Letters From Home

Letters From Home by Kristina McMorris

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I can be such a book snob sometimes.

I don't know what's gotten into me, but before I picked up Letters From Home, there were thoughts forming in my head, which eventually stuck with me through the first pages of the book. Maybe it was instinct or just one of my mood swings.

But seriously though, I can't remember what happened in the first chapters. Unless I give my memory some time to settle down.

I remembered plowing through the words, fighting an upstream battle.
I also remembered sucking in deep breaths, closing my eyes and smiling, and crying my heart out, in all the right moments.

Liz's character was a bit pale for me, despite of how the novel kinda revolved around her. I expected more from her and, okay, the other characters too. What stood out in the novel was the war and how it changes lives, changes us in ways we don't even know we can, and how powerful a few words can affect us. It reminded me of I Had Seen Castles, but somewhat more hopeful than that.

Letters in those days was there life line, the parcel of hope they cling to when the world is falling away, when life is draining at their feet. It guided them back home.

Although I was not impressed with the letters Liz wrote - pales in comparison to the letters from Jojo Moyes' The Last Letter From Your Lover, or maybe the writers poured out their throes of passion in them, different from Liz & Morgan's letter.

Still, it was heartbreaking but beautifully crafted to reach just the right ending, for Liz, for Betty, for Julia, for Morgan and for Charlie.




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This feeling

Have you ever had this feeling when you realize one day you're wasting away sitting here, while the Earth revolves around the sun - minutes, hours, days, months go by - still nothing ever changed but a lot did in so many ways?

Have you ever had this overwhelming lust for the world around you? To watch the stars, the sunset, the waves? To hear your own voice and his weaving through the wind as you drive away? To feel weightless, to feel gravity? To taste his mouth, his skin and the flavors of the world?

Have you ever felt so carefree and unburdened that you lost the sense of it all?

Have you ever woken up to a day just like any other, and feel limited, caged, rooted, that you just want to shout from the top of your lungs until you're out of breath?

Have you ever just wanted to do something, anything, everything, but... you never took the first step?

Have you ever had this feeling in the pit of your stomach because you can’t find the answers, you’re not sure where you are, but somehow you know, one day, you’re gonna get there, wherever you’re supposed to be?

Guilty pleasure

Oh no. What have I done.

I looked down. At the pen and paper in my hands.

Yet another list of book titles drawled out in my lazy script. Dozens of titles and authors lined up in pieces of paper. No, nothing harmless about that.

Where are the other lists? Lost in my black hole of a bag, lost in the folds of my notebook, lost in the depths of my over-thinking mind.

It's a mannerism, a coping mechanism, above all, a guilty pleasure.

The OCD in me is itching to tick off one book after the other because... that's what lists are for! I cross out one, two if I'm lucky, but never did I follow through.

But my carefree spirit says otherwise and tells me to just give in to my bibliophilic instincts. Let it take over me and, without so much as a second glance, I will know which trove is destined for me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I feel like a hopeless case. All I have are endless titles and names rather than pulpy paperbacks. I'm swimming around in an ocean of lists.

Sometimes I think I'm more frustrated with the fact that I can't have all the books I want soon enough.

In the words of Matthew J. Bruccoli, scholar and F. Scott Fitzgerald biographer : "You don't buy books as an investment. You buy them because it gives you pleasure to read them, to touch them... to see them on shelves."

Is there anyone out there who feels the same way?

Before Ever After

Before Ever After by Samantha Sotto

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Eggs.

Whether its well done, sunny side up, creamy scrambled eggs, by the time I'm finished with this book, I was having egg withdrawals.

You guessed it. Before Ever After revolves around eggs which I think, for sometime, was pretty out of the box. That and the egg hunt tour around Europe.

But then, it's what gave the novel a unique charm. I've always been in love with Europe. The cobbled streets lit by the warm glow of lamps. The brick houses and the castles. The history and culture that resonates even now.

For someone who can only dream about going to Europe, I felt nostalgic. Samantha Sotto takes you through Europe's streets with lush and vivid prose, with unexpected twists and turns.

Though it dragged at first and there were many questions left unanswered, what really set Before Ever After above other novels is Sotto's unrivaled take on immortality.

She defied the laws of fiction writing by beginning the past at the end and weaving it with the unfolding present(whew!).

After I read this book, I had a different perspective on eggs, basilisks, and endings.

PS. I'm extremely proud for this beautiful Pinay and her ode to the Philippines!

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Separation anxiety

When I look at my book shelf, all I see is: SEPARATION ANXIETY. The missing titles among the row of books is that obvious I could actually see those two words.

It does feel good to share shove my books into my friends hands. For them to read it and like it is another thing to boost my bibliophilic ego.

But I do miss my books after a while and it worries me that they might never come back. I fervently hope not. That would break me.

My books are important to me. They each carry a piece of me - a memory, a place, a time, a person. They've been with me through a certain point in my life and I clung to them for my dear life.

Maybe one day I could let them go, set them free. Pieces of me in the hundred paperbacks, millions of words, out there in the universe.

Now they're selfishly mine. Living pieces of me scattered within a 300 mile-radius, maybe?