The Pensieve

I’ve had enough of this question:

What are your new year resolutions?

Please don’t ask me again. Thank you.

I have no new year resolutions whatsoever, and everyone else’s new year resolutions are just so plain boring… I can even guess… things such as doing well for the exams, passing courses, graduating, getting a new/better job, losing weight, building up muscles, becoming a better person (like how?), earning more money… sick. damn. boring.

Plus, I don’t believe that we should make new year resolutions just cuz it’s a new year? eh… the logic doesn’t work well with me. We need goals EVERYDAY! We should be planning every single day! So, well, since I’m planning all the time, I don’t think new year resolutions are anything special.

Besides, how many people have I known who’ve really achieved their new year resolutions? Barely any… So why make resolutions if you’re not going to achieve them anyway? You’re just going to end up feeling bad.

If I were forced to make new year resolutions… these would be them:
1. be able to speak up for myself against all the people who embarrass me or say mean things to me, especially if those are certain friends of mine who are such tactless asses (watch out! the usual meanies during CNY… you’re gonna get it from me this yr! ROAR!!!)
2. complain about the horrible attitude of most of the doctors in the team that i encountered this holiday season and commend all the wonderful nurses (I swear, I would not get myself admitted or get others admitted to that dpt in that hosp if I can avoid it!)
3. learn how to fly by developing an anti-gravity mechanism… then we could fit this nice gadget to all the people with high risk of suicide.
4. become a ventriloquist so I can freak out all those kiasu/selfish people who don’t share cases with the rest of us. I’ll make them think they are having auditory delusions… hehehe…
5. make men experience menses too. it’s so not fair that we women have it monthly, and still have to bear with the crap of 9mths of pregnancy. gar!
6. install x-ray vision into my eyes, yeah i’m sure that would get me straight A’s in ortho!
7. be able to make myself invisible at will. Gawd, how I’d like to do that at times! Just poof! Dissociate! Begone stress!
8. invent earrings and shoes that shapeshift into your design of choice when u press a tiny button. sure gonna save me cartloads of money!
9. see some gunshot wounds, suture a couple of lacerations, finally use the defib pads
10. yell from a pulpit on international tv: “BEGONE ALL YE MORONS! PEACE ON EARTH!”

Rating: Can’t get enough of it!
Genre: metafiction, parody, fantasy

This ingenious novel features a literary detective called Thursday Next. A literary detective, or LiteraTec, is actually a detective who deals with solving puzzles/crimes related to books. Their workscope includes:
- analysing manuscripts to verify their authenticity (they do it in super interesting and imaginative ways, such as feeding the text into this machine, which analyses all the word use, punctuation, sentence construction and so on… and compares it to a set ‘control’…)
- doing investigations into curious incidents of ‘escaped’ characters from novels
In this novel, Thursday comes up against Acheron Hades (this big baddie with such scary mythical powers and ability - think Voldemort), Acheron has stolen the manuscripts Chuzzlewit and Jane Eyre, and kidnapped Mycroft, Thursday’s uncle. Mycroft has invented a special machine which opens portals into books, allowing outsiders to enter the world… think escapism (via reading). It’s really cool actually… I would dearly love to enter quite a few novels! Think of the sights I would be able to see! The fantastic creatures! The magic… wouldn’t you just love to step into Hogwarts? Or visit Verona? Or take part in the exciting trail of Dracula? Or perhaps, even, have a tour of utopia?

The book also discusses the possibility of whether Shakespeare really wrote his plays? Or was it Francis Bacon? Marlowe? This part of the mystery is solved by Thursday’s father, also a member of the SpecOps, until he turned ‘rogue’. He’s in the chronoguard, a special force which is able to jump around in time, mend Patches of Bad Time (think a hole in the sky, like in ‘Chicken Little’, enlarging, and influencing the area rite under it such that time slows down to a crawl in there… ) It’s such an interesting concept though. It’s hard to explain.

It’s a book about books. And nothing but books, characters from books, extinct creatures… There’s no mention of the television, radio, cosmetics, clothes, u know… all the frivolous things we shop for? It’s like everything that matters in the book is the literary word. I really enjoyed the book, and marvelled at Fforde’s creativity. His imagination has no boundaries! Fantastic!

Other books by Jasper Fforde:
The Thursday Next series: The Eyre Affair (2001), Lost in a Good Book (2002), The Well of Lost Plots (2003), Something Rotten (2004)
The Nursery Criems series: The Big Easy over Money (2005), The Fourth Bear (July 2006)

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