so glad that i still read. but now that army’s ending i think the volume of books i read is going to drop sharply. there’s nowhere else i can think where you have so much free time and so little to do that you can just read books.

also glad that i no longer read what i call crap anymore.

Steve Toltz – A Fraction of the Whole

this is a weird book. it’s about this kid’s life, his dad’s life and their dysfunctional relationship with each other.  there’s a whole bunch of stuff that happens that’s too ridiculous to be true which only leaves me feeling if i’m missing something. actually, i really can’t understand either character very much. still it’s quite interesting except that the ending leaves you quite unsatisfied. like you’d expect or wish for a happy ending, but instead you’re just left hanging. it’s readable la, i finished it in japan.

Alice Sebold – The Almost Noon

alright this book is damn morbid. i don’t know why i kept reading it. the story’s pretty straight forward. a woman kills her mother at the start of the book. the story follows her dealing with the events after she killed her mom, at the same time exploring the relationship she had had with her. it’s really quite messed up, because the mom is mentally unstable and causes all sorts of problems, eventually overshadowing the life of her daughter. her whole life she dreams of finally escaping the clutches of her mom, but in the end she ends up looking after her even after her dad commits suicide. this book is definitely more real to me, even though it’s damn dark it seemed to strike a chord with me because i finished it faster than usual. the ending’s better too, at least its one of courage and hope that can set your mind at rest.

i’m going to try reading non-fiction now for a change. my old plan of reading alternating between one fiction and one non-fiction books gone to shit, but i’m going to give it a shot. already started on ‘the world is flat’ which is kind of old, but i guess still relevant.

sunday duty in camp again. boredom on my lonesome.

you lose track of time in here. some times when i think about how old i am i manually deduct my birth year from 2008. there’s probably some part of me that’s still in denial about me being (2008-1988..) 20 years old already. you’d think that things would be happening in your life, and it’s time to stop being a kid already, but that’s exactly what i still feel i am. and if even army can’t change the way that i feel about that, i’m beginning to wonder what it’s gonna take for me to finally grow out of my sneakers.

and yes, i’m still reading.

steven king, without a shadow of a doubt, is one of my favourite authors. but this book, somehow just doesn’t fit. i don’t know. the language i love to read is all there, but the characters. i think what really makes a book for me are the characters. i need characters i can love, respect and identify with. and in this book, i can’t really connect with the characters. they just seem so completely out of this world, beyond the limits of what i can believe are actually real people and that’s what made the book so hard to read.

and as hard as the last book was to read, this was twice as awesome. i loved the loneliness of the main character, the way he dealt with it. the starting pace was so slow and comfortable, watching him pass the time and enjoy the simple things. and i can only wish that one day, i’ll be able to sit back and enjoy one day at a time on some secluded beach house somewhere. and then everything changes. you’ve forgotten that stephen king is the master of horror. things begin to go so horribly, terribly and unimaginably wrong. and you never, for a moment see it coming. events take a turn for the worse, and i don’t recall being so scared and gripped by a book since salems’ lot. and i wonder why can’t there be more books like this.

and now i’m reading, or at least trying to read midnight children by rushdie. it’s all hyped up as the best book in forever so i’m curious to see what it’s all about. yeah, and my mom and bro saw me reading it and found it, to say the least, amusing. quoting the former, ‘ i bought that book for you so long ago and it took you six years to read it.’ but seriously, i find it almost impossible to choke down the rubbish that i loved to read until only recently and even the book now has me intrigued.

this weekend has felt like a revival. it’s true, i finally feel renewed, refreshed or whatever the hell you wanna call it. it’s like i was lying down there in the depths, not daring to even hope again and now it feels like i’ve just crawled to the surface and i can feel the sun’s warm kiss on my face for the first time in the longest time. everything’s finally over and i can hardly dare to believe it. everything’s going to be back to normal and for that i’m glad.

can’t say i’ve achieved much this weekend. not that i really achieve anything most weekends anyway. i don’t think i really did anything aside from going out to carnivore with the guys. aside from that, i went to sew my uniforms at beach road. worked so hard for that damn tab, it’s a damn shame if i booked in with it undone. that’s what i think anyway. then i scored quite a lot of free meals off my parents. i mean, if you really want to enjoy yourself eating you’re definitely going to need a deeper pockets, or at least someone with really deep pockets like my folks. that said, i’m mostly at home on weekends, so they need to feed me anyway. that’s probably why my bank account’s been mostly untouched lately.

i’ve started reading a new book, duma key by stephen king. yeah, king again. i like the way he writes. it’s been about 70 odd pages of so but i can tell i’m going to like the book. there’s a lot of loneliness and a sense of being lost in there which seems to strike a chord with me. plus the font’s really nice. somehow, the font of the book always matters to me because i really can’t stand to read something with huge fonts meant for five year olds. it’s like trying to cheat and make your book seem more substantial. come on please, don’t treat us like fools, even primary school kids can do that.

i felt a pointless night in the making in the evening just now so i went to the rental store to get a couple of dvds which in hindsight seems to be a very bad idea. more because my choice in movies tonight left quite a lot to be desired. starship troopers was always one of my favourite movies so i decided to overlook the second film and give the third one the chance i thought it deserved but boy was i wrong. god, there was nothing to redeem that movie. i don’t know how i sat through almost 100 minutes of that awful crap. there was almost no discernible plot with what little plot being completely ludricous and the most unforgivable part was the complete lack of any action to drive the movie. why do they even need a plot anyway? just cram it full of believable and solid action sequences and people will completely suck it up. you don’t need bigger brain bugs or mind control bugs or any shit like that. hollywood astounds me really. it seems like they will make any kind of shit just to make money now.

the other choice of the night was the iron man animated movie. yeah, i’m a comic book geek so fuck off. it wasn’t really a BAD movie per se, but it wasn’t exciting enough. really, i fell asleep so i didn’t get the ending but it seemed inconsequential anyway so i shut it off and just went back to my room.

something else also quite sad. i went ahead and measured my weight and its not a nice figure. i would dare to say it’s the lowest it has been since like sec four and that’s how much you can imagine i lost during summex. and now, i need to find a way to put what i lost back and stat.

i’ve been reading like a bunny lately.

see the cover?

“The best horror novel of the new century.” -Stephen King. doesn’t it so totally get your hopes up? that’s high praise from the master of horror himself. so either the standard of horror this century has hit rock bottom, or that comment has been taken completely out of context like “Certainly not the best horror novel of the new century,” because the book was a complete and utter disappointment for me. personally, i’m always willing to forgive a lack of flair in the writing if the plot is awesome enough. this book, definitely does not have any sort of awesome plot. basically, a group of young americans somehow land up on a hill. a hill with, no wait for it, KILLER VINES! woah is that cool or what? it’s goddamn killer vines. so i end up reading about what they do on the hill, and how they defend themselves against these evil sentient plants which becomes very, very tedious reading after a while. in the end, it becomes another book you can’t wait to finish so you can go on to read something else. and by the time you reach the end, you just wanna tear at your hair in frustration at the stupidity of the ending. they all die one by one, and eventually the last few kill themselves. what the fuck!? why even read the damn book in the first place if they all die. argh. waste of time, waste of time.

i’ve actually made a pact with myself to cut reading mindless thrillers, but i think for these authors, i will always make an exception. their books are probably what i mean when i’d sacrifice the writing for the story because their plots are always exciting, full of twists and with the right dose of supernatural elements to keep things interesting. for me, its nothing short of a gripping page-turner that makes me pull a chair out of my bunk into the corridor to keep reading. plus, i really, really like the characters because they’re so eccentric and quirky and unbelievable. the concept of recurring characters appeals to me a lot too, i like the continuity rather than ending your relationship with them after one novel.

anyway, this book, i admit, isn’t really up to the standard of the previous novels. the main character, pendergast’s, role is a little subdued compared to the intensity of the previous books. and i think the plot is a little more contrived than usual. i’ll put it down to the limitations of constructing a complex plot on board a ship. but it’s still a page-turner that lasted me less than two or three days of intense reading. the story was still quite absorbing and you can really see the level of research and planning that the author’s put into writing the story. it’s still a pretty darn good book, and was at least worth the time reading it.

this book is a new type of read for me. part of my attempt to read deeper, more insightful books. it was bought at the times warehouse sale, and i think the “nominated for booker prize” was the line that hooked me. so i read it, and i have to admit it definitely was interesting and very different from the fictional crap that i normally bury my nose in. it’s basically about a man who drags his family halfway across america in hopes of getting a fair share in his recently deceased uncle’s farm. there’s also a plot behind the death of his uncle that threatens to rewrite everything he thought he knew about his past. it’s something very, very different and i enjoyed reading it for the language and the slow unfolding plot which made the experience so much more real. the man’s dysfunctional relationship with his wife and family is nice to read too. his love-hate relationship with his wife was one of the highlights, but the love and tenderness he had for his son was the best bit of the book for me.

so i’m going to read other books now. i’m considering reading midnight children by salman rushdie just to see what’s all the hype about. i’ll probably find it boring, and won’t understand a thing but there’s no harm in trying.

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