Eccentypically

THE VEGETARIAN  by Han Kang  translated by Deborah Smith Of the books I've read this year, this happens to be one of the weirdest ones as much as I have been unable to stop thinking about it.  I initially thought it was going to follow one of those "I hate my wife," narratives that manage to achieve nothing other than invoking pure infuriation from me as a reader. However, as the story unfolded, I felt more sadness and disappointment(in the system and characters not the book), than the anger I initially anticipated. The themes brought to light in this book could be treated as a universal problem even though the writer originally intended to bring forward issues in South Korea where the book is set. Again drawing to mind that the struggle of women anywhere is the struggle of women everywhere. In the book, we follow the story of Yeong-hye who is viewed as a sister, daughter, sister-in-law or wife and in my opinion, overlooked as a person. Her decision to become vegetarian a...

  I’m beginning to think that this should have remained in my journal. The phrase “think outside the box” is possibly one of the most life-changing phrases I have ever heard. As someone with claustrophobia, I must admit that my life was much better before I figured out that there was a box and I might be trapped in it. After this gut-wrenching fear dawned on me, I began to struggle with every possibility of never getting out of this box; at the expense of my creativity. Although, I have become largely open to entirely new ideas that have most likely not been expressed, I have also found it extremely difficult to accept that I am allowed to develop or act on any idea that may seem relatively simple. Plaguing my creative expression, is the compulsion to always offer something new and reject all forms of generality even when it completely drains me and leaves me in a self-hate filled slump whenever I can’t think of anything revolutionary. The issue with this is, I have made my...

At some point in my life, I believed that the world would end due to a robot apocalypse... That was after watching a movie in which robots became sentient and managed to develop human emotions and sentiments including the will for rebellion and destruction. I had mind maps of all the places I would hide and possibly enough determination to survive long into the apocalypse. Recently, I’ve come to believe that this fear of mine is most unlikely to come true; at least until 2035(according to I, Robot) . For now, I am of the opinion that if human creativity dies before human extinction, it would be as a result of the misuse of Artificial Intelligence. I must agree with people who have suggested that if Artificial Intelligence were to destroy the world, it would be in a philosophical and not necessarily an apocalyptic sense. An article in 2023 mentioned that Artificial Intelligence or the excessive use of it, can alter the way people view themselves and degrade abilities or experien...

     THE BOOK THIEF                by Markus Zusak      I first heard about the Second World War in primary school. This historical event features in the movie, "Sound of Music" and has movies dedicated entirely to the people who lived through this war. It's the reason behind the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A side note   What if Hitler's propaganda had won?      "The Book Thief" is set in Nazi Germany but it isn't just any war story. The narrator of this story is Death.  ( If that hasn't already made you want to read it, then I don't know what will.)      In the book, we see death as an onlooker who can be anywhere but has singled out and chosen to study a little German girl, Liesel Meminger, who lives with her foster parents after her biological mother can no longer cater for her.       Liesel only grows closer to her foster fath...