Something Wonderful (by Judith McNaught)

It would be pretty weird to start a book review with the story’s ending but what gripped me most about Judith McNaught’s “Something Wonderful” was the parting dialogue between Alexandra and Jordan. 

Indeed, it was “Something Wonderful”.

I haven’t read a book from Judith McNaught that I did not like and trust me when I say she belongs to the few numbered authors in my list whose works I will not second guess in buying.

I’m a romantic at heart and Judith McNaught is a great romance story teller. You would expect that writing Romance Novels is an easy task. You just need two people to fall in love set within a ridiculous situation.

But I tell you, after reading my way through all those romance novels be it in English or Tagalong since age 10, romance novels can get pretty boring fast.

It seems all authors have the same plot with boring dialogues, horrible characters and unbelievable situations, so reading “Something Wonderful” was a breath of fresh air.

I spent the whole night reading it and mind you, I read it from start to finish, without skipping a page! I cried at the end.

Full marks would have been given but the story has the same element as the rest of her books, you’d expect the same thing. But what makes Judith McNaught’s works different is how good she writes every single story.

I am an emotional reader if there is such a thing, I do not visualize the sentences - I try to feel them.

Judith McNaught writes as if she believes her own story. I can feel the passion; I can feel her very emotion. This made “Something Wonderful” so alive and believable.

In the story, Alexandra developed from an innocent child to a woman of the world, who believed in love and happy endings only to realize that true love is far more complex.

Jordan was a cynical man, a man of the world were love can be easily bought, who realized after a near brush with death that love takes a lot of trust.

I would not write an insincere review if I had no strong feelings for the book. It taught me a lot of things about love, especially how you view it when you are seventeen and how it can quickly change when you get your heart broken.

If you are interested to cry, feel free to do so. Read the book.

Find out if it really is - “Something Wonderful”.

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Date a Girl Who Reads

― by Rosemarie Urquico

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

Disclaimer:

I wish I was witty enough to write such an inspiring article! Unfortunately, the muses were not that generous to me :(   so a big shout out to Rosemarie Urquico  for bringing justice to book nerds and writers. Hope everyone lands a date! :) 

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Blurring Reality

"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."  ~Anna Quindlen

What a great way to start my blogpost. It’s a total smack down for the kind of childhood I lived and wish my future children to follow.

I don't have bookshelves but I have boxes :D

I have lived with books for as long as I can remember. I eat them for breakfast, especially when I am so eager to finish the story. I sleep with them on rainy nights when I just wish to reminisce a particular scene.

I talk to them when I don’t understand them and best of all, my fondest memories of them are in the bathroom. Yes, I read books when I am using the toilet.

If you happened to be like most kids during my age, I bet Toy Kingdom was a great go to place, or if not, Bibo or any gaming center. But for me and my sister, the only place we won’t ever get lost going to was National Bookstore.

Maybe because books were the only things that could help us escape our “realities” back then. My parents happened to be very strict about a lot of things, from no boyfriends to no going out of the house to play; it was the only thing that colored our lives, aside from each other. 

even the cabinets are not spared!

I used to read the encyclopedia (forgot the title) from cover to cover out of boredom (wonder why I never got around to being a mad scientist?) and did not spare bible stories.

some of those encyclopedias are still around

But fairy tales where my most favorite! My mom bought us all the fairytale stories she could get and we read all of them. And until now, the book I consider as the best among the rest is “Beauty and the Beast”. I’m a hopeless romantic, I know.

But then Tagalog Novels came and soon became my addiction. By 10 years old, I was no longer naive to the words “kissing”, “petting” and “sex”. Blame it to the person who brought the blasted book to the house. It has replaced my fairytale stories and I began to collect them.

Have you heard of Gillian? Arielle? Or Martha Cecilia perhaps? They were my very first teachers to what true love was all about.

i like Christine Feehan

Being exposed to books all my life has developed within me a habit of sorts. I would read the end first before taking the time to read the beginning. If the end was any good, I would try reading the first few starting chapters until such a time when a particular chapter starts to drag. I would skip it and proceed to the succeeding exciting chapter until I finish the book.

So yes, there are only a few books that I have read from cover to cover but those kinds of books, I would never forget.

In a way, reading books matured me and broadened my horizons without having me leave the safety of my home. I have journeyed the Carpathian Mountains a couple of times, been to the heart of dreaming visiting my old friend Morpheus. Talked to Sun Tzu, traveled with Gulliver and had done a lot of things actual reality could not offer. 

I wish a lot of people would come to realize that investing in books are not a waste. No matter how pretty you are, when your brain is empty you will always be a small character in the background, not the lead of the story.

So if you wish to be your very own hero, travel to Europe without paying for a plane ticket, buy a book. Read. 


Your imagination is your only limitation. =)

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