wow, two classics in a year! that’s quite a miracle considering how i’m not really much of a fan of the classics. both books reinforced that opinion. they bored me to death. but that, of course, is too bold a statement as i am still pretty much alive. i guess it’s the highfalutin words that get to me and renders my brain paralyzed from all the “what the f%ck does that mean?!” i had to go through but was too lazy to get off the bed to look it up in the dictionary. the will is strong but the body is weak.
and besides, i don’t have a dictionary. so most of the time i end up googling the meaning of words on my phone. and while i’m on it, maybe also find the meaning of life by watching a couple of ted talks or simply scrolling down watching everyone else’s lives on instagram that at the end of the session, i realize that not only do i have no life but i also do not have time anymore to continue reading because i’d much rather curl up in bed and sleep. by then i had already forgotten the alien word and what it means.
and i wonder why my vocabulary is that of a sixth grader.
but i don’t need a lot of big words to say that anne of green gables was a very annoying character, do i? not mincing any words, i found her annoying and demanding for somebody who was given a better shot at life even if she wasn’t meant to be there in the first place. sure, she redeemed herself in the end which made me hate her a bit less, but still.
i don’t know. i think a lot of my opinion had to do with all my preconceived notions about the book. for some reason, i was under the impression that it was a psycho thriller so the whole time i held my breath in suspense as to when she would kill her adoptive parents off like that girl in ‘the orphan.’ (good movie, by the way.) but nope, turns out she wasn’t homicidal. just bratty.
if i held my breath any longer, the only fatality would’ve been me.
as for ‘wind in the willows,’ i found the sad, quiet story behind the story more captivating than the (mis)adventures of toad, who, after a while, was starting to annoy me too. apparently, the book was inspired by the stories that kenneth grahame, the author, made up for his frail son who was blind in one eye to entertain him when he was a kid.
long story short, that little boy grew up and laid himself down on the railway track to end his misery at the age of 19 because he couldn’t cope with his father’s unrealistic academic expectations considering his visual disability. something like that. (but the way i see it, as emotionally distant as he might have been to his son, i’m pretty sure he loved him in his own way. the academic institutions f%cked him up too in more ways than one, putting all that pressure on him to pass written examinations he can barely see.)
if you’re a fan of the book and you wanna know more, here’s the link that would definitely provide you with more insight than i can because as always, i suck at explaining things and my memory is shot.
of the lot, my ultimate favorite would have to be ‘one hundred days of happiness‘ because it’s a sad story that’s funnily written where the characters celebrate life and all its dramas in the most unassuming way. that book left me crying in the end, i kid you not. big, ugly tears. if this book doesn’t move you, i don’t know what will.
