Saturday, June 14, 2014

Book, Movies, Music Updates

Hey peeps. So since the last time I wrote, I actually finished a book. I finished The Catcher in the Rye this week. That's what happens when I have to eat lunch alone. I read. I thought The Catcher in the Rye is really good. Something that I think will be useful for teenagers to read and though I am not a teenager anymore, somehow all that sentiments of hating stuff and in general be lost kinda resonate in me and kinda reminds me of some people I know. It was impressive as well how J. D. Salinger wrote this because it's like a whole stream of consciousness. I have always wished that there's a magic pen of something which can write all my random thoughts as they happened. Now I see that if such thing is possible, the end result is most probably similar to The Catcher in the Rye. The book itself is not very thick and the story actually only took places in a span of just over a weekend. It's about a boy who got kicked out of a school again and decided to get away on his own for a few days before going back to his parents. The books contains all his thoughts in those few days. Towards the end, the book has some pretty wise lines coming from his ex-teacher, Mr. Antolini. 2 that jumped out to me are these:

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
[Mr. Antolini actually mentioned that this is attributed to Wilhelm Stekel, an Austrian physician and psychologist]

"I'm not trying to tell you," he said, "that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with – which, unfortunately, is rarely the case – tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And – most important – nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker."

They get you thinking, no? So anyway now I am reading number9dream by David Mitchell which turns out to be very hard to read. I think the sentences are too crafty or beautiful or poetic that I have a hard time registering what was written and this is coming from the back of The Catcher in the Rye which so fluid in the way it's written. I feel like I'm progressing quite slowly in number9dream and there are times when I thought if I were the type who give up easily, I would just give up on this book. David Mitchell is not a Japanese and so when I read the book jacket that this book is about a Japanese boy and set in Japan, I was amazed that one could write such details about something that one is not, but apparently his wife is Japanese and he has lived in Japan before, so it kinda makes sense that he could write with such details. He actually wrote this book before Cloud Atlas and this book is even more interesting in terms of structure. I have only finished the first chapter and I'm still not sure what's going on, if there's an alternate reality or the different stories that jump from different parts are kinda different daydreams of the main character. I'm still not sure what the main reality is. It's also quite futuristic or perhaps science fiction-y in a way. It's a thicker book and I do hope that I can finish this fast to make time for book number 5.

On movies updates. Here are the ones I managed to watch. I watched Maleficent, which I thought wasn't bad. Maybe it's just me, but I thought the raven should be the true love and so when that didn't happen, I was kinda disappointed. At least it's not the prince though. I also watched Edge of Tomorrow which was much better than I thought. I thought it would be like Groundhog Day meets science fiction action and that it would just be lame and weird, but yeah it was much better than I expected. I got to thinking that Tom Cruise is just such a heroic leading man. Yes, Tom Cruise has played different characters, but him as the hero is just so Tom Cruise and as Gascoigne puts it, he's good at that, at being Tom Cruise :D It's amazing that he has hit 50 and still be desirable. Then today I watched Chef with la Gioia and I love it a lot. This kinda movies are really the type that supports my point on why we should waste our times watching formulaic super heroes movies, not that Chef is not formulaic itself (the dad had to disappoint his son one more time before coming around), but it's still really good and the food shots are glorious and Jon Favreau is just awesome at what he does, he's really talented.

On music updates (something I don't often do here), been listening to Boyzone. Boyzone is the boyband that I worshiped when I was a teenager and I went all crazy about it. They were the first concert I have ever attended! Before you get all dismissive about it, I think every straight girl will have their boyband phase :P Anyway they really colored my junior high school life then. Love Stephen Gately then and it's always sad when I think of him now. One would think that their music would be the first I put into my iPod but I only did that some weeks ago and since then I have been listening to them over and over. I love their newer albums though there were songs that sounded like the Take That songs after their own reunion. As always the case from before, I hope the rests would sing more. They do give Mikey more chance now. So anyway, listening to their old songs sometime got me smiling and thinking of those days when I was young and insane. Teenager insane I mean and we all know they can be such a pain :D I also listened to Linkin Park's album, Living Things for the first time last week. I know it's very late of me, but how I LOVE this album. It sounds like their earlier works that made me love Linkin Park in the first place. Really good album to add into my Linkin Park therapy session, that is when I am really really angry and pissed about something and I just need to drown the world, I usually listen to Linkin Park's first 2 albums. Hope their next album will be great as well.

On other people's life update, Starfish got married last week. I went to the wedding with Gascoigne, la Gioia, and Joey and we met Whisky and Jean there. The topic of finding the one has been the topic of our conversations ever since I knew Starfish and I guess it's good that he has finally found the one. It happens really fast for him, like around 1 year? The last time I met with this group of people, he was still single, and then suddenly he met someone and it's was full speed ahead. We didn't really stay long for the wedding, but then all of us minus Jean decided to catch up and have cold drinks and enjoy the much needed air con at the Old Town cafe. I love how all of us who actually talk and meet with each other rarely can just have great conversation when we meet. We joked and talked about stuff and the time spent felt short. I wonder if the next time we meet would be because one of the person in this group is getting married and that makes me think if the group going for a drink afterwards going to be smaller. I hope it will be me though :D

:) eKa @ 8:54:00 PM •