coreof-melancholy

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Highway with green apples by Bae Suah

I read this short story while working my shifts at the museum of the lacuster city I have been living in for the past 10 years. My job may seem boring for most people: I just have to sit or stand next to the art pieces and wait for someone to ask me a question about it. In summer, especially in August, only a few hundreds people come in, and they are usually too busy not to pass out from the heat to ask me a question. So I always have a book with me.

During one of those scorching hot days I was reading Highway with green apples by Bae Suah.

The story is about a Korean woman who opposes to the fate the people around her are trying to impose her. While she is on a road trip with her lover, past and present start to interwine and it becomes difficult for the protagonist and for the reader to understand what belongs to reality.

Green apples lay on the floor of the car, the same green apples a curious visitor is eating, ignoring the "no food allowed" sign. While I walk towards the visitor I imagine his apple being sweeter than the sour green apple of the story. Maybe because reality can be sometimes sweeter than our worries.

(credits to the owner of the first pic: https://pin.it/3VvNWOWhO )

[coreof-melancholy]

(credits to the owner of the pic: https://pin.it/1H3kGXAeT)

[coreof-melancholy]

(credits to the owner of the pic: https://pin.it/3KTqhWPb9)

[coreof-melancholy]

Lately I haven't been reading as much as I usually do.

Actually, I haven't read a single page of a book for months till two weeks ago. It happens, I guess.

What was your last reading?

(credits to the owner of the pic: https://pin.it/4YjKAaS5W)

[coreof-melancholy]

my favourite books (part 1)

Soul mountain by Gao Xingjian

A you and a I wander through the most characteristic Chinese landscapes, villages, and cultural assets in search of the Soul Mountain. Soul Mountain is our deepest self. This book is so lyrical and deep I thought I was getting lost in myself.

Gao Xingjian - A lonely man (Un homme seul), 2008

My Brilliant Friend (The Neapolitan Novels) by Elena Ferrante

Finding the right words is the job of a writer, but when Elena Ferrante writes, words aren't just right, they slowly form a path you walk through the whole book. My brilliant friend is the story of Elena Greco (Lenuccia) and Raffaella Cerullo (Lila), two friends that live in one of the districts in the outskirts of Napoli. In each book of the series, the story is narrated through Lenuccia's point of view and it intertwines with the historical events of those years that serve as a background, and influence the lives of the books' characters. L'amica geniale, this is the Italian title of the book, is the story of Elena and Lila's whole lives; it is the story of their jealousy, their rage, their sorrows, their being human, but most importantly, it is the story of a friendship that deeply influenced the lives of the two characters. Maybe it is because I am from Napoli, and therefore I understand many of the dynamics narrated, especially in the first books, but I found this series very realistic and "human".