title: death on the nile
author: agatha christie
country: united kingdom
language: english
genre: crime novel
published: 1 november 1937
publisher: collins crime club
pages: 288pp

synopsis:
The tranquillity of a cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot through the head. She was young, stylish and beautiful, a girl who had everything - until she lost her life. Hercule Poirot recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: 'I'd like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.' Yet in this exotic setting, nothing is ever quite what it seems... 

this is the second agatha christie novel that i've read, and it truly doesn't disappoint. (shoutout to kak oline for letting me borrow these hehe)

the story builds slowly, but,of course, not at all uninterestingly. even though the story revolves around the murder of one character, everyone is given time in the spotlight. i love the diversity of the characters and how we are introduced to their traits deliberately, not just half heartedly like many novels do these days. i get the sense that everyone is important and involved, and it's great.

what is also great: the guessing game. now that everything is laid out and we're familiar with the characters, who did the murder? is it the obvious one? confusion feels nice. or, more accurately, curiosity. flipping through the book is nothing like a task.

i'm not very experienced with crime novels, by the way, because i don't think i could handle reading some hundred words to be disappointed by a dry ending. but this is agatha christie, and i don't think anything she'd made could be disappointing. and the twists i stumble upon aren't only in the ending. it's everywhere. the plot is really impossible to guess.

everything is interesting and it's hard to find that in most books. all in all, i love hercule poirot. i love agatha christie, and i love this book. 10/10

Labels: book review, school

title: a tale for the time being
author: ruth ozeki
country: usa
language: english
genre: fiction, psychological fiction
published: march 12, 2013
publisher: viking
pages: 432pp

synopsis:
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying, but before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

Full of Ozeki’s signature humour and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.

this has to be my favorite read yet; a refreshingly vivid, wise yet youthful book that just has it all in one tale, you know what i mean?

(probably not, you'd need to read it first.)

so this story is told in two perspectives: one by ruth, a writer living with her husband in a remote island, and nao, a sixteen-year-old japanese girl. admittedly, i would be a lot sceptical about reading a dual-narrative story. it sounds like it would be tedious, and hard to keep up with, since we'd have to keep up with two main characters and all that, right? but ozeki did a wonderful job in piecing the story together. nao's and ruth's narratives are so refreshingly contrasted, one being dramatic and saturated, the other calmer. it's different, in the best way possible.

ozeki builds up a mystery from small questions, left unanswered with the underlying promise of an answer at the end of the book. the mystery gets bigger as we read on, and, okay, this is a really hyperbolic metaphor but it almost feels like vines slowly caging us in, twirling around our ankles, little by little. no complaints here—it's really a wonderful feeling to be this curious, this enraptured in a story, you know?

ozeki takes us on a journey to uncover nao's fate, connecting everything together, unfolding mysteries about the world. i especially love how she knit in quantum theories, like multiverses, so fittingly. it's super enlightening, and gives a realistic feel to the story.

all in all, it's a 5 stars from me! a must read. huge thank you to ruth ozeki for this masterpiece.

[]

Labels: book review, school

when i read the article my reaction was mostly just, like, OK. i relate to a degree. it's a well-known fact that the school system sucks universally, and i think this article sums up the reasoning behind its suckiness (?) pretty well! like, an elaborate break down of it in a light form.

the writer is apparently a year above me, and she's a good writer, for that level! her article is easy to read, has that ~relatable feeeel~. i wish i have enough free time + motivation + energy to write things like that ahA

there she explains her interests, mine is: i take an interest in drawing and the arts. i don't know what i wish for or what i want to be just yet. i'd love to take up art, learn deeper into that, but i'm not sure what i want to do to make my main profit. preferable something not boring.......... 

identify 5 form of tenses in this article!

• School slowly became a place of memorizing facts just long enough to get the A; simple past.

• As I entered high school, and even middle school, everyone around me, teachers and students alike, had the mindset of “cram cram cram, A’s, A’s A’s”; simple past.

• I too have fallen prey to this harsh reality; present perfect.

• I’ve made myself a promise that from this day forward; present perfect.

• I’m only comparing my feelings now for the ecstasy of my elementary days; present continuous

Labels: article, school

based on the attached data (from the cia factbook), here is my take on imagining how indonesia will be in 5 years.

geographically screwed, maybe, since i'm a Firm Believer that global warming is real and not a mere conspiracy made up by China (as stated by a certain president of a certain united states). the weather is growing increasingly unstable by the years. rainfall is a lot more often, since the water cycle is disturbed. so naturally there will be more floods than the occasional.

speaking of natural hazards, droughts are? to be expected? it says 'severe' here, that's really bad. i don't have anything to contribute other than that? i hope that doesn't happen. 

and i sure hope no volcanoes erupt in the next 5 years. or 10. or until i die

anyways it's stated that the current environmental issues are deforestation, water pollution, and air pollution. that's great. it'll probably get worse in the next 5 years, unless people start to plant trees, stop throwing junk in the water, and reduce the use of transportation? even then, it still might not work.

as for how the population will do: it's growing fast, that's for sure. there's really nothing we can do about that? lest take care of health and stuff so that the people are Happy and Thriving. hope we won't have that "only 1 child allowed" law anytime soon

and uhhhh it's said here that the risk of infectious diseases in Indonesia is Very High, that worries me a bit? although we've been through that before, not without casualties. zombie infections though? how about that

sorry about this post i hope no one reads this i'm bad at doing homework like a normal student please pray for me that i don't have to re-do this article i tried

Labels: school, sorry

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