#peekabook

[zarahgagatiga]

It is always a joy to tell a story and to read aloud to kids and the young at heart. Yesterday, I was once again given the opportunity to share joy and wonder to eager listeners and curious minds at the Cultural Center of the Philippines during the opening exhibit of #peekabook. Thank you to wonder women, Bebang Siy, @lizaflowers and Kora Dandan! Masakit ang kaliwang braso ko pero napawi ng kaligayahang dulot ng pagkukuwento! Salamat talaga mga kapatid sa industriya! #parasabata #parasabayan #parasakababaihan

[mr-wein]

The OHIO GAYS BAES 😽 @kylepacelli @peterd82 @lcconnelly @elwoodyoung @rvannortwick1 @etretts #gwstyle #gwobsession #theohiogays #peekabook #swak #fireisland #summer17 #summeriscomming #baebaes (at Fire Island Pines, New York)

[dinalenka]

Colorless of Tsukuru Tazaki

First thing first. I could relate to the story so much. And the feeling of losing part of your life with n reason is describe very well, if not too much, by Murakami.

I love the details. Love how Murakami delivered to us the devastating part of Tsukuru’s life, and how he finally can manage to live on even with some burden still lingering in his heart. The way the story goes made you (or me) wanna read more and finish the book as fast as you can, but then after you finished there’s this hanging feeling...like you don’t really want it to finish..or maybe because Murakami left some things unexplained to the reader. Such as the part of why H left without any traces, and what will Sara answer to Tsukuru’s question. Well, maybe that’s the way Murakami told us that nothing’s completely resolved in life. Hmmm...

Tsukuru itself is an interesting character. I mean, I tried to imagine him as he describe himself, and for that reason I found he’s too hard on himself. Believing that he didn’t have any special traits, and characteristic just because he doesn’t have any color in his name. Later, as I read the story, I found other characters describe him as a wonderful man. A handsome, composed man who already found his dream and brave enough to pursue it, unlike his other friends. Maybe because he is the type of man who didn’t do too much than necessary, that made him think he is not good enough.

This story is not really like any other Murakami’s piece. There’s no magical incidents happened. This is quite a normal one, but the way Murakami brought us to read along the story until its finish is what made me intrigued. Yet in there’s this strangeness in this casual story. The delivery’s quite stilted; we will follow along Tsukuru who walked down his memory lanes. One moment he was talking to Sara, conveyed his youth past and most wonderful phase in his life. The next moment you will found yourself imagining how Tsukuru’s life and his precious ex best friends.

In the end, I love the story. It is a simple story of imperfect life yet a heart-warming one.

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Makassar - July 2016

Credit : the last picture is illustrated by Yuko Shimizu

[dinalenka]

Rashomon!

Akutagawa Ryunosuke is another Japanese author whose his work I read, aside from Murakami. While Murakami is a Japanese contemporary author, Akutagawa is one of the best short story author that Japan had. This is his first book of him that I read, and I found it hooked me in. The theme is simple, it rotates around humans and values in life. Especially in this one, it shows how the difference of bad/evil and good; ignoble and noble; right and wrong; is very thin. It is really depends on how broad your perspective to see things. One of the short story, "In the Grove", shows how every human has its own perspective to interpret things, that even the same incident could be told totally different by some people. In "Rashomon", shows how good and bad is very thin, when your life is in stake you could even cross the line of good and bad itself. "The White" try to tell us, how a single mistake could change your life drastically, and then only by fight to make it up for your mistake, you could eventually find yourself again. And so on. Akutagawa offered us stories with the set in Japan centuries past (you can find story about samurai in this one), and wrote it in a modernist way, showing humans need and flaw. Overall, recommended to kill your time while also getting valuable moral stories without preaching.

[dinalenka]

Landline Rainbow Rowell

                                                       What would you do if you can call someone in the past?

That’s the main idea of Landline by Rainbow Rowell.

This is about Georgie, who works in the field of television, making sitcom’s script. Georgie was forced to finish her scripts, and obliged to spend Christmas Eve alone. Yes, because her husband and two daughters would take vacation in Omaha, without her. This is a story about Georgie, who feel her household is in the verge of breakdown (or at least that is what the people around her said almost all the time).

After her husband and children left, Georgie had to finish her scripts, and ended up sleeping in her mother house because it was too much to bear the feeling of coming home to an empty house. She has been tried to call Neal through an old landline in her room. Her call got through to Neal, but it was Neal in 1998 who answered, and then things went that way. They talked several times, the present Georgie with the past Neal. Even though Georgie can’t fathom what was happening, she saw that situation as a chance to fix her household with Neal. The question is, how will she fix anything that go wrong between them? Say that she try to fix it, is it really gonna fix anything? Or it would just make things worst? 

__________________________________________________________________________________________

 Landline makes me imagined a household where the wife is a career woman, and the husband becomes father of the household, living and taking care of the children. Anyway, there’s an interesting conversation about relationship in this book. When Heather, Georgie’s sister ask her about what made her knew she was falling in love and ready to married someone (pg.164)

Georgie : “It’s more like you meet someone, and you fall in love, and you hope that that person is the one - and then at some point, you have to put down your chips. You just have to make a commitment and hope that you’re right.”

Heather : “So, you think most people bet everything, their whole lives, on hope. Just hoping that what they’re feeling is real.”

Georgie : “Real isn’t relevant. It’s like… you’re tossing a ball between you, and you’re just hoping you can keep it in the air. And it has nothing to do with whether you love each other or not. If you didn’t love each other, you wouldn’t be playing this stupid game with the ball. You love each other - and you just hope you can keep the ball in play.”

I don’t wanna spoil everything’s about this book, but those of you who wanna read something about relationship (well, a marriage relationship) maybe you could read this one.

[dinalenka]

1Q84

I have read the trilogy of Murakami's book, 1Q84. Someone asked me,

 "What do you got from reading those thick books? You don't just waste your time and read it to killing times, right"

Well, first of all “Yes, I do read for my own satisfaction”. And to kill some times. There are many choices that you can make in your life, one of them is how to spend your time. Me choose to read some books for my own good.

Back to 1Q84. For you who don't familiar with the book please do see it here . This book has so many things to talk about. We can talk about how the stories go, about who do you think Murakami means as Little People, to how do you feel about the ending of the stories. I wrote this few months after i finished read the trilogy so i just write down what i remember.

One that I really got from reading this, it shows how human could be and do in their lives, depending of how they were made by their experienced in the past. You are today is what you were yesterday. 

After reading some of Murakami's book, I became more aware and self-conscious about myself. The way he wrote and described the characters, made me trying to understand my own self.

Another one that I notice is, in this book the story about Doza, Maza, Two Moons, Sakigake and Little People didn't really revealed, even till the end. So I felt hanging. Yes Murakami, you hanging me to dry here. But then, in the books showed many sides of human. From Aomame, Tango, the Old Lady, to the Ushikawa. From Aomame, we can learn how human need some kinda salvation in this life in order to keep on living. Yes, salvation. Aomame's salvation is Tango, the one that she loves! How cute isn't it! We live in the world where there are many things that can harm us, outside or even inside ourselves. Aomame has been living an up-tight life I might say, where she has to murder people yet keep reminded that what she had done are something outrageous. Yet, she could maintain her sanity and live, because she knows there's Tango, breath and alive in this world. Love can help you, guys. On the other hand it also can destroy you, HA!

Tango, on the other hand is the portrayed of man who has talent but no ambition whatsoever. He just contented with what he had, the job as a math teacher, a girlfriend who is someone else's wife, and his work in  writings. He just lived his life like that, doing the things that he liked. Until then, he met Fuka Eri and his way of life changed slowly.

Both of them, Tango and Aomame, were entering a big story by following their own destiny. Tango and his writing-business with Fuka Eri led him to enter a path where leading him to meet Aomame. And vice versa, Aomame and her job as an assassin led her to finally  meet her love of life, Tango. 

Murakami portrayed to us how destiny can be absurd sometimes, like it is playing with you. The destiny of Aomame and Tango, after 20 years of lost contact and longing for each other they finally met in weird circumstances. Well, there’s so many things to talk about 1Q84, the characters are interesting to discuss but I’d like to keep it down by talking just about Tango and Aomame. 

______________________________________________________________

It won’t hurt you to read 1Q84, for it was a nice journey to me, to follow the path of Tango and Aomame (even though you can’t find the answers of some things in the end.......). Like riding a roller coaster, sometimes it slows down and made you anticipated the next, sometimes it’s just too fast you can’t grab what’s the meaning of those events, but those made the story interesting.

                                                                                     Makassar, Januari 2015

[dinalenka]

Adakah Keindahan Perlu Dinamai?

Buku pertama yang saya baca dari Ayu Utami, dengan judul Saman.

Ini merupakan hadiah dari seorang senior di kampus, dia memberikannya lengkap dengan sebuah buku lagi dan sebuah CD yang sampai sekarang belum saya buka. Rencananya nanti, kalau tidak ada hal yang perlu saya kerjakan akan saya dengarkan dengan khidmat. Ya, terkadang saya agak sedikit idealis untuk hal-hal yang remeh seperti membuka kado.

Kembali ke buku Saman. Buku ini ternyata diterbitkan tepat pada saat dimulainya era reformasi yakni tahun 1998, dan berhasil tembus sebagai pemenang Dewan Kesenian Jakarta 1997.

                              “Adakah keindahan perlu dinamai?”

Kisah ini dimulai dengan monolog salah satu tokoh,yang sedang menunggu kekasihnya. Kalimat di atas yang diakhiri tanda tanya membuat saya terlena. Iya, saya gampang terlena dengan keindahan, apalagi yang dibubuhi dengan tanda tanya. Haha. Saya tidak berniat untuk memberikan spoiler tentang novel ini, tapi buku ini bisa menggambarkan kondisi orde baru dengan cukup baik. 

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Saman merupakan nama seorang aktivis. Buku ini berkisar tentang perjalanannya, dan juga 4 tokoh perempuan yang merupakan kenalan sekaligus teman Saman. Bagaimana Saman yang semula hanyalah seorang pastor, kemudian beralih menjadi aktivis karena seorang perempuan tidak waras yang ia temui di sebuah desa. Agak aneh. Siapa orang waras yang bersedia bekerja keras mencurahkan perhatiannya, demi seorang perempuan tidak waras yang sering keliling kampung, yang tidak sadar akan perbuatannya? Tapi perempuan gila itulah yang menggerakkan Saman. Hingga ia terlibat jauh, dalam sengketa tanah dan kebun, yang melibatkan sebuah perusahaan pada saat itu. Antara penduduk sebuah kampung terpencil dan perusahaan tsb. terdapat jurang kepentingan yang besar. Satu pihak, menumpukan kelangsungan hidup keluarga dan anak mereka pada tanah dan kebun. Pihak lainnya, berorientasikan profit perusahaan. Alhasil, ketika penduduk menolak menyerahkan tanah dan kebun, jalan pintaslah yang digunakan oleh perusahaan. Tak peduli jalan pintas tsb. melibatkan orang yang tak bersalah. Di sinilah titik balik dalam hidup Saman, yang menjadikan ia mengabdikan hidupnya menjadi aktivis. Ia telah menyaksikan seberapa jauh pihak berkuasa sudi bertindak, demi mencapai kepentingan mereka.

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Ayu Utami, berhasil menarik saya untuk terus membaca kalimat per kalimat yang ia tuliskan. Walaupun penuturan yang ia lakukan terbilang vulgar, namun Ayu Utami dengan cukup apik menyelipkan sentilan-sentilan dalam percakapan antar tokohnya. Ayu juga dengan baik memilih latar belakang kehidupan para tokoh dalam novel ini. Empat orang wanita yang juga turut dikisahkan, berasal dari latar belakang yang berbeda, namun mampu berteman dan memberikan kisah yang menarik untuk dibaca.

Ayu Utami memberikan gambaran sedemikian destruktifnya otoritarian pada zaman orde baru dalam kehidupan rakyat hingga ke pelosok desa terpencil; bagaimana aktivis berupaya untuk menyuarakan keadilan di tengah otoritarianisme tsb. Namun ia tetap memperlihatkan betapa manusia masih membutuhkan cinta di kehidupannya. Karena cinta itu yang menyatukan kisah beberapa tokoh dalam novel Saman ini, menyederhanakan sekaligus memperumitnya.

                                                                                        Makassar, 7 Juni 2015

[dinalenka]

The Strange Library is a short story of Murakami. What makes this book lovely is the way they put some illustrations in it, making this short story deserved to entitled a nice book. Here some of the illustrations that I managed to share with you guys. Reading this one is like reading a children bed-time story, but a bizarre, absurd and kinda dark one.

Borrowed it from Katakerja, an interesting library not far from my campus.