 decemb...