Christmas Vacation and my Christmas Books

piles of books (whew!)

Christmas break finally started last week. I was so thrilled because there seems to be lots of things to do in the Christmas break! For one thing, I miss watching anime because I was too busy finishing my end-of-the-year-papers. And I miss sleeping, waking up late in the morning, and having much time to smell and sip my morning coffee.

I’ve been reading a lot of books (at least, starting to read) lately. I’m doing routines stuffs every vacation breaks since I usually stay at home the whole day (I don’t like going out that much). So my normal day would be eating, sleeping, watching TV, reading, or chatting in the internet.

So back to the books, I’m reading –
Happy Endings by Luis Joaquin Katigbak. I just finished my required book review (in one of my major subjects) and I chose this book without hesitation because I like the book myself. That’s a plus – at least, I didn’t have a hard time doing my homework.
The Selected Poetry of Rainier Maria Rilke – I’m not really ‘scrutinizing’ the poems, I’m just reading 2-3 poems each day. If I understand it, good. If I don’t, then nothing happens. Probably in the future I’d be able to understand most of his poems (they’re difficult to understand, but there is something in the poems that you can feel, and I don’t know what’s this mysterious emotion). One of my favorite poems is the one with the first line, “World was in the face of the beloved.” That sentence says so much, it feels like it’s a whole story already.
The Great Divorce by CS Lewis. I love CS Lewis. I read his Narnia series and I came to like the author very much. When I stumbled upon this book in the library I thought this might be interesting, so I borrowed it.
An Anthology of Aesthetic Theory – I miss critical theories (honestly!) so I’m still reading a few art theories, theories of interpretation, treatise, etc. In intense moments of concentration, I find the readings really pleasurable (treatise that are not discussed in class, of course). I love Criticism class and I love theories. I don’t know why is this, but through studying it, it paved a way for a much wider perspective on looking at things. And critical theories in literature are not boring (at least, not all of them) entirely.

Lolita

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov – I just downloaded the ebook of this story, and well, when I first read the first few lines of the book, I was immediately hooked to the story. The translated version feels as if it’s pure poetry! It’s lovely to read it aloud, you can feel the words being chewed in your mouth, sort of, like ice cream.

Sigh. I wish I have lots of books to read. And I hope that I have lots of time to read them. Well, anyway, time has its own way to draw itself to us, and we, as humans, have to deal with them in anyway that we can. Happy Christmas everyone!