Achieving Happiness

The only drawback there is to this life and this lifestyle is that I cannot buy the books I want when I want them.

Am so eager for Christmas to come because I’m looking forward to hoard I’m expecting. Mostly I get journals and fountain pens and writing paper and books for Christmas, and that’s just about perfect for me. But to make sure that the books I get are the books I want, well, I’m not above hinting.

BROAD hinting.

Because there’s nothing worse than getting a new copy of a book you already have. A book the gifter brought for P700 when the giftee already has a copy she brought at Booksale for P60.

In any case, I don’t have any of the two books written by this whiz kid Jonathan Safran Foer. I’ve read so many reviews, and I’ve read at least a chapter of both of his books (picture me looking forlorn and bereft at Fully Booked, wishing I had the money to fork out. But then again, even if I had the money, I wouldn’t use it to buy the books. Too expensive.) Hint hint hint.

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Two of my favorite authors Douglas Coupland and Alain de Botton write about life as they view it from their respective positions in the world: upper middle class, educated, artistic and far removed from the realities confronted by most people. They write, they analyze how people cope with emotion — the impact of external factors on the internal life processes. But the factors are hardly ever political or economic. Mostly they skim over the surface of socio-economic considerations, the actual physical, concrete contexts of their imagined, constructed mileau.

It’s endlessly amazing to me how so many worlds can exist in literature, and the way one views is the world is often reflected in the kind of books one likes reading.

What does this say about the reader?

Speaking (or rather, writing) for myself, I am a reader who seeks not really to learn about the world, but to help me understand myself and how I deal with the world. And with people I have to deal with on a more or less personal basis. It’s a very self-aware kind of process with me, picking the books I read;the way I ruminate and reflect on their contents and messages;  and the way I react to them.

I even have this habit (often unforgivable. I hate this about myself, but I can’t seem to help it) of figuring out people from the books they read. Of course this doesn’t apply to say, the farmers, workers and urban/rural poor people I meet and work with/for. This applies to, well, people with whom I more or less share the same economic and social background.

Some people have tendencies of gauging others by looking at the shoes or clothes they wear, or the music they listen to.(Ok, so maybe I also try to figure out people by the music they like. But that’s a different blog altogether, and it’s a trickier classifier.)

I tend to weigh people by the books they read. It’s not like I’m judging their values or anything — it’s, well, it’s my way of finding out whether or not I can be friends with them and be comfortable enough with them.

I often guess at what’s normal. It takes so much effort for me to make friends and to keep them. Hay. This is why I like books — it’s like having friends I don’t have to see or talk to, but I care deeply about the characters and what happens to them.

Sheesh. How’s that for being a loser? When I first read Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary I got a little upset reading the part where Bridget flinches at Mark Darcy’s conversation opener: "Read any good books lately?"

That’s a perfectly good starter to a conversation, I thought. Sheesh.

(At this point I would like to defend Helen Fielding and say that her first book Cause Celeb is infinitely a worthier book than the last three she’s written. Cause Celeb didn’t make much money, I guess, so that’s why Ms.Fielding wrote more popular books such. Cause Celeb is well-written and its narrator is an intelligent version of the quintessential Singleton Bridget. It’s about a British relief worker in Africa. It’s funny and enagaging, and it’s also, well, somewhat political. At least it makes very pointed (although not preachy) observations about how life is for the rich and famous, and how demented their priorities are when seen in the context of how so many things are wrong in the world like the existence of widespread hunger, disease and governments imposing vurulently anti-people policies that push people to launch civil war.)

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I am so looking forward to seeing and maybe talking to Arundhati Roy in December!!!

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These days I’m coming to terms with the truth that I really am not a people- person. It’s sad; but what can I do? I do not have very good social skills. I never did. I sometimes wish I were less…awkward around people. I can chatter like a magpie on certain things, but for the most part I’m like Susan the Silent in  Finian’s Rainbow (or one of those characters in Finnegan’s Wake ni James Joyce. Unreadable.)

I can be gregarious and communicative on paper, though. (although to the few friends I have, I suppose I’m not exactly a dry stick or a lump of clay. I’ve had a two- hour conversation with Walkie about Harry Potter as if Harry were a real person. I’m not, however, a regular ray of sunshine and  there will never be anyone who will say that their first impression of me is that I’m friendly.)

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Crap,this blog is already starting to read like my journal. But then again, nobody reads this so who cares?

Fornit Some Fornus.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 22nd, 2005 at 6:48 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.