February's reading list:
I've also read Dan Brown's newest book, Origins. Let's start with that first since I gotta maintain my status of reading every one of his works haha. I didn't even know he wrote a new novel until I saw this at the book swap in my building.
This one is a little different. Sure there's still the Catholic religion involved, but their symbolism is less entrenched in the plot compared to his previous books. It makes sense, this is about AI. It's a lot more relatable to me than the previous books, even tho I'm more familiar with the location of the previous. The plot twist at the end is also highly relevant to the AI safety discussion that's going on these days.
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Convenience Store Woman
The main message I got from this novel is the same as the message I took away from American Psycho: that other people / society expects you to fill a role and will ignore vast stretches of reality to maintain that expectation. I think there's a Vonnegut novel with the same theme, but forget which one. The style...or is it tone...of this book also reminds me of Vonnegut, although less humorous. The difference is that the main character in Convenience Store Women is aware of this, moreso than the other two works, and the awareness brings her suffering.
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The Rest of Us Just Lives Here
Another YA novel, I wonder where's the category of books that document graduating university rather than high school? Although existential problems are really all the same. This was also relatable.
The one of this book reminds me of Generation A, the following quotation even reminds me of the quotation that I picked out in that post:
"Why does everything have to mean something, though?" Jared asks. "Haven't we got enough life to be living?"
Two more quotations that I like:
Henna laughs lightly. Then she takes my hand in hers and holds it. "Mikey," she says, but not like she's about to say anything more, just like she's identifying me, making a place for me here that's mine to exist in.
It's to do with what something becomes once you tell it. It's like it's truer. And it's got a life of its own and rushes out into the world and becomes something you can't control.
The latter reminds me of another quotation on the same topic that I really, really, could relate to. Something about not admitting it to yourself because otherwise you couldn't deny it. The former, again reminds me of another passage, this time from Murakami:
We held hands just once. She was leading me somehow and grabbed my hand as if to say, This way - hurry up. Our hands were clasped together ten seconds at most, but to me it felt more like thirty minutes. When she let go of my hand, I was suddenly lost. It was all very natural, the way she took my hand, but I knew she'd been dying to do so.
The feel of her hand has never left me. It was different from any other hand I'd ever held, different from any touch I've ever known. It was merely the small, warm hand of a twelve-year-old girl, yet those five fingers and that palm were like a display case crammed full of everything I wanted to know - and everything I had to know. By taking my hand, she showed me what these things were. That within the real world, a place like this existed. In the space of those ten seconds I became a tiny bird, fluttering into the air, the wind rushing by. From high in the sky I could see a scene far away. It was so far off I couldn't make it out clearly, yet something was there, and I knew that someday I would travel to that place. This revelation made me catch my breath and made my chest tremble.
Coincidentally I was also in Atlanta while reading South of the Border, actually I think I read most of my Murakami while being here.
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