The Giver by Lois Lowry - A review

The Giver by Lois Lowry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not everything under control is perfect. And every single thing could never be under anyone's control.

A society telling us what we must become, a society deciding what's best for us, a society trying to maintain balance in everything, a society which tells us what to hold on to and what we must let go of. We aren't living in this kind of society, or are we?

Are we prisoners of other people's choices for us? Do we really think that if we make other choices (other than those they've already planned for us), we'd be making the wrong one, and we'd be taking the wrong path?

Are we trapped in this kind of world as well? Do we still feel, see, and hear things beyond what our senses can grasp? Or do we simply no longer care about these things?

I find it hard to comment about this book because I feel like the way I've understood the story was quite too shallow compared to the actual message the author was trying to impose.

But I liked the book, I liked the way I understood it (uhh, maybe), even though the ending wasn't quite clear for me. What happened to the community he has left? Was their mission successful or what? The world that holds their future and past, what does it really imply? I don't know, I can't really tell. I'm still on the process of comprehending it further. Maybe I have yet to discover what's beyond the sentences that I've read, the pages that I've turned, the experiences of the characters that I've gone through. Maybe there's still more...

Of course, there will always be something more.

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- E. 

Message in a Bottle - A Short Review

*Spoiler alert*

Message in a Bottle is a story about. . . Well, I suggest that you read its summary somewhere else. The blogger is too stubborn to give you a glimpse of the whole novel. But here's a short review:

Like any other Nicholas Sparks novel, it has these several "predictable" scenes. Maybe it has something to do with his style of writing or maybe it has just something to do with the way I foresee the events happening in the characters' lives. 

But I'm glad that despite this "little" disappointment I felt as I was reading the novel, I've got to learn and realize something about love. 

Garrett, despite his grief and great love for Catherine, was able to move on after years and began to love again. Theresa, despite her sadness and heartbreak after Garrett had died, was able to realize after some time that she, too, would be capable of having something beautiful too in the future. It wouldn't be easy, it would take time, but Garrett has given her hope...

We can really never live competing and comparing ourselves with the people that our "boy/girlfriends/husbands/wives" have loved before. At one point in their lives, they have let go of and moved on from them. What matters is that they love us now, and we have the hope that in the future, they still will. Both people involved in the relationship have to make it work, because the moment one has stopped trying, we'll never know when it'll be all to late... Just like what happened to Garrett and Theresa. They've taken too much time when they could have worked it out...

- E.