Reading List: Books I Won’t Ever Give Away

I won’t pretend to be all high and mighty and claim that I’m a well read person or that I’m
incredibly smart. In all honesty, I still have a lot of books to read and genres to explore. However,
I will say that I’ve amassed a considerable amount of books that I truly treasure. Here’s the first
of the bunch:
What was the most difficult book you’ve ever read?

It certainly falls somewhere between Memoirs of a Geisha and Macbeth. I read the
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden when I was finishing high school. My vocabulary then
was pretty limited to textbook jargon so you can just imagine how tough it was for me to absorb
all of Arthur’s genius. I had to reread a page like three times before I could get a basic idea about
what it was telling me. I didn’t finish Memoirs of a Geisha though because, well, it was much too
complicated for me then. When I read Macbeth by William Shakespeare, I was in my 3rd year in
college and was quite familiar with high handed lexicon so it was not as tough of a read as Memoirs
of a Geisha, although it would still take me twice the reading time it takes for a normal book. And
since Macbeth is a classic (and the technique, history, and vocabulary is old testament), it was still
profoundly challenging.

What book changed your whole life?

I’d love to say it was The Travelers Gift by Andy Andrews, but the book that truly changed
my whole perspective on reading and writing was Moloka’i by Alan Brennert brought by my
cousin from Hawaii. This book deeply moved me to resiliency of the human spirit. I normally
don’t believe in destiny and all that nonsense, but in this case, I can honestly say that it was my
destiny to read that book. I was just browsing through our high school library one afternoon (alone,
because my classmates thought books were rubbish) and it just so happened that when I was
rearranging back the books I took out, Anne Rice fell out. It was a small paperback version and
the front cover art was just a simple pink orchid. I sneaked it into my backpack (okay, I stole it but
in my defense, nobody reads from our high school library so nobody would even miss it) and I
read it at home. I had no idea it was erotica and that was when my mind exploded, figuratively of
course.

Who is your favorite author?

Like other bibliophiles, my favorite author changes from time to time. Currently, its
Danielle Anne Trussoni. I recently bought one of her books, Angelology, and it has instantly
become a favorite. I loved how she built the characters, the tension and the plot arcs in each chapter.
It’s far from a romance novel, but it is a book about angel dissections, the bloodbaths, the infected
angelic wings. I bought that book because the prologue was really good and the front cover was
interesting, a sort-of dark, mysterious angelic being. I was very pleased that the book turned out
so much better than I expected. I loved how Trussoni introduced her powerful iridescent angels
and her formidable angelologists. I love the historical and religious references, the symbolism, and
the biblical plot points. I’m certainly adding more of Trussoni’s books in my reading list for my
HSPFY.
What book did you find it hard to recover from?

I can name two, that is if we are talking about books that made it challenging for me to get
up out of bed and face the sunlight. I just wanted to curl up and moan over and over again,
“Whyyyyyy?”. The first is the third book of Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay in The Hunger Games
trilogy which made me depressed for like a whole week. I knew that there were bound to be deaths
given that it was a civil war in a dystopian setting, but I still grieved for Fennick Ordair and
Primrose Everdeen. Second is A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. I can’t name just a
single book in his series because each one truly made me feel like I’m bipolar. I would be
cripplingly depressive or crazy after reading one of his books because I would grieve for the
characters that died and the characters they left behind. I also couldn’t put his books down because
they were just so… amazing. There’s truly no other word for it. The amount of detail in the history,
settings, familial connections, culture and traditions, language, plot intrigue, and world-building is
just so immense.

What is your latest obsession?

Well, everyone knows in the seminary that I’m a GoT nerd (Game of Thrones series but it
is actually A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin) because of the fact that I love dragons
since childhood. Aside from dragons, what I like about this book is that love is a sweet sweet
poison. What good is life if there aren’t faces that could launch a thousand ships, passions so
desperate they seduce with the sweet escape of suicide, or stolen kisses so tragic they could start a
rebellion and end a dynasty. We have Romeo and Juliet, Paris and Helen, Cleopatra and Mark
Anthony, Rose and Jack, Othello and Desdemona, Henry and Anne Boleyn, Aragorn and Arwen,
Noah and Allie, and now Rhaegar and Lyanna. George R.R. Martin’s epic A Song of Ice and Fire
isn’t only a gritty storytelling about politics and power, but love in all its glorious tragedy too. If
the characters we root for don’t usually end up on the Iron Throne, you can bet that the lovers we
admire don’t end with a happily ever after.

So that’s it for my first reading list. I’m really not that kind of bookish person but this is
the other side of me. I read books when I go travel, kill some time, and for the love of literature.
And I still have some catching up to read especially theological and spiritual books.