On "Starter for Ten"

Starter for Ten by David Nicholls
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are a lot of reasons for me not to give this book a five. Yet in the end, it's the overwhelming weight of empathy that I have for most of its characters that prevailed.

It's incredible really, how important this book seems to me now, what with turning 19, and going to university, and trying to move forward from a point in your life while trying to compensate for old friends who assume that you're deliberately forgetting them, when you're not.

I agree with most reviews that while Brian is the awkward nerd, to which most of us would wish to relate, it is kind of difficult to root for him. But then I think that that's the point of his character. Evidently, he believes himself to be a self-deprecating prick, and at some point he had wanted to run away from that. But in trying to get ahead, he ends up making the wrong choices, and ultimately fails himself (and everybody else around him).

It's actually kind of sad what happens to Brian in the end. The last paragraph sent me goosebumps, especially when I realized that if I read the book over again, the entire story is only Brian's thoughts cycling around this period of his life - reliving it, as if his whole life stopped there.

Cheesy as it may sound, I could almost believe that there's an actual Brian Jackson in some corner of the world. Perhaps he's still confused or has yet to really get over the simple tragedies of life. Now I don't like Brian, but out of all the characters, it's him with whom I empathize the most. Every other element could only fall so perfectly into place. I think that's what got to me.

On "Looking for Alaska"

Looking for Alaska by John Green
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Alaska asks, how will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering? I like the Colonel's answer best: We don't. We take the labyrinth. The labyrinth blows, but we'll take it. Not to create a home at the back of it, but to indulge in it.

Alaska had an answer herself: straight and fast. Yet, she never considered - not to be alone, but with the people we care about, even the one that have passed on and whom we occasionally forget. In that retrospect, we find what's at the other end of the labyrinth, the unknown that awaits us through the end of our lives.

After all this, we might not even be anywhere. Or, I don't know - we could even be anywhere. We are never sure, only that we'd like to believe in all these things because we want to have something to hold on to. People will forget us soon enough. But we will forgive them because we are here now and our memories about this life will serve us right.

I like how Pudge brought up the thing about energies. How we are a greater part of the sum of our known parts. How that bigger part is invincible, never created nor destroyed. It just transfers from one place to another, manifesting into different forms. We are all energies. We are something that the religious doctrines would never resort to. We will be recycled, transformed. But we will live on because like tables, this world will always have another side. We don't know where exactly or how particularly, but we know about it. All that's left to do, like Pudge, is to hope that it will be very beautiful out there.

So when the labyrinth of suffering ceases to exist for us, or when we finish the maze, we will be prepared. We will be forgotten but we will forgive. And we will be big. And we will never be afraid of how we screwed up, or how bad it will get - because everything has to be that way after all. It will blow, this labyrinth. But, at least we will walk into it hand-in-hand and never by ourselves. We will never leave grief or guilt on the people we know and love. That's how we end the Great Perhaps. Otherwise, it wouldn't work. Like how the greatest prank in the world wouldn't work without allies - the very ones who have the blueprint and calculations memorized, breathing your exhalations, being one with your body.

Maybe, after then, there will be so much more to look forward to. Maybe an even Greater Perhaps, with ourselves in the form of our energies, taking infinity to discover it. That's a most beautiful thing that I'd like to hold on to.