I am avoiding checking papers.



Book # 8: The Beach. It took me several weeks to finish this book, not because it’s boring. Far from it. If not for all the student papers that came in, I wouldn’t have dropped it. Whenever I could, I turned a few pages while quietly eating in a din filled fast food, on the train to and from school, late night at the bowling alley. After the last of the people at the bowling alley left, I had less than a hundred pages to go. I was still in that detached, emotion recollected in tranquility mood, so I hiked off to the Shang Starbux—how so distressingly burgis, I know, don’t kill me—but it’s really nice to just sit in a corner there and read. The moment I sank my tush in that couch, aaahhh...book heaven. There weren’t too many people. I sipped my tea, listened to jazz and reggae, and marathoned the doomed ending of this secluded Southeast Asian island Eden. The beach people surrounded Alex, ready to kill him when they learned the rafters got there because of the map he drew. The flower children in the commune are now murderers. They gleefully sank in their knives into the flesh, cutting off limbs, severing ears and playing with them. The horror, the horror indeed.

Sure, it’s about some young and listless white guy who had nothing else to do but search for “real” meaning and adventure, but there’s also an awareness that they are to blame. The frequent references to helicopters’ rotor blades kept throwing me back to Apocalypse Now, to M*A*S*H, and somehow I felt a bit happy that I slugged it through Heart of Darkness, kahit na constipated ang language ni Conrad, and just because I would have been lost in Neferti’s class if I didn’t.

And oh, I liked it that Alex Garland seemed to know what he was talking about, and that Richard’s most favorite destination was the Philippines. I’m only sorry that I read this just now, long after I’ve watched the Leonardo de Caprio and Virginie Ledoyen movie. Major change nga pala between book and film: In the book, Richard was British, and in the film he was American. Si Leo kasi. This was after Titanic. Tsika pa nga dapat si Ewan McGregor dapat ang gaganap na Richard, but since Leo was hot, the studio cast him at wala nang nagawa si Danny Boyle. Ngayon hindi na siya kinakausap ni Ewan. Pero sige okay na rin dahil si Danny Boyle naman ng Trainspotting at 28 Days Later ang director. Saka it has Virginie Ledoyen. Hehehe.

Book # 9: The Laramie Project. I also read it in little bursts. I started it last year pa yata, but I only got to finish it now. Partly because Tita Arlyn gloated that she got her copy for only forty bucks. Blech. It’s a play about how a theater group went to Laramie, Wyoming to investigate about the death of a young gay male college student, Matthew Shepard, who was beaten and left for dead on the outskirts of town. Parang documentary. Anyhow, interesting read, but took me awhile to plough through.

Btw, I got my copy of The Beach for 85 bucks in a Booksale bin, and it's survived a shower leak in the bathroom. Bad and stupid, I know. But it's still alive, and the cover is just like the one in Amazon. Also, went book prowling na rin kahapon since I was so restless and was becoming bitchy already, and I found Robert Olen's They Whisper for 95 bucks!