Aicha Amano

In my quest to 'broaden my literary horizon' I made a point to go out of this  terrible 'complaisant zone' I am currently  at. To be honest, my reading state is probably a lot bleaker that what I'm letting on: I have not finished a novel since three months ago! As penitensya for my incessant lack of drive and, I suppose, to jolt my brain back to the pace it used to enjoy prior to this reading drought, I decided that I must go the route of reading 'Difficult Books'. "A difficult book is still just a book",  I told myself; how silly to get hung up on what other people say about how much of a PitA   it is to slough through. I pride myself on reading basically everything I get my hands on. Because when all your life you've felt that reading a book was the warmest , most comfortable state to just be , it feels as natural as a breeze turning a page. So I grabbed a copy of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury . I am lucky enough to be at ...

Ever get that blurred vision during a hazy, warm summer's day, when the air is thick with humidity then all you can see is the clear sky with no trace of clouds, and the road is a strip of hot air forming a translucent mirage, and for some strange reason, the sun keeps on getting in your eye and you just can't think straight? That's what I felt when I read The Stranger by Albert Camus . Even during at night when fluorescent lights are lit up for everything they're worth, my eyes still squint from overexposure from a scorching sun and mirage from the asphalt roads; the same way when the bright noonday sun slashes from between the rustling leaves of tall trees. I've heard of Albert Camus before, as he is big in the Philosopher's circles and his works have so far branched out into the Literary pools that one can't help but at least hear of his name. The one thing that I am always curious about is Philosophy, but I can never keep up with this or that schoo...

For 227 days with little to no food, a 16-year-old boy from India shared a small boat with a hungry Bengal tiger... Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel from Pondicherry, India grew up with beautiful and exotic animals from his father's zoo. His familiarity with the animals has led him to love and revere these wild animals, observing their behavior and studying their way of living and adapting despite their captivity. Because of the sudden political instability, the Patel family found that it will not be able to continue the expensive upkeep of the zoo. The father decided to sell the zoo and its animals, start anew and try his luck across the ocean. Pi and the rest of the family were eager to be able to journey to Canada, to where another zoo has purchased a variety of their best animals. But in the middle of crossing the great ocean the ship sank and the only human survivor was Pi. In a small lifeboat Pi cowered with fear, anxiety, hunger and all the chaotic jumble of thoughts in...