August 26, 2011

Breaking of words

Facebook is good. It's entertaining, it's informative (though sometimes I get info diarrhoea from it), packed with both exciting and dull updates of my 136 friends (I screen who gets access to my fb) and it lets me show off some of my photos from time to time (I'm under the illusion that my 136 friends care to view them).

Facebook is of absolute no value when it comes to making a connection with what is lying inside oneself. This is when books come in. I mean, real books. Like, you know, the kind printed on yellowish paper, with gluey binding and a front and back cover. The kind you can spend hours in bookstores to browse, leafing page-by-page, and not the kind you get from some IT gadget store or some convenient quick apps downloaded on a gadget.

I am reading Great House, by Nicole Krauss now. Her previous works have more than converted me to be her fan, particularly The History of Love (which I must haunt Eugene to return me).

It continues to amaze me that simple words, when crafted well into sentences and assembled well into paragraphs, can totally absorb my consciousness, bring it into another surreal realm where I feel acknowledged and understood, then land me softly back into my physical setting, feeling purged and relieved of the emotional confusion I had just before reading.

It's happened before, in one of my lowest points in life. That time, I read the most number of books ever in a period of a year. All good books. All took my mind away from the pain, confusion and void that surrounded me then, and returned it to a state of clarity and relief (even if it was temporary). It was more than what anyone could have done for me, and definitely more purgative than any self-help book. That was also the time I decided that good fiction has a much stronger curative power than bestselling self-help books.

Just the comfort of knowing that I have a copy of a few of those books is assuring. It's like having best friends on the shelf, quietly and patiently waiting to comfort you because they know they can. That, Facebook can hardly come close.

Quiet moments, me and my book. The mental getaway.

If you are nodding in agreement with what you have been reading, I hope you are reading a good book now. MPH warehouse sales this weekend at Expo. Go stash some.

Posted by 杏 cy （Jancy） at 11:24