stress buster

since July came, i have been able to finish these:

i have realized that the speed with which i've read these books is directly proportional to the degree of stress in my workplace. i could not recall having read as much books in the past months than in the month of July.

of these 5 books, "The People of Paper" by Salvador Plascencia proved to be avant garde, consisting of a plot entirely new and foreign to me, because the characters in the book waged a war against the fate chosen for them by the author but they ended up defeated, of course.

"London Fields" by Martin Amis is in a way, a fresh way of story telling considering that the author is laying several planes of existence in that, there is a writer in the novel who wrote a book about a murder. it isn't as simple as that though, because the characters of the book within the book are not fictional.

"The Loss of Leon Meed" by Josh Emmons is reminiscent of the guy in "The Time Traveller's Wife" because Leon Meed also disappeared and appeared randomly in a small-town in California. it was quite engaging at first, but the ending just sucked. oh well, i prefer grand and dramatic endings. this one ended with Leon's bouts of appearance and disappearance unexplained and that ten years later, he was found dead in his cabin. it still was a good read.

"The View from Saturday" is a children's book which is not to say that it is intended only for kids. i'd like to think that there is so much to learn from the kids, even though they have the diadvantage of age if wisdom is to be premised on that. it was such a light read, literally and mentally but not emotionally.

"On Beauty" by Zadie Smith is another book i can tick off from the list of books one should read before one dies. if there is any topic worth writing and reaqding about, it's on families. the complexities, realities and idiosyncracies of such an arrangement were all beautifully depicted in this novel. i had a good laugh over the many similarities of families which cut across cultures.

currently, i am reading:

"All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well" by Tod Wodicka which is about a widowed history teacher who, in order to escape his present, tried to live in the past, as in the Medieval Ages, with the tunic outfit and sandals worn in those times.