Jodi Picoult - Mercy

Did you ever look down at yourself and realize that you finally had it all? Did you ever feel that everything is so right in your life you have no where to go but downhill?

George Bernard Shaw: "There are two great tragedies in life. One is to not get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."

I heard this quote by Shaw in One Tree Hill and when i was reading this book it reminded me of that.

why is it you think that we can go so long feeling miserable; depressed; and despaired when joy is so fleeting?

if sadness and happiness in the end amount down to the same word: "emotions" then why the discerpency between the two?

Are we just built this way? forever ungrateful and eternally...stupid? not grasping the moment and savouring it as it will surely leave us for some unexpected tragedy.

there have been moments in my life in which i have been in perfect harmony with my self.

when i felt that i have the best friends...when i realised how lucky i am in my family...when i enjoyed my school life so much that each second was a blessing.

but all the same there in those moments there was an unease. the quiet fear that if i blink this feeling will go away. and so it did. now all i am left with are memories of how precious those moments were.

i have just started mercy. and i love the way picoult draws out my emotions until i feel almost as if i were in the book. the story is of loving some one so much that you would do anything for them...even if that meant taking their lives.

how do we draw the line between obssession and love? is obssession always one sided? what if its equal and it works for them? do we have the right to step in and call them unnatural? even knowing that our objection is less to do with their dynamics or more to do with our own envy.

Alice Hoffman - Green Angel

If this was the future, I wasn't certain I wanted to be in it. I started to feel as though I were disappearing. Perhaps I myself was a figment of my own imagination, a storm cloud, a wisp of smoke, a burning ember.

Read this book on the recommendation of a friend. Green Angel is a post apocalyptic story, easy to read (since its written by a young-adult author) and almost lyrical. I like the way it centered around the human sins and its consequences. Its one of those books that are good, not excellent. Green/Ash tended to get annoying at times, but it was interesting how her character was shaped and contrasted with her sister's.

For me the best parts were when Green referred to her life away from the city. And later when everything just vanishes right infront of her, the denial that she clings on to is so real. Finished it in around an hour (on my notebook woh bhi).

Kate Walbert - The Gardens of Kyoto

Iago says, I am not what I am, and for this he is called deceitful, a villain. Odd, isn't it? I have always found him to be the most truthful of Shakespeare's creations. We are none of us who we are.

So I'm done with the novel finally, and it has left me with a silence that settles on your shoulders, a certain stagnant weight that seems to mirror the residue of your thoughts while reading a story. In its depiction of war and mental illness, heartache and secrets and the unveiling of those secrets, the thought that stuck with me was how hollow our lives are, like a cavity, an indentation that can never be filled up.

Walbert's prose is haunting and deceptively simple at first but holds such pregnant ideas and pauses that make you go over certain lines. I felt sorry for Professor X, Rock and Ellen, for Randall, Rita, Ruby, Sterling even Daphne. And then I laughed. Because truth be told I was merely indulging in a pity party of my own. Ellen said "we are none of us who we are" and I was all of them one time or the other and then none.

Elizabeth Gilbert - Eat, Pray, Love

“When I get lonely these days, I think: So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.”

It says it all doesnt it? the title?

you and i both know how disappointing our university life is turning out to be. but sometimes i think we need to let go and just be sad; be lonely; be...incomplete.

sometimes i get so tired of holding it together. trying to make the best of it. but the worst part is, that i dont have a lot of ppl to use as a scratching post.

this is what this book is about. an autobiographical account of the courage it takes to face lonliness and depression all by yourself.

a definite definite must read. some thing that for a while takes care of everything.

Al Gore - An Inconvenient Truth

So I was just surfing and I found this. I think this is so beautiful and scary.

You look at that river gently flowing by. You notice the leaves rustling with the wind. You hear the birds; you hear the tree frogs. In the distance you hear a cow. You feel the grass. The mud gives a little bit on the river bank. It’s quiet; it’s peaceful. And all of a sudden, it’s a gear shift inside you. And it’s like taking a deep breath and going... 'Oh yeah, I forgot about this'.

Al Gore in the opening monologue of An Inconvenient Truth

Kamila Shamsie - Kartography

Can angels lie spine to spine? If not, how they must envy us humans.

Despite what you may think, i am not a romantic. But sometimes a book, a phrase, a picture; something comes along and simply tugs me. And makes me wonder. We go about our lives and we go as far as to scorn those who believe in the beauty of love and the magic that comes with it. All the while we pride our selves as mature.

Read this book and then tell me...are you still that content? I am still not a romantic but this book has given me something to daydream over. The concept of it is very "smile-on-your-face-as-you-gaze-out-a-rainy-day"