The 20-Something Life with Green Apples

I find Highway with Green Apples intriguing, mysterious, deeply-woven, and confusing – exactly an unapologetic mastery of my twenty-something life. It is a hauntingly real read. It’s like a zombie – walking across, limping aimlessly, wandering suddenly in my mind, all while checking my twitter feed and emails in between the daily routine that has become of a life.

The typical socially-active twenty-something would have, perhaps, rather dismiss these thoughts and continue staring off the computer screen at work or mindlessly gulp that nth cup of coffee. I thought I would too. Yet I couldn't. Thoughts like: “what the hell! Did she? Did the BFF? Oh no? That other friend was surely unhappy with her in-real-life Dr. McDreamy?!? Woah and now she works as a customer service rep like me? Whoa I feel like eating green apples now under the dawn light? Shall I get a new haircut too? What was her name?! O.o ” I couldn't shake it away.

It’s just that in the story, I felt I was represented and that someone knows how it feels to be in my skin and head. I somehow feel that Bae Suah is freakishly like me or at least the character in her story is; only she likes green apples too much. Perhaps it’s just got something to do with being in this phase of my life. However, honestly, I could easily leave a letter to my parents saying that “I've fallen in love” and would run away in a heartbeat. I would go seek that place by the highway and sell green apples all my life. If that means knowing what I want, getting it, being contented, and be happy with it; despite and amidst all the restrictions society has to place. Yet it’s not all that.

The setting and cultural context may be different from what and where I am living in now but it is mostly still the same struggles somehow. Reading the story felt like there is an acknowledgment of what I feel, like there is hand that reached out to mine. There may not be a solution to the core problem. But it’s enough, it is okay.

☼

Reflections on Kyung-Sook Shin's 'Please Look After Mother'

Please Look After Mom
(Vintage Contemporaries)

I finished reading Kyung-Sook Shin's 'Please Look After Mother' at work earlier. It wasn't queuing so I had time to read.

Many times I paused from reading because tears were slowly coming out. All I could do is stop reading, stare at the ceiling for awhile and hope my seatmate did not notice my slight sobbing.

When I read Sputnik Sweetheart

How do I even begin. First, the title was cheesy. I heard about the book from a friend who was reading Fifty Shades at that time. At first, I thought it was of the same genre, my apologies. That has always been one of my flaws, being judgmental to people, book titles and reading choices. I am trying my best to be a changed person now though.

So there was the story, SS. I first read a HM book years ago before the incident, out of whim, and before the SJ era. I even forgot the title of that book. The only feeling that the book left me was of confusion. The girl in the story somehow disappeared and vanished in her room??! That story was also narrated through a male's point of view. Is this a recurring theme in HM books? Well, maybe I am getting ahead of myself.

Here are my thoughts/realizations/and fifty cents on the book SS by HM: