I can't help but think about all of Grandpa's books I saw in La Union.

My maternal grandfather used to be a teacher and a professor in education. He also liked to read a lot in different topics ranging from literature to philosophy. After he retired, he tended to read and write about religion, and brought this pastime to the States where he currently lives with my grandma and other relatives.

Their distant relatives and former tenants are now living in their old family house, and the way they manage the house tends towards practicality rather than preservation of my grandparents' aesthetic tastes. The kitchen has been extended to fit in half the house and the garden that I remember took so much effort to take care of was mostly mowed down. The most striking difference I perceived was the shelves and endless shelves of books that my grandfather owned now dusty like old family guardians lined up in a corner of the house that's so dark I couldn't see the titles.

I wouldn't know what he would think about how his collection is stored like that now, or about how I rummaged through them and brought some of them home. As one of the very few relatives who reads, I felt a vague sense of responsibility to somehow use and preserve at least a little of what he saved. (The rest of the books there, photocopies of books on spirituality, I can't really see myself using and keeping in the future, sorry Grandpa.)

Books acquired
A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe - Fernando Pessoa

Books finished
Kokoro - Soseki Natsume
A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe - Fernando Pessoa

Books currently reading:
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge - Rainer Maria Rilke
Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger 

Books finished:
A Happy Death - Albert Camus

Books acquired:
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
The First Man - Albert Camus
Swann's Way - Marcel Proust
A Tragic Sense of Life - Miguel de Unamuno
Kokoro - Soseki Natsume

Books started on but on hold:
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien (shaaaammmeee)
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Catch-21 - Joseph Heller


It seems I start a lot but don't finish a lot ._.

Finished A Happy Death.

Struggled with The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis by Jose Sarmago and put it aside for later, but I really want to read this because of its references to Pessoa and his heteronyms.

Twenty percent done with The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke. It reads like the story of my childhood.

Will let my sister read A Life of Pi first.

Looks like I won't continue studying until I've finished reading A Happy Death.

Ilustrado - Miguel Syjuco
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis - Jose Sarmago
Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
If on a winter's night a traveler - Italo Calvino
A Happy Death - Albert Camus
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Kangkong 1896 - Ceres Alabado
The Pale King - David Foster Wallace
LoTR: The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Changeling - Kenzaburo Oe
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
Forbidden Colors - Yukio Mishima

Back at the dorm. (That's what I'd always text my parents the moment I arrive at the dorm, having eaten and done errands and before taking a shower.)

This weekend passed by in a flash. Yesterday, I commuted through floods to a talk on innovative fields in medicine, half of the content I've already heard somewhere before. Today, I went to the MIBF and Best of Anime convention with my family.

Now, I'm starting another school week. I'm dreading another tedious five days going to school then going back to the dorm to study and repeating the same thing the next day. And I can't be left alone to mope; my dormmates are at the common room, gigglesnorting and mumbling about things again.

I don't know what the point of this post is. Just for the sake of record keeping, maybe?

"[Other authors] have challenged the "2-hour rule" on the grounds that a longer time, that is, at least 4 hours, is necessary before concluding that the active phase of labor has failed. We agree."

- Cunningham, et al., from Williams Obstetrics, 23rd ed., in the chapter on Abnormal Labor

These kinds of things are why I like reading textbooks over transcriptions (even at the point when I'm supposed to be cramming everything the night before the exam).