Books : About Books - When I Finally Hv the Time

Note: I'm back from my Raya holiday quite early, so to end my hiatus I will finish up drafting this post and actually click the 'publish' button. Salam Aidilfitri ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆

 Books I Consumed in March - April :

• The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante - loved it. Would read more books by Elena Ferrante.
• My Husband by Maud Ventura - A French woman obsessing about her "ideal" husband and how to make their marriage more passionate even after 15 years together. It was annoyingly obsessive, would question where is the line between love and obsession.
• Strangers by Taichi Yamada - heyyy, the plot twist! A major film called All of Us Strangers starring Paul Mescal, Andrew Scott, and Claire Foy just came out, it is loosely based on this 1987 Japanese novel. In the novel, the couple isn't g*y though. The loneliness feels like it came straight from the Murakami realm. 
• The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar - about motherhood, early post-partum depression, the struggle to make sense, and the loneliness as a default parent. 
• Afterwards by Charlotte Leonard- About grieving, when her husband killed herself, she was left processing the grief and loss. 
• Peter Camenzind by Hermann Hesse - a young man from the Swiss mountain village, leaves his home and goes to the city to experience new things. About relationships and life, mostly, perhaps about the love for nature as well. 
• 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak - Another favorite of mine by Elif. 

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Everything about books in my life:

• I started consuming books again right after I finished my miserable months with TBT. During those 2 months, I slowly read some physical books but didn't finish any of them. Now, I subscribed to Everand again (used to be known as Scribd) and been listening to audiobooks like before.
• I gave away all my Jodi Picoult's book collection to a random Ig follower, hoping for them to find a new home, a new reader that would appreciate the journey. My first Jodi's book was My Sister's Keeper, bought at Popular South City Plaza in 2008 right after SPM (I still remember the day). My last Jodi's book was A Spark of Light in 2019. I decided to stop reading her books after falling out of love with her writing style/genre. In my Jodi's collection, I got 2 books from Aja, 1 book from Ra, 1 from Uncle, 1 from Zm, 1 from Ay, and 1 from Tsy - all other books were bought by me.  
• I also collected all the comics from my dad's house (mostly collected by my siblings during our teenage years). There were around 4 shelves of books. We brought it to the recycling center and only received RM 7.70 for all 4 shelves of books. Which I found funny because the 4 shelves of comics = not even 1 new comic in the market.
• I decided to reduce more of my old book clutter, and then I managed to separate the books that I needed to send to the donation center in IOI or perhaps any library that would accept used fiction. Now what I have on my current bookshelves are books that I actually want to read, and reread, or the ones with sentimental values. I decided to only limit my books to 2 big bookshelves :F  
• During the cleanup, which took days and days of thorough inspection. I found several hundred ringgit and a LOT of trinkets that I used as my bookmarks. Huge amounts of bus tickets (metro & rapidKL), tissues from cafes or restaurants, money, name cards, notes, reminders, postcards, and yes, proper 'real' bookmarks. Just to tell you how much reading I did during waiting time - for the bus, for the train, for people, in general. A lot of waiting. 
• Now that the fasting month has ended, I will try to spend some days in the library, reading books. I found another new library that I would like to explore. 

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On Reading More HH's :

I read HH's first book - Peter Camenzind and I quite enjoyed it. My journey with HH is almost at the end - I have a digital copy of his last fiction on my Kindle, but not Gertrude (might need to do a little more digging). 

Herman Hesse's Books : 

•  1904 - Peter Camenzind ✓ 
•  1906 - Beneath the Wheel ✓ 
•  1910 - Gertrude 
•  1914 - Rosshalde ✓
•  1915 - Knulp ✓ 
•  1919 - Demian ✓ 
•  1922 - Siddhartha ✓ 
•  1927 - Steppenwolf ✓ 
•  1930 - Narcissus and Goldmund ✓ 
• 1932 - Journey to the East ✓ 
•  1943 - The Glass Bead Game

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Whisper of the Heart, 1995

Today I also finished watching this Ghibli anime. As a book lover, I was pleased when I found out that the hero and heroine are both intense readers, both spent a lot of time in the library and antique shop + she finally found her calling and decided to become a writer. 

Have a crush based on the name on book library cards? - That is so like a book nerd romance-fantasy. Thank you, Hayao for creating a nerdy character. 

♡︎