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Have a Little Faith

Reviews 2010. 8. 10. 15:52

An easy read.
Mitch Albom is one of the authors I follow and buy whenever their books are released (not right away, but I buy them eventually after some time), and this book was his latest.
It went very similarly to Tuesdays with Morrie, but this book was about religion. And instead of Morrie Schwartz, this book is mainly about conversations of Albom and Albert Lewis, a rabbi of Albom's synagogue in NJ.
Well, this book just talks about about religion(s) and life - something I have thought about 7 years ago. This book features thoughts nothing new to me, but I did feel the urge to recommend this book to several acquaintances who are especially devoted to their own religions.

This book talks about life with religions. No, life with acceptance to deities - now that's better.
Albom is Jewish, but he also features a story of his experience with a Christian church in Detroit for about 30% of the book.

He doesn't say that Judaism is the way to go, neither says he that Christianity is the ultimately correct one. But he tries to describe the meaning of having a religion, deities in one's life in a right way as each religion was originally mean to be.

Every religion features love, care, ethics and hope. Those are all that matter in a life, and if you cannot provide these by yourself, you can always rely on any of these religions. He just utilizes his Judaism background and his rabbi to give an example of the true way how a religion and how God should influence one's life, and utilizes Christianity in which he feels practically the same to him despite of all their differences. Those two were the religions that he was exposed to in his life, so it was natural for him to choose them in the book. I am sure he could have featured Muslim or Buddhism if those were the religions he had experiences with.

I have been friends with many religious men and women in my life like priests, sisters, pastors and monks. A majority of those are very nice and hearty people, but of course I also have met real fucked-ups those almost fucked up my life. It's a little irony that all those fucked-ups were protestants, which I am fine with now BTW. Probably it was just my bad luck - but I also have a number of good friends who are protestants, so it's a fair deal.

Even before reading this book, I have been telling this to as many people as I can - that people should respect other religions - but obviously those hard-headed, vain-self-centered religion fanatics could not accept that there are other ways to God(s) than their own. Those simply cannot respect others and other opinions in general.

I've heard these so many times - I was in a protestant high school and a Catholic university:

1) You should believe in Jesus because He is the only true God who can save your soul.

2) If you don't believe in Jesus, you will go to hell.

...

The list of this kind goes on and on and on. I've had been very spiritual and philosophical as long as I can remember, and I did consider finding my peace in some religion specially in Christianity (specifically Roman Catholicism since that's the one I was most exposed to), but I got over those periods. I now have a firm belief and faith there exists some deity, and I should live with love in hope following my conscience... and I know I can do that without actually worshiping and participating in any religious ritual.

Once, I have been a victim of those fucked-up religious fanatics who tried to cut my friends away utilizing a verse from the Bible, which goes:

"Do not be yoked with those who are different, with unbelievers. For what partnership do righteousness and lawlessness have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness? - 2 Corinthians 6:14"

I hate that fucking verse so much, I have memorized it for 10 years now - word by word.

Sure, if you take that verse literally, join the league of the fucked-up. I am big of a man enough to understand you, respect your fucking decisions and still treat you like any other acquaintances in my life.

But if that's what some people truly believe, I am sorry for their souls - for every religion is for the good and unity of humanity and nothing more, nothing less.

I am sad that a best selling author had to write a book something like this to remind people what religions should be. I am very sad that some of religious leaders like priests, pastors, rabbis, monks and imams are so fucked up, they are spreading false teachings to take advantage of their positions. I am sad that people has to be reminded of such obvious and trite nature of religions which existed as long as the history.

People need more love, I guess... and it should be a package deal with respect and understanding than pure self-righteousness and wrong confidence in their own deities.

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Posted by 【洪】ILHONG

The Aleph and Other Stories

Reviews 2010. 8. 6. 06:43

First time with Borges following fervent argument from JSO who kept implying my accolade on Gabriel Garcia Marquez is very misled and, in fact, very wrong. He insisted so hard he almost offended me, but oh well. I love to read whatever.

So, JSO picked me that book among all Borges books on Amazon (his burden anyway) and I read it.

Despite it being just 180 pages or so, it took me 8 days to finish. Well, I read it only for 4 days, but it's been 8 days since I first started reading the book.

This book was a compilation of short stories.

I wish I had known before I started. I researched less and obviously I forgot the difference in preferences JSO and I have regarding some art, especially music.

Borges stories were often just a couple pages, but it does not mean his work was to be taken lightly. I am not sure if Hurley translated all right (because I had to dig up dictionary pretty often while reading this book), but if Borges did use those vocabularies, then yes, he did want the reader to think and think deep in every story he wrote.

And that was not perhaps what I wanted to do after reading a fantasy novel and The Help. Both books required no cerebral activities at all. All I had to do was intake and read nonstop without pausing for vocabularies.

Not complaining about vocabularies here, I love learning new words, it's just the thinking part I didn't expect it to be so heavy.

I do enjoy books that require some serious reflections, but this book came at a wrong time so I needed to get myself ready if I was going to read it last several days.

This book features, as I said, several short stories, but obviously The Aleph was the most memorable one. Others I can think of without going through the tables of contents are The Zahir, Deutsches Requiem, The Dead Man, The Writing of God, The Other Death, , Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhar, Murdered in His Labyrinth. Everything and Nothing, Dreamtigers, and Ragnarok.

All short stories that were not listed above were still reasonably good, few boring, but they probably had an impact of 1-3 to me out of 10. (10 would be the feeling I had in last 15 pages of One Hundred Years of Solitude [and it was 3 at best for the first 300 pages of that book]. FYI 8-9 was what I had throughout Love in the Time of Cholera.)

Those Borges stories mentioned were 5-8. The Aleph was probably 8 or 9. The Aleph was good, very good.

The view of the whole world through the Aleph was so vibrant I could not sleep thinking about it and re-reading that part. I thought about the coin in The Zahir in relation to The Alpeh. That small coin could have blocked the view through the Aleph. Perhaps, all the Borges in the Zahir really wanted was a peek through the Aleph.

Borges stories can be characterized by two: 1) circle and 2) death.

Death was not present in every story, but it was in almost every short story in the book.

The idea of circle was always there - circle of life, time flowing forward, time flowing backward, ideas like multiverse, etc. - and I liked it.

Life is a circle, it's a continuum and it does not end because of a death, as it will be continued in any other way possible - by oneself or by others.

That was in back of my head constantly while reading this book.

Borges obviously wrote for the sake of literature - no ideologies, no nothing.

Utilizes fantasies to draw the most out of the readers' inner selves in a couple page long short stories, and he does so well. Impressed. One day, I will get another book from him and read when I am really ready.

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Posted by 【洪】ILHONG

Let the Right One In

Reviews 2010. 8. 4. 15:22

Amazing...

Sure there were two scenes where camera was clearly shaking a little bit, but it was a great movie over all.

Watched again on Netflix as it's available on streaming services now.

A friendship or love whatever it may be... It's unnatural, and maybe even be forbidden, but it takes its place no matter what. For the sake of writing about it, let's call it love - since it can be perceived as some kinda puppy love.

The plot depicts this unnatural love with following factors (spoiler alert):

1) love between two boys;

2) love between a human and a vampire; and

3) love between a victimizer and a victim.

(I apologize calling the love between two boys unnatural, but because of my 2nd point, I could not say that the movie depicts love of "relative minority". I am fine with homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals or whatever you are. In fact, this movie was recommended by my gay friend ZY. If what I said above offends the reader, let's say my lexicon is very limited.)

Despite of all the unnatural factors, the movie portrays love that was pure and untainted.

This love supersedes all those unnatural factors above and provides the crystal clear view on how pure the love between Eli and Oskar is.

ZY, who introduced this movie also told me about the novel the movie was originated from. He said how detail the book went beyond the movie. I just bought the book off Amazon, and I can't wait to read it. (I am a little bothered about buying books these days because I am running out of shelf spaces.)

This movie, while entertaining me and giving me all kinda emotions, gave me a bitter aftertaste.

Why is it so hard for me to accept and picture myself in some kinda love/friendship these days (which I think I even long for) while I conceptually, and also by heart, accept this love between Eli and Oskar which is against all social norms?

5/5

PS: Hollywood is now remaking this film and calling it "Let Me In". Matt Reeves will be on it... It'll be interesting to see how Hollywood ruin an art. Yes, I am biased on this.