Creative Writing Assignment #2: Your Favorite Book

To ask me to name a favorite book is a demanding thing to do. It's almost as hard as picking a favorite shade of your favorite color. And to tell people about it? I don't think anyone's got enough time to listen to what I have to say about my favorite books. So for this assignment, I decided to put together a string of quotes from some of my favorite books to create a story.

For You, A Thousand Times Over

She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a cork board like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.

“Oh, the cleverness of me!” she said. “I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one.  And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane. She was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.

In my mind I could hear her say, “Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”

As she read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once. 

And in that moment, I swear I was infinite.

I hope it made as much sense to you as it did for me. After all, creating a cohesive story out of a bunch of unrelated lines isn't exactly a walk in the park. For those who are curious and unfamiliar to the quotes, I've linked each one to the book's Goodreads page. For those who recognize them, I salute you for having an excellent memory and exquisite taste in books. ;)

The Best Kind

Watching a pixie-haired Dakota Fanning slowly die of leukemia in Now Is Good, I realized how I'm inclined to like books and movies that feature hopeless romances, dysfunctional lovers, and death. For some weird reason, I find beauty in pain and lacrimation. I've watched Celine and Jesse spend a perfect day together, knowing they will have to part in the end. I've read about A and Rhiannon's painfully unconventional love story that does not end as planned. And to be perfectly honest, the only books by John Green that I've truly enjoyed are the ones where one of the protagonists die. I don't know what to make of this realization, but I bet there's more to it than just my sick obsession for emotional turmoil.

After giving it some thought, I've come to conclude that my affinity for their unfortunate circumstance might be due to the fact that they feel more "real" than others. As Augustus Waters would put it, life is not a wish-granting factory. In real life, nobody has it easy, and everyone ends up dead. This explains why even as much as I love fairy tales, I find some books and movies with happy endings to be off-putting. When the pretty white girl conveniently gets her way and lives happily ever after with the unbelievably hot guy, I find myself rolling my eyes. I prefer watching a perfect match not end up with each other, or a clever young girl fall for an emotionally disturbed fella. Something about their hopelessness is just so beautiful. I don't know what that says about me, but I do think that the best stories are the ones that hurt. The ones that cause you pain because you know there was something so beautiful that didn't last—not because they didn't want to, but because it just wasn't meant to.

“My dear," Rose said, "you might be surprised at how much happiness you can find in the pages of the shortest love stories."

- Before Ever After, Samantha Sotto

There Is Something Strange In Your Neighborhood

Have you read a good book lately? I have. And if you have the time, let me tell you all about it.

Just recently, I read a book called Kapitan Sino by the witty and remarkably humorous Filipino writer, Bob Ong. It's a little different from the others he wrote as it is not semi-biographical, but his charming wit and humor are still very much present in the said book.

Like Macarthur, his other novel-ish type book, it's still sort of a comic tragedy but it's not half as depressing. It tells the story of a Pinoy superhero and his struggles in life, but presented in a way that's closer to reality than most of the superhero comics or novels. It showed a superhero that's flawed and, in spite of having superpowers, very human. It also paints a very clear picture of the kind of society we're in.

I'm not very good at summarizing things, so I suggest you read for yourself. I won't say it's a great book because the plot is not really something new (and it might also cause you to raise your expectations), but it's a really good read. It's entertaining as it is very funny. Also, it has the Bob Ong trademark. You learn a good lesson after all the funny anecdotes without spending more than Php 200.

If you're looking for something to read to pass the time, I suggest you read Kapitan Sino.

Whoa. I think I just wrote my first book review.