Song of the Week and Other Things

Doesn’t feel like a week has flown past; my unexpected holiday at home got over on a bad note and when I left home on Monday morning, I was sour. I couldn’t feel the happiness I have grown so dangerously used to off late, and that scared me.

But yes, holidays put me in perspective. I’m once again out of my ‘I-really-do-care-about-you-so-please-just-stop-fighting-coz-I-don’t-care-who-is-wrong’ phase (for now). I’m just going to have to be a little easy on myself. Admittedly, I feel horrible if somebody is upset because of me (even if they are being stupid or they’re the ones who’re wrong). I can’t, for the life of me, understand what made me this way. It puzzles me. I can’t help wonder about it. I can’t help wishing I didn’t get so confused between boundaries of right and wrong. I act like somebody bruised. And I have had my share of bruises for a nineteen year old, sure, but I need to start developing some overview. And so this is the new old me, back again for the moment.

I’m currently reading The Girl Who Played with Fire. Stieg Larsson’s book one had been an enjoyable experience though I didn’t like Lisbeth much. Now I do. She has her own sense of justice; she was brought up in a world that was very wrong and she is a rather unusual heroine but she appeals to me. I’ve read 83 pages, which have so far mostly covered Lisbeth’s Caribbean island adventure (which made me interested enough to read up about Matilda hitting Grenada in 2004). And the other hero of the book…Mikael Blomkvist is also rather unusual. He enjoys multiple affairs with casual women and maintains a long term relationship with his married friend and colleague. A rather interesting light to portray your leads in, was one of my first thoughts when I started reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in the summer. But then I got really engrossed in the ‘murder’ story in that book. It also had rather strongly sexual undertones; things I haven’t read in bestseller print before. That surprised and amused me. I wish Stieg Larsson could’ve written more fiction before he died.

Also on my list of books to read is The Girl Who Stirred the Hornet’s Nest (the final book in this series), The Tale of Two Cities (long overdue) and Miep Gies’s account of World War One and Anne Frank and her family’s hiding years during the Nazi era (a thin book with a few new Anne pictures that I hadn’t seen before, one of which shows her seated on a reclining chair with a sunhat and the prettiest smile in the world!—look below)