[Book Review] The Time Machine

The Time Machine. H.G. Wells. Signet Classics (2002). 118 pages.

This book was first published in 1895, but it could still give me fresh and interesting ideas. The story contained the time travelling concept, with the protagonist being identified as Time Traveller who has an incredible journey to over 800,000 years ahead by the machine he invents. There, he meets the evolutionary version of human beings, which not only do they have different body structure, but they also use different language and have different nature. Whatever the Time Traveller experiences in his journey both amazes and terrifies him.

The Time Machine is not a heavy-science fiction. There is not much introduction to the new technological concepts. However, what makes it so interesting is that the author also presented the ideas of socialism and eschatology. Unlike many science fictions which mostly show the development or the rise of technology that may affect human life in either positive or negative way, this book shows the downturn. The era to which the protagonist travels is in the point that everything, whether it be science or art term, has been plummeting. Moreover, in that era, the gap between upper class and working class is too wide that they seem to be impossible to converge again.

After reading this book, I felt like I want more from this author. His prediction is impressive. I've heard that some ideas he wrote in his books had later come true in reality. Even though some may not or maybe not yet happened, I still want to dig up his views even more, and I, therefore, will definitely read the other books of him. 

Below there're some ideas or quotes that I've found interesting:

“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers.”

“Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life -- the true civilizing process that makes life more and more secure -- had gone steadily on to a climax... And the harvest was what I saw.”

“So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs.”

[Book Review] The Diary of a Young Girl

The Diary of a Young Girl. Anne Frank (Edited by Otto Frank). Puffin Books (2003). Paperback. 432 pages. 

This book is so good! I wish I read it earlier. Anne Frank wrote it during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands after she had received a blank diary as her 13th-birthday present. The diary recorded two-year life (1942-1944) of a Jewish girl who lost her childhood to the war and Nazi Germany. Because of anti-Jewish legislation, the Franks went into hiding in the "Secret Annex" of an office building in Amsterdam, where Anne's father, Otto Frank, used to do business there. With the help of some Otto's non-Jewish colleagues, the Frank family and four other Jews were able to get food and other supplies.

In Anne's diary, it mentioned the life in the Secret Annex. She frequently wrote about a difficult relationship with her mother, while she considered herself being emotionally close to her father. The diary also showed how the girl's heart had been eaten up with desperation and fear. Every time when the gunfire went off, or when someone besides the helpers came to the office, the Jews would keep quiet and conceal their existence as hard as possible, praying to survive the next day while being frightened that their hiding would be exposed. Those moments was like hell; and for Anne, it seemed like forever. 

Despite living in the dark period, she still had hope and dreams. With her aptitude for reading and writing, she wished she would become a writer. She even wrote some stories while hiding in the Secret Annex. I think her insight about world and people was invaluable, and I could see her improvement in writing through her diary. She was the girl who shone in the darkness. If she was alive after the war, she must have become a good writer. We might have seen her various works from then on.

Here are my favorite Anne Frank's quotes: 

"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."

"Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands."

"I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains."

"People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but that doesn’t stop you from having your own opinion."

"Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again."

"As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?"

"Women should be respected as well! Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn't women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?...Women, who struggle and suffer pain to ensure the continuation of the human race, make much tougher and more courageous soldiers than all those big-mouthed freedom-fighting heroes put together!"

[Book Review] The Five People You Meet in Heaven

 

The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Mitch Albom. Time Warner Paperbacks (2005). 229 pages.

An old man, Eddie, who is working at the amusement park called Ruby Pier, dies in a tragic accident after trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. The story actually begins after the death of the old man on his eighty-third birthday. In afterlife, Eddie goes to heaven, but it neither the place of peace nor the place full of happiness. Instead, it is the place where he meets five people who connected to him when he was alive, who were also the reason why he lived 'til the old age. He's never expected that he would experience something like that in heaven. Anyway, each meeting with those people helps him understand his past and gives him a lesson about life.   

This book taught me about life and death, and how one's actions affect others. I really enjoyed when I was reading. It's like I was learning the lessons with Eddie. Mitch Albom's style of writing attracted me. After finished reading the story, what I had in mind was that I would definitely buy more books of this author.

My Favorite quotes from The Five People You Meet in Heaven:

“All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.”

“Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.”

“Each affects the other, and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.”

“Fairness," he said, 'does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young.”

“Holding anger is a poison...It eats you from inside...We think that by hating someone we hurt them...But hatred is a curved blade...and the harm we do to others...we also do to ourselves.”

“Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.”

“In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.”

[Book Review] Turtles All the Way Down

Turtles All The Way Down. John Green. 2017. 286 pages.

The story is about a sixteen-year-old girl, Aza Holmes, who has been suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety. It starts with a fugitive billionaire, Russell Pickett, who is the father of Aza's old friends, Davis Pickett, went missing. Due to the reward of $100,000 for information leading to Pickett's arrest, her friend, Daisy, takes Aza on the search for the missing billionaire. 

In the beginning, it seems like the story would go around the mystery of the missing billionaire. However, it actually focuses on Aza and her relationship with others, whereas the mystery part is taken so lightly. 

I felt a little bit disappointed when finding out that the main plot wasn't about the search for Russell Pickett, but I will admit that each character of this story was well-written, especially Aza Holmes. I liked the way John Green showed Aza's mental illness; it made me easily understand her. Other interesting characters were Davis Pickett and his younger bother as the missing of their father directly affected their feeling.

Speaking of the relationship in this story, the romantic relationship between Aza and Davis was nice, and I even loved the friendship between Aza and her best friend, Daisy. Their friendship is complicated as Daisy isn't fully understand Aza's suffering, while Aza doesn't quite understand Daisy's tough times without much money either. In spite of this, both of them still love and support each other.

My favorite quotes from Turtles All The Way Down:

“Life is a series of choices between wonders.”

“The problem with happy endings is that they're either not really happy, or not really endings, you know? In real life, some things get better and some things get worse. And then eventually you die.”

“The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely.”

“What I love about science is that as you learn, you don't really get answers. You just get better questions.”

“It's turtles all the way fucking down, Holmesy. You're trying to find the turtle at the bottom of the pile, but that's not how it works.”

[Book Review] A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens. HarperCollins (2013). 144 pages. 

It is such a heartwarming book. The plot is simple but so touching. The story is about a greedy, cold-hearted old man, Ebenezer Scrooge, who was a social outcast, and always refused to give others a hand. 

It began with the visit of a ghost, Scrooge's dead business partner. The ghost warned him that he would be haunted by three spirits of Christmas: Past, Present and Future. The spirit of Christmas Past showed Scrooge's memory how he gradually changed from a good-natured boy to that kind of man. It was 'time' that washed his kindness away and froze his heart into the block solid of ice. However, I could see his cold heart had slowly melted during the visit of three spirits.

This story made me think about when I was young, questioning myself if I have forgotten something important on the path of growing up. Along with this, it is beautifully written; it attracted me since the opening, bringing me to other Dickens' works.

This is one of my favorite character descriptions:

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas. 

[Book Haul] Big Bad Wolf 2017 on 11 - 27 August @Impact Muang Thong Thani, Bangkok

'I won't go to any book fairs until next year'

This had been in my thought before Big Bad Wolf being held.

Due to the fact that there has been a ton of book which I have not yet read in my house, I tried to avoid walking past the book stores or going to the book fairs. However, on Facebook, there was some of my friends posting pictures of book fair event called 'Big Bad Wolf', which had 60%- 80% discount. That when I couldn't wait any longer!!

On Aug 25, 2017, I finally went to this event. As soon as I entered the event's hall, a smell of books came to my nose. THAT WAS SO GOOD! I always love that smell. Various kinds of English books were there, many of which were fables and pop-up books for children.

I felt that there was not enough young adult fictions, besides that, some books were not in their genre's zone, but were placed in random instead, which was difficult for me to find them; yet, I had to tell myself not to hypnotically spend all of my money on that event.

This is the books I bought from Big Bad Wolf 2017

The collection book of Oscar Wilde's short stories (the last one in above picture) was the first one I bought that day though I used to read some of his stories, such as 'The Canterville Ghost' before. I really fascinate with his style of writing, so I couldn't let it go.

As for a set of 'Maze Runner', I had to spend more than an hour finding all books in this series since each was placed in random, but finally I got them.

'My Heart Is Like A Singing Bird' is such a beautiful title of this adult coloring book. It caught my eyes when I wandered around the art zone. It has a small size, and the pictures inside the book look cute and easy.  The most interesting thing of this book is there being some beautiful quotes in each page.  

I walked past the comic zone a hundred times, thinking if I would buy some superhero comics or not. Because of the high prices, I rarely buy graphic books. But it seemed like those books beckoned me to them. Their cheaper price made my heart sway, and I took them home with me at the end.  

After being back home, I found myself really want to go to this book fair again. It is great to find numerous interesting books with lower prices like that event.

I will look forward to Big Bad Wolf sales next year!!