Foot and Fire

Brida  Paulo Coelho Fiction/Novel  originally published in 1990 Translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jule Costa hardbound, 212 pages This is my second Paulo Coelho book. I first read The Alchemist and it did not transform me into something after reading it (even just into something next to stone). It was eons ago that I read it, and sadly, all I can even recall now is how I was thinking that everything in it were cliches. After reading Brida, I wonder why I think/felt that way with The Alchemist that I am on a mission to reread it. Perhaps, as a reader I was, in time, transformed too. Not that Brida got me totally. It is just that I gave it a chance as I went on, perhaps because Brida is a woman and this is March, a celebratory month for women. And usually, the equinox happens in March. I should have some mystic vibes so I can be more receptive, I guess. But that is the point of reading, to explore a world, an idea outside our own and somehow finding some connect...

Men without women By Haruki Murakami Fiction, 228 pages Just a little after valentine's day, I met up with my friends but opened this book to pass the time as I was in the last two short stories out of the eight. When my friends saw the title, they surmised that it might be about misogyny. No, I said they're short stories. Actually, I was in the seventh kafka-esque story of Samsa In Love and I was deciding if I still liked the book itself. I liked how it started with a woman driver and flowed till the fifth story of Kino which I was a bit lost (need to reread this one to get to where it's headed but perhaps that's the point, being lost). Actually, this is the first nonfiction of Murakami that I finished, the first attempt was The Wind Up Bird Chronicle which I find too difficult to continue. I loved Murakami's memoir " What I talk about when I talk about running " that I decided to read his nonfiction. In this shorts, he is still philosophical ...