I’ve not, for the record, been in the slightest mood to tell tall tales of my weeks so far back home. I cannot so easily blame it on my sloth-like nature, nor could my experiences be dramatic anecdotes that resist sharing. I am approaching the end; eyeing my packed bags on the floor, I know I ought to be used to this, but even routines need to fall needlessly into a comfortable pattern. Flying back always pulls me: I can never justify leaving my family, for that has always pulled me behind.

On a lighter note, I’ve found good reason to resurrect my reading habit. I pulled in a paltry 3 novels for my summer break thus far, but at least the Lit Count is steadily picking up. As I once used to be aware of, reading in the subway polishes off pages quite easily. I never found the need to use trains in Adelaide (and reading in buses makes me nauseous), but a healthy comparison between commuters here and in Japan easily tips the Japanese in favour of reading as opposed to the Singaporean past-time of, well, staring. A Japanese man was once doing Sudoku (in pen!) as he was standing in the crowded Chuo train; I can hardly think of any other journey-derived excitement that could surpass that. Yes folks, I love tackling Sudoku..in pen.

And now that I’ve finally finished Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement’, I can be quite guilt free when picking the DVD off the shelves. One hates a film that butchers the book; though very few redeem the sins of its text (read: Lord of the Rings). Watching ‘Twilight’ with my tween cousins has forced me to keep a 5m radius off that minisculic plot of love, living death and pimples. No way will my cleansed fingers be touching that profit-driven written junk! As my cousin gave a Bella/Edward 101 lecture, I had to steady myself at strategic plot curves to prevent gagging on my own vomit. But that’s just me being vile…and terribly biased, for I have many examples of Love Stories that cut the mustard.

But back to the purpose of this ‘off the topic’ entry: I have now found (another) good reason to read more novels! Behold this quote:

‘ For this was the point, surely: he would be a better doctor for having read literature. What deep readings his modified sensibility might make of human suffering, of the self-destructive folly or sheer bad luck that drive men towards ill-health! Birth, death and frailty in between. Rise and fall - this was the doctor’s business, and it was literature’s too.
…. his kind of doctor would be alive to monstrous patterns of fate, and to the vain and comic denial of the inevitable; he would press the enfeebled pulse, hear the expiring breath, feel the fevered hand begin to cool and reflect, in the manner that only literature and religion teach, on the puniness and nobility of mankind…’
- Atonement, Ian McEwan

Too bad Robbie didn’t become a doctor. He would be one intriguing Cambridge doctor; like my Dr Darcy (mmph!).

I have never, for one, enjoyed reading reviews. There is this unflinching paranoia that the writer may give the plot away and leave me moody; housing inactive residual pockets of deja-vu-ness that would crop up should I one day turn the pages of the novel - oh yes, this seems familiar! It would be a horrible notion if he has somehow successfully managed to make me hate a novel before reading it (or judging it by its cover).

If your astute powers of deduction has not failed you so far, it is no spoiler that this entry marks the occasion when a reviewer has - surprisingly - earned my trust.

The Guardian hosts a special page for the Booker prize, a little treat I thought I could peruse through to allow me to procrastinate (studying) a little longer. Al Kennedy is - as other words fail to describe it so easily - brilliant! His review on ‘The Gathering’ told me what I already knew (from a conversation with Alfred in the hospital library), but he managed to describe it with much passion that now, as I’m typing this, I’m wishing my agenda is left free so that I could read this book with a cup of tea. He states that the author, a Miss Enright, believes that ‘telling a story is not enough..it must be well told‘. His homage to the author is a review that is well written despite it being a simple description of the novel. His personal thoughts are sprinkled sparingly: dissection of characters and events are teasingly minimal, but pungently invokes curiousity for the reader.

My favourite bits include these quips and quotations:

1. This is a world where fidelity is impossible and sex is absurd, but love is forever, like a scar.

2. Veronica [a character] reminds us that she is named for the saint who wiped Christ’s face on his way to the cross, producing his image “on her tea towel”, a nun tells her - this was “the first ever photograph”. Veronica mentions, characteristically deadpan, that she still thinks of the saint whenever she’s given a moist towel after a Chinese meal.

3. He [the character Liam] becomes the ultimate definition of love’s stupidity - an outpouring of energy towards people who are always destined to disappoint, to be disappointed and, above all, who are compelled to leave us in the most devastating way, by dying.

4. She [the author Anne Enright] has uncovered the truth that sometimes our great adventures are interior. When someone we love dies, leaves, the action is elsewhere. That battle with cancer, that dramatic crash, that bolt from the blue - it’s all scripted for someone else. And yet still we insist on being changed, moved, reshaped. It is our nature, the nature Enright charts.

Oh, when exams end, what wierd and wonderful things (like reading endlessly) await me! My toes bristle with anticipation for this madness to end!

Photo courtesy of insashi

“Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.”
- High Windows, Philip Larkin