At the beginning of 2015, I promised myself I read more.The reason is this: reading restrains me from merely being in a rush. When I read, I take my time even if it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m at the time period that the present was. I have been blaming the technology and social media for the short attention span that I have developed. I grew weary that my ability to read may become a skill that will obsolete if I don’t persist. Books kept being appealing, but it was harder to pursue.
As December approached, I counted the pile of books I read, and felt quite content with how I did. I came back to the weird connection that I used to have: realities through the realm of fictions.
The amount of books I read was far from being impressive, but I found back the thrill. These are the top of my twenty-fifteen’s reading list.
Anansi Boys
Neil Gaiman had been my hero since a couple years back. I wish I had his brain and eloquence to make fantasies real. Anansi Boys is a prequel of American Gods. American Gods was my first Gaiman book and hooked me like I have never felt in a long time. I wanted to read all of his books whenever possible, which was why the Anansi Boys was my first choice of 2015.
As a prequel of the American Gods, I had my expectations to the story. Gaiman kept the world of gods alive, but to be honest, the American Gods was hard to beat. Anansi felt indeed like a portion of a greater sum, a pleasant complementary for the world that (for me) is still Wednesday and Shadow’s.
Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore
This one was an obvious option. Every one seemed to be reading it at the beginning of the year, and the title sounded appropriate for me to read as I was in my early days of connecting Seumpama, the bookstore initiative that eventually came together by the end of the year.
A story about a bookstore that opens 24 hours a day. That initial premise itself will attract most book buyers today. To top it all it contextualise the juxtaposing traditional history and digital future of books, the codings that had actually taken place in the two different world, making the analog and computerised even more similar as it grew constantly further apart.
The Complete Winnie-the-Pooh
A classic, because whenever I need the naive bear’s philosophy to lead my ways of life, I would open this book. I needed to read this because it’s Winnie, and Piglet and Eeyore; and Owl and jumpy Tigger; and tense Kanga and gullible Roo, oh and Rabbitt – I always mentally ‘skipped’ him, he’s my least favourite – they have always been relevant for my life, and for the inner-child that has the loudest voice in my head. It’s a repeating read, because Piglet’s wisdom goes beyond his tiny little paws, and Pooh’s perspectives give you reasons to feel love in the wittiest way, and that Eeyore’s sulkiness is ever so relevant, but even he finds love in the hopeless place.
The Satanic Verses
Talk to me about this book, and you’d find the hyperbole version of me. This book has made it to my top ten recommended books of all times. Why? Well, because it took me five years and three attempts to go through Rushdie’s layered complex mind, so in that sense I will be talking about it for a while.
It was a challenging book for me, hence the multiple attempts. Despite the controversies that remains due to the theme the lay settings to the story, Rushdie was not being mindful to wreck minds apart with his writing. His self-made terms were abrupt yet comprehensible, the hopping of period and settings, the coming together pieces that he abruptly tore apart within the next segment of the paragraph you just ended, it deconstructed everything that I have understood from writings. I often think that he may be under substance when he wrote this, because how else would you tell a story that started with two men floating in air over the English Channel singing songs of the torn heaven.
Cantik itu Luka & Lelaki Harimau
One of my biggest weaknesses as a reader is that I don’t do a lot of readings from Indonesian writers. I have been searching for reasons why I struggle with reading words from the language that is actually my first. I think a lot of it has to do with the lack of understanding of the context of the materials that were available when I develop my literature foundations. Growing up Chinese – and quite homogeneously- I spent the first fifteen years of my life standing in a distance understanding Indonesians only from the perspective of my Chinese-Indonesian family, and being the submissive daughter that I was, I tried to avoid reading materials that arouse controversies, while apparently the good-writers were the ones who did cause controversies. I lost a lot of literature references simply because of that. As I grew older, I just grew out of it, I didn’t really find any curiosity in the names and so I continued to read mostly in English. In the past decade, the only Indonesian book I read was those of the Supernova series from Dewi Lestari.
Eka Kurniawan caught my attention because I was preparing myself to the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival and he was highlighted. I had heard about him before but was not really caught to the conversation. I knew it was something about an Indonesian author getting his books translated into English and got excellent reviews. He started to be compared to Pramoedya, although I feel the two of them write in a completely different way. Both in Cantik itu Luka (Beauty is Wound) and Lelaki Harimau (Tiger Man), I feel that Mas Eka is what happens when you put a portion of Pram with Gaiman: an Indonesian (specifically Javanese) nomenclature and narrative meeting with the homey feeling of a wild yet plausible fantasy.
Ready Player One
And this to close the year. It was a pleasant reading and was the fastest to finish. It was also the scariest one for its closeness to the dystopic society that I may live to see. Cline’s references to games and pop culture of the eighties were so impressive, I felt that the stories he was telling may just be the next 1984. It may not have the philosophical depth that Orwell offered, but with the age that we live today, it seems that the depth may cause irrelevancies – or perhaps just seem pretentious because in a short future what matters would merely be our avatars and the values of our avatars.
–
I managed to read more books, but these shortlisted were really the ones that made the year meant literately, fore me. I started reading with a different approach because having to work on a book myself, albeit a children illustrated one, I needed to develop a voice and ability to tell a story that flows. I noticed how each writers generate their plot generation, looking into each author’s complexities or mere simplicities that would become their strength, their choice of words that pushes imagination into envisioned fantasy, their ability to make me speak the language of their characters and believe that the truth was in every dot, to feel glad and sad at the same time when each story ended yet felt utterly content, feeling like every end as a new beginning, even in stories that were concluded with an absolute ‘fin’.
rassinarika.com 
Leave a comment