This quarter, I finished a grand total of two books and abandoned one.
The first book I read was Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, a historical fiction book that I had met on Goodreads (Goodreads is basically my Tinder for online book-dating xD). I was captivated by the intricately realistic detail and vivid emotions that Golden portrayed, a quality made even more astonishing by the fact that Golden is an American male author writing from the first-person perspective of a Japanese woman. This was one of the few books that I feel really deserved my "spiritual reading"; it really opened my eyes to the culture of Japanese geisha during the time of the World Wars, and I was also able to pick up and appreciate the beautiful writing style and figurative language. I feel like I really rediscovered historical fiction and I hope to read more in the future, because it was a window into a whole different culture and time period.
I am debating over whether to see the movie or not... I fear it might ruin the beautiful imagery in my mind from the book, but I also think it might be intriguing to see someone else's interpretation. For those who have seen the movie — any suggestions?
The other book that I finished was Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, on a recommendation from Jason Zhang, who claims that the book changed his entire perspective of the world. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to have nearly as strong of an impact on me. I read The Davinci Code, also by Brown, last year, and the first thing I noticed was how strikingly (and almost amusingly) similar these two books were. The storyline is amazingly parallel: Harvard professor Robert Langdon gets a call from a mysterious official late in the night on account of an unexplained murder, and he whizzes off to a famous location in Europe to investigate a series of obscure clues put in place by a secret satanic cult seeking to destroy the Catholic Church (while picking up an attractive young female scientist along the way), all in a matter of twenty-four hours. Hashtag deja vu.
This book was one of the faster reads for me, and I didn't connect with it on such a spiritual level because (okay you can disagree with me) there didn't seem to be as much human emotion and beautiful, image-filled writing to savor. Nonetheless, Angels and Demons did not fail to thrill and captivate me with Langdon's superhuman intelligence and the smooth elegance with which all the details of the situation fit together, and after finishing the book, it is hard to believe that the Illuminati doesn't really exist. I will never look at a one-dollar bill the same way.
I will admit that I didn't get to read as many books as I had hoped (BUT I CAN EXPLAIN) because I've spent these couple months scrambling around frantically, trying to adjust to the new rhythm of high school life, tackle a new AP course (fist...pump), get ahead in Science Olympiad, write my oratory speech for Speech and Debate, and manage to keep up with practicing violin, all in one big gulp, leaving me extremely limited time to pursue my reading and do justice to the title of my blog (wow that whole paragraph was one enormous sentence #syntax). I do hope that next quarter, I'll be able to squeeze out more time from in between my other activities to unwind and read.
Speaking of studying for Scioly, I actually believe that during the past quarter, I've read far more than ever before — not in terms of books, but in terms of pages and new knowledge that I've gained. Scioly, a competitive club in which students compete in various subjects in science (mine include anatomy and biology), is one of my most demanding extracurricular commitments. Soooo... does this count as my independent reading? *adorable smile* :)
During second quarter, my reading goal is to finish at least four books, including at least one classic (perhaps Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and/or Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which happen to already be sitting in my Kindle library). I also want to explore more historical fiction, which is kind of a genre I just "rediscovered". One such book on my Goodreads to-read list is Kathryn Stockett's The Help, which I've been wanting to read for, like, forever T_T
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