I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone
- Lord Byron

You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be
- Albus Dumbledore

Even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there
- Charlie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience
- Atticus Finch

To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure
- Albus Dumbledore

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion
- Albert Camus

Fear of a name increases fear of a thing itself
- Albus Dumbledore

"...they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
- Miss Maudie, To Kill a Mockingbird

You cannot kill what you did not create
- Slipknot

There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
– Morpheus, The Matrix

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try..
– Yoda

Water is powerful; it can wash away earth, put out fire and even destroy iron
- Mameha, Memoirs of a Geisha(film)

Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.
- Albus Dumbledore

I don't want to be a product of my environment, i want my environment to be a product of me
- Frank Costello, The Departed

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
― Albert Einstein

Some people feel the rain, others just get wet
- Bob Dylan

Water can carve its way, even through stone and when trapped, water makes a new path
- Sayuri, Memoirs of a Geisha(film)

Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them.
- Albus Dumbledore

Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable,
palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway
- Tolkein, The Hobbit

Never laugh at live dragons
- Bilbo

The beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair
- Relient K

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.
― Frank Zappa

You know what music is? God's little reminder that there's something else besides us in this universe, a harmonic connection between all living beings, every where, even the stars.
- Wizard, August Rush.

Me, I'm dishonest, and you can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest ones you have to watch out for.
- Capt. Jack Sparrow

Life is too important to be taken seriously
- Oscar Wilde

Time Passes. Even When It Seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood
behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does
- Bella, New Moon

The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be alone, alone with the sky, nature and God. For then and only then
can you feel that everything is as it should be and that God wants people to be happy amid nature's beauty and simplicity
- Anne Frank, Diary of Anne Frank

People demand freedom of speech as compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use
- Soren Kierkegaard

Music. I can hear it everywhere. In the wind, in the air, in the light. It's all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do is listen.
- August Rush

Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it's very important that you do it, 'cause nobody else will.
- Tyler, Remember Me

The depths of a mans soul can not be measured in a manner of meters and fathoms; but rather, it is in my opinion, only quantified by his proximity to heaven and hell.
- Alesana

Rating: 3.5 / 5

My second review goes to The Fault in Our Stars, believe me, I'm surprised too. Anyway, I finally got around to reading The Fault in Our Stars and I’m glad I wasn’t as disappointed as I thought I would be. The book, maybe due to the movie, got sooo much buzz I was sure there had to be a catch, and while I agree it IS a really good piece of work, I still think it was blown juuuust a tad out of proportion. With that being said, I’m still glad I read it, it’s a sweet book- I'm not sure how many people would agree.

Truth be told, the title, by virtue of it being anything but random won me over. It comes from a line in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar where Cassius says, "The fault, dear Brutus is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings." which seems to suggests that Cassius thinks that it's not fate that dooms men, but instead their own failings so basically we are too blame for all the bad things that happen to us. Obviously John Green disagrees- and I do too! Sometimes bad things happen just because- eg, the kids in the book didn't get cancer because they did anything wrong, it's just how it is and it's a fact that cannot be undone by any act on their part. (Bad things happen to 'good' people all the time- the reverse is also true). I'm really eager to have this discussion with someone, especially from a religious point of view, the idea of predestination and the notion that our actions cause a reaction/ripple effect into our future. But I digress. As you read on, you realise the beauty of the message in the title is that they can still live and make their decisions despite the fault in their stars, even when they know the inevitable fate that awaits them. Its pretty encouraging.

I don’t want to say it’s a book about cancer, or kids suffering WITH (notice I don’t say ‘from’?) because it is not. I don't even think the characters would agree with me, they wouldn’t say they were suffering per se…just living; it's one of those things they're living with. Anyway, yes cancer plays a significant role in the lives of the characters and there's an unspoken sadness about the book being about kids who will inevitably die young, but the book is so much more than that.

Kids with cancer, I expected waterworks-I had been warned to expect waterworks. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve shed my fair share of tears because of words on paper about things and people that seemed to me more real than anything and anyone I’ve had the good fortune of encountering. So imagine my surprise when I closed the book and it dawned on me that I had not been accosted by the tears I was sure I would shed. The book savvy friends that recommended this book each vowed that they themselves had read parts of the book behind a haze of tears. Either they lied or I’m a stone-cold unfeeling reader!

There’s a realness to this book that no doubt is what most people like about it, myself included. No rainbows and bunnies, no greener grass, no sugar-coating, maybe a silver-lining or two but that’s debatable. There is just truth- reality in all its brutality. “The world is not a wish-granting factory”. There’s a bit which I particularly loved about the universe wanting to be noticed and how it rewards the intelligent in part because they are able to give it the attention it craves (or something along those lines). It feels kind of true doesn’t it? Those more attuned with their surroundings and take time to be AWARE of anything and everything around them seem to be at a slightly better place, physically and emotionally, than people that go about their lives in a straight line, buried behind a “busy” life , focusing on only the red objects they see and so on. We are but pawns my dear reader.

One of the characters, Augustus, has it in their mind that for their life to have been worth something, they have to be remember by many, they must have accomplished a great feat, been a great person, made a great sacrifice, you catch my drift. I took a rather nihilistic view on this-so did the main character (and narrator) Hazel…to a certain extent. She puts it aptly, go read the book. While the Christian in me believes we were all created for a purpose and our lives have somehow already been written out (I have some reservations on this but that takes us back to the faults being in our stars debate) I do not think that purpose necessarily means greatness and I fear for people who live their lives in search of greatness because they ultimately miss out on what the world really has to offer, it goes back to the universe wanting to be noticed, all the the non-red objects.

John Green knows how to write, I’ll give him that. The book has a lot of quotable lines which I’ll spare you, just Google them- there are probably a ton of bumper stickers or “Encouragements” that the book has given rise to. I will, however, give you this, Augustus’ proclamation of love…waah, beautiful. The cloistered hopeless romantic in me was cooing all over the place with this one. Guys take notes.

But more than anything, and I’m sure many would agree, it is an epic epic love story, I’ll leave it at that.

Until next time, stay golden dear reader.

Stop. Listen.

Something a friend of mine put up a couple of days ago that I haven't been able to stop thinking about...Listening is something we rarely do, we're in the business of 'hearing' and in that process we filter so much that half the time what was intended is not what was registered. This is what she had to say....


My Thoughts : Stop. Listen.:

Stop. Listen.

Consider these two responses

Person 1: I have a lot going on in my life right now... I'm not sure I can handle that as well.

Person 2: I don't have time for such nonsense.

Which of these two people would you immediately understand and/or identify with?

Who do you think has 'more reason' in their answer?

If you're thinking person 1, you're wrong.
The answer is: neither of them.

You see, words have over time acquired certain implications and meanings that they may or may not have had when they were first created. There's no way of knowing for sure, this thing goes back to the creation of language....long, long, looong ago.
So why would you give Person 1 sympathy or understanding and not give the same to Person 2?

Don't you think that they're both saying the same thing? Or is it because Person 2 said 'I don't have time' and 'nonsense' that we immediately jump to conclusions?

Look, both of them are really saying, 'I can't do that' OR 'I won't do that'. All Person 2 did was go ahead and add how they felt about what they were being asked to do. They were being brutally honest.

And what does brutal honesty get you? Nothing good, most of the time.
And we wonder why people would rather lie.

So what am I saying here?
I'm not sure I really know myself. Perhaps it's just that we need to take time to stop and listen more often than not.

Maybe then people would not need to continually repeat themselves.
Maybe then people would begin to feel heard.
Maybe then...maybe.

Stop. Listen.

PS: I'm very proud to say that the pictures and edits are my own. Quotes have been attributed within the edits :)

UCUlawresearchproject: Steve Jobs on Creativity: Here are a couple of quotes from Steve Jobs on creativity which you may find interesting...

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things."

"good artists copy; great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

Rating: 5 / 5

I love this book. I’ve loved it since I first read it some odd 7 years ago and I’ll continue to love it a long time from now…not sure where I’m going with this but you get the idea, I love, love, love this book. It’s a beautiful piece, beautifully written and for a Nipponfiliac such as yours truly, it’s GOLDEN, see what I did there?

I picked it to be the first book I reviewed for no other reason than I miss home; I re-read it on the bus back home for the Christmas holidays (20hours on the road is no joke and there’s nothing like a good book to kill the time), so call it being home-sick.

So the book basically reads like a recount of events, an autobiography (the title’s a dead giveaway) complete with a translator’s note which makes it seem proper legit, and in many ways it is. The reader feels like they’re having a conversation with this old Japanese lady who is telling you the tale of her life as a lustrous Kyoto geisha in the 1930s-40s. In fact it begins (with the exception of the translator’s note) like this:

“Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we talked about something that had happened a long while ago, and I said to you…”

This already creates a mental ambiance, sets the place (which as it were, happens to be from an apartment at the Waldorf Astoria so a very fancy place) at least it did for me. You don’t get the feeling that it has in fact been written by some white man from Tennessee, albeit who holds an M.A in Japanese history-which is one reason I love this book. Likely someone who is Japanese, or knows enough about Japanese history and culture to note any discrepancies, would not agree with me but in any case I’m allowed to remain blissfully ignorant.

Nitta Sayuri (formerly Sakamoto Chiyo) is the said old Japanese woman with you in the present who takes you into her past. Hers is a beautiful, tragic journey from a poor fisherman’s daughter in a poor fishing village to how (and why) she became a famous geisha- which as we read on we come to realise really isn’t all it is pegged to be. It is filled with the little superficialities in life where looks mean everything and you are pretty much nothing more than a painted face in brilliant kimono whose life’s mission is to entertain powerful/wealthy (married) men and where the notion of happiness derived from love is a ludicrous, almost shameful, idea. Just a painted face, a delicate porcelain mannequin of sorts, to be lusted over but rarely touched (that privilege was reserved for the highest bidder) so that having a lover is dangerous for a geisha, whose air of unattainability is crucial to their allure. In fact there’s a geisha, queen b***h actually, Hatsumomo, who had a lover, and it seems she proper loved him- her ONLY redeeming “human” quality, was almost banished from the okiya* because not only would it bring shame to her, but to them as well not to mention the profits they would lose out on.

It is ironic therefore that above all else, this book is a great romance, (oh Chairman!) and it has a happy realistic ending so, yey! It is filled with betrayal, intrigue, some wise and some not so wise decisions, Sayuri’s coming of age, acts of jealousy and desperation, some questionable Japanese practices all wrapped up in one of the most captivating books I’ve ever read.

I actually watched the movie adaptation before I read the book so I sadly had a few expectations going into it, but it is so well written that the impression left by the movie was pushed to the curb. I am glad however that the movie does well on its own, it’s a lovely film. You know those movie adaptations that are downright bogus? This one isn’t and I would recommend its viewing before or after reading the book (as a golden rule, I would never recommend watching an adaptation pre-book but this is among the few exceptions to the rule). If you’ve read the book or watched the movie, I’d love know what you thought!

Until next time, stay golden dear reader.

Ps: notice the lack of memes? You’re welcome.

*Okiya: An okiya (置屋 ^?) is the lodging house in which a maiko (apprentice geisha) or geisha lives during the length of her nenki (contract or career as a geisha). A young woman's first step toward becoming a geisha is to be accepted into an okiya (boarding house). 

Look here! I'm FINALLY going to talk about what I intend this blog to be about!! 

So, bottom line is I've loved books since…well, I think since I could read and I could go on about how books were my escape from reality especially in my teens when I felt like I was in a crappy school with crappy spoiled rich kids and felt out of place and alone in this world—not to mention my existential crisis

Who am I, why am I here, what's the point of all of this?

…but I’ll spare you, dear reader, from all that hormonal angst. I like a good book, it can take me places. I just like me a good book. I’ll read anything and everything, which means I may have to make obvious series on this blog, but we’ll cross that bridge if and when we get there. This isn't to say that I like ALL books, no, I have some standards.

Stuff like this I laugh at and scorn

I do not read, *no offence intended to the author and its readers (ok, maybe a little judgement), I just grabbed the picture off Google*

This blog will be focused on reviews, book reviews to be exact but as I write this the idea of doing music, movie and even series reviews seems like a good idea, albeit ambitious seeing as I’m likely to post annually- surely I mean this book review situation seems far-fetched enough already. There might be other generic posts, but again bridge and crossing.

I've given some thought about what I’d like my reviews to be like, I could do the whole nine yards and deconstruct the piece, delve into elements like plot and setting and character development and literary technics and have discussions about the nuances of what the author wanted to say and how they said it but what they really came off as saying…yes yes yes, but I will not. I’m not a literature student and while it would do me some good in terms of becoming a good writer, I’m honestly just too lazy and I’m not too keen on my writing skills so *shrug* you may stop reading now.

If by some miracle you've continued reading and are still with me, you brave soul, I warn you, my reviews are going to be painfully subjective and filled with adulation and/or rants or something in between. My foreseeable distaste for some works is not because I’m anywhere near qualified and therefore know any better but because this is the internet and I can— the beauty of freedom of thought and…I’m sure expression goes somewhere here too. Basically its going to be about out me loving/liking or hating/disliking a book and giving my reasons why without giving away too much of the story...that's right, no spoilers. I hate them myself, bane of my existence, so I shall not do unto others what I do not want done unto myself. There will be mention of characters and likely references to scenes and whether there was a happy or a crappy ending (don’t get me wrong, crappy endings are good too). If I deviate from this and you, dear reader, are affronted enough, you can refer me to this post and reproach me all you want.

I’ll also try really hard to cut down on the memes and GIFs, no promises though; they give me a false sense of humour so they’ll be hard to do without, bear with me.

And with that…

somewhere in the world, it must be a crime to fold the corner of a page #literaryoffences