I practically couldn't believe my eyes when I saw "The Perks of Being A Wallflower" lying there on the display table. Having read so many beautiful quotes extracted from it in tumblr posts, it felt like the perfect book for me. It seemed to me as if every line in the book was pretty much quotable.

I just had to grab it.

Then, my eyes widened too when I saw "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera nearby, on the same table. Fuck! These two books have been in my to-read list for quite some time now. The reaction I could muster to see them lying close by on one table was like... "Whoa." Cue grabby hands again.

I had came with the intention to purchase a particular book, cos I had a newspaper voucher with 25% discount for it. But when I realised that there was only the hardcover version of it in store, the price served as a discouragement to buy; cue dampening of mood.

So I was holding the book, still contemplating whether to buy it or not... while browsing through the shelves. Ruefully, I was faced with the reality once more that damn, books really aren't cheap here. Plus, it's kinda hard to justify buying a pretty thin one for a price higher than the average sized novel's. Yes, I judge a book also by its thickness wtf. The math simply is fewer pages = less material = lower price wtf. It's not really fair to thin books that are actually really good reads I admit, but one does not simply (Boromir meme, anyone? No?) ignore simple maths entrenched by the teachings of Asian parents wtf.

I came pretty close to walking out empty handed when finally, FINALLY I came across those two. In the end, I walked out with five books heh.

Money could buy happiness after all, if spent on the right things. It felt great to hug the paper bag containing my five new nicely wrapped books. Ah, the joy of new reads.

I guess what I'm trying to say after everything above is - deep down, I'm just a socially awkward, contemplative bookworm after all eh.

**

Reading and me, have had quite a relationship. I'm not really one to keep in touch, but when I have the time and initiative, I find myself falling in love all over again. It is a love that I would never want to part with.

Previously, I was reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude"and man, did it seem like one needed precisely one hundred years of solitude to finish it. It was not that it was badly written, in fact when one started to get into it, the beauty of the prose and meticulousness in which the characters were developed and described were hard to go unnoticed. But oh God, the names first of all were so confusing cos everyone pretty much had the same few names wtf, generations on. If it weren't for the family tree drawn on one of the pages in front, it would have been so easy to get frustrated and chuck the book aside.

Despite all the name confusion, and quite frankly disgust at the incestuous vein pulsing through the family... and wonderment as to how long it'll finally take me to finish the book, once I got through to the end, it was all fucking worth it. GGM managed to tie it all up so magnificently, it was just Wow. The last sentence just reverberated through the whole story, the whole family tree, the whole reading experience, and you realised there was no title more apt than the one craftily chosen.

That's just it. Reading can be such a marvelous experience... how can one not fall in love with it?