The Housekeeper and the Professor

"My memory lasts only eighty minutes"

What if every morning you wake up and find this thought clipped on your clothes? How would you accept it or react on this fact? This is the question that the Housekeeper cannot even imagine answering. This is also where the story of this novel revolves. As part of the "Japanese Invasion" in my bookshelf, I got myself a copy of The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa despite of it costing more than Php 600 for only 180 pages of readings. Now, before I take you to a deeper look of the novel, please give me the pleasure of gushing about the novel's cover. According to the World Wide Web, the copy that I have is the 2009 edition. And I cannot help but admire the cover of this novel because it is sooo dreamy. I simply love it! It exudes an intense emotion, a little melancholic perhaps, touching, and also calming. It was just perfect for the story that it will eventually reveal.

The first two pages took my breath away. I loved how Ogawa wrote it; she made me feel like I am personally with the Professor and the Housekeeper, listening to the Professor's "lecture". The succeeding few pages made me laughed and it is because how Ogawa drops the lines. She has a lot of humor going on and she delivers it perfectly. Generally, Yoko Ogawa has managed to provoke each of my emotions through out this whole novel. I laughed, felt sad, confused, sympathetic, irritated, helpless, touched, informed, learned, regretful, and again, sad. Although the ending was quite sad, Ogawa skipped the melodrama (Japanese  people strike me as non-melodramatics), but was able to convey the sadness effectively. Whenever I thought I would cry, Ogawa's words would uplift me as if calming me down. It is as if she is assuring me that everything will be alright. That everything is part of life, which it really is and that makes this novel very real. It also amazes me that this novel has so many baseball facts that I cannot help but wonder if Ogawa really is a baseball fan. Based also to the extensive discussions about Mathematics, I wonder if she is also a Mathematician or she got her ideas from a Mathematician (she co-wrote another story with one). And for these two "lectures", she has impressed me.

As Ogawa has made me feel like I am a part of the everyday living of the characters, I find the Professor a comfort to me too. So when he was to live somewhere else, I got sad also. I find the Professor very loving, lovable, and at times funny. I was also pitiful of him that there are times that I just want to pull him out of the eighty-minute frame so that he can live a normal life. Root on the other hand has portrayed a certain level of maturity for a child of 10. He has been mature about and towards the Professor. As for the real relationship of the Professor to his sister-in-law, as much as I want to know more about it, I appreciated that Ogawa did not dwell much more about this. It gave the story another level of reality.

I love how Yoko Ogawa wrote this novel. Although there are times that I am about to feel bored (baseball stuff and the Math), Ogawa, or rather the Professor always comes to my rescue. I finished the novel in less than 24 hours and although it is just 180 pages, do not also forget that it includes Math and baseball discussions. These are two things that I would not bother to read for mere pleasure except of course if the Professor is a part of these.

Safe Haven

❝if you love someone set him free; if he comes back he is yours, if not you were not meant to be❞

If you have ever been in love, then I trust that you have already heard this saying. I, myself had used this a lot of times before and I think this is the best summary for the latest Nicholas Sparks novel.

I have been putting this novel on hold, even avoiding buying this for the longest time but when my favorite bookstore put the trade paperback version on sale, I just could not resist. Nicholas Sparks is one of my favorite author and I find his novels, at least those that I have read to be tear-jerkers in a good way. But  after reading a brief summary of Safe Haven, in one way or the other I somehow find this latest offering of his to be non-par with those previous novels he wrote.

Anyway, when I opened the novel to its first chapter, I was expecting to cry buckets of tears through my reading just like how almost all of his novels that I read made me. I was half-afraid that my hunch might be right about this novel and yet I am excited and intrigued of what Sparks has to offer me this time. I was worried that the "Sparks' magic touch" will not move me anymore. Well, when I started reading the first few pages of the novel, I was slowly yet surely being hooked. I find Katie sweet, and yet intriguing. And just like Jo, when I did not know about Kevin yet, I was afraid that she will suddenly betray and hurt Alex and the kids. When I got to the part of the novel where it introduced Kevin and his deeds, I cannot help but think of Enough. Enough is a movie starred by J. Lo, and Katie or rather Erin's story is similar to J. Lo's character's story.

All along, more than half way in the novel, when I realized that I haven't shed a single tear yet, I thought that I won't cry this time. That Nicholas Sparks has lost his magic on me. But as I read on to the living with Kevin part, especially to what he had done to the perfume ad in the magazine, I finally cried. Then as the story ends, though I did not cry buckets of tears, I felt it tug at my heart. I was touched by the power of love, love proving that it is the most powerful of all. That a person who loves truly will do everything in her power and even beyond it to take care of her loved one. My heart also goes out to the friendship that has formed only to end the way it did. But for the most part, Safe Haven proved to me that if you really love someone, you will do everything to make him happy even if it meant letting him love and be loved by someone else.

Book Shopping Galore

Yesterday was a feast day for me, well, for my soul at least. My friend and I went to MOA and I had a blast visiting bookstores. Well, Powerbooks in MOA is going to close down because apparently SM did not renew their contract so they are having a clearance sale from June 1 to 15. I ended up with three purchases: The Reader's Digest June issue that comes bundled with the January issue, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was sad that Powerbooks MOA is already closing its doors because it is the biggest branch that is near to me. Hopefully Powerbooks in Robinson's Midtown will not have the same faith or else I would have a very hard time keeping up with my readings. Books really are the food for my soul. 

There is one book that I have been lusting about and I did not find it in Powerbooks. It is by another Japanese author, a female Japanese author, Yoko Ogawa. The Housekeeper and the Professor has been receiving good reviews (from the book bloggers that I am following, at least), and I want to experience her as well. The summaries the bloggers have written are enough to make me salivate over this because I think it has a very interesting plot. Thus the trek over the other border to Fully Booked. I already know that they have a copy, a lone copy at that, because I have already inquired about the book before but found that they only have trade paperback (read: expensive) so I was not ecstatic to march to their store at that time. When I inquired about the book, the attendant hand over to me the lone copy a few minutes later. My spirit was lifted when I held the book. But when I turned it over to check for damages, I found the cut at the side of the book unflattering. The kind which makes an impression that it is a rejected copy because of the rugged cut. After inquiring, I found out that there really is a cut as such and that it is something done deliberately and not as what I thought. After the explanation, I went over to pay for it with my eyes shut but was delighted when the cashier told me that there is a 20% discount for all book purchases. 

I also saw those cute little post-it notes that I can use as bookmarking as I am not one of those who writes on books. I like my books clean and serene. Notice those butterflies at the tip of each post-it notes? They are not cartoon-ish in any way that is why I love them, especially for the price tag of Php 75.00 I think it was a good deal. Those cute animals riding a red bus were bought from FUNctional for Php 65.00 and those are.. not stickers.. they are bookmarks, in fact. They look so cute and tiny and I love that they do their jobs well. Notice one missing? Its because I am already using it and loving how it can hoist itself on a book page even though it is teeny tiny. So there you are, my Saturday book shopping spree.

Home Sweet Home

I have been blogging about books in my other blog and it's when I begun to dwell in book blogs that I finally decided to create my own. Thus, shielareads was born. If you will notice, pictures from posts before this were marked with my other blog's name, which is shielathot. I imported these entries from that blog and I find changing these with the new blog address is much more complicated so I just let it be.

Since I have always been a book lover, I have already read many books but I do not suppose I can still remember each and every one thus I cannot anymore blog about those. In some cases, I shall blog about a few books I have read before and try with all my might to give you a good review.

So, here's to hoping for a good future for this book blog of mine...Enjoy!