The Undomestic Goddess

The Undomestic Goddess (2005)
401 pages

by: Sophie Kinsella

"If I've learned one lesson from all that's happened to me, it's that there is no such thing as the biggest mistake of your existence. There's no such thing as ruining your life. Life's a pretty resilient thing, it turns out."

Have just finished reading this book and I must say that this has been my dose of sunshine on this cloudy day. Full of hilarity and witty remarks, no one does it like Sophie Kinsella aka Madeleine Wickham (her real name). I SOO LURVE IT! lol.

The story is about a brilliant corporate lawyer, Samantha Sweeting, who seems to never have the time for anything else than her work. In fact she doesn't have a minute to clean her place and even tidy up her table. An intelligent woman whom you might envisage as someone independent but wait, she's not self-sufficient enough because she is practically naive in the art of household chores - can't cook, can't do the laundry, and cannot sew on a button! Her assiduousness and commitment paid off when she finally became a partner - the thing she ever wanted. Or is it? Or her mother's?

But then, as she vowed to begin cleaning up her table, she found a document that revealed something horrible - she discovered she made the most basic mistake of a lawyer. She then left the office, still at shock, leaving London via train and a bank with 50 million quid loss. Finding herself in the middle of nowhere, she then ended up in a huge house, whose owners mistakenly identified her as an interviewee as "Housekeeper".

Her adventure begins here - learning what matters most in life - as she finally realized what she wanted to do and to have. Samantha then realized the value of time after she met Nathaniel and unlike her uber busy ex-beau Jacob who would do the deed for just effin' six minutes due to their busy skeds, Nathaniel showed her the beauty of having time to relax, enjoy the surroundings and have good loving sex! But will he still love her despite the major lie - that the housekeeper he loves is actually a mathematical whiz who can incredibly solve high-number problems and an exceptional lawyer of a top-rank company? The ending though is very much predictable.

"Six minutes isn't sex. Six minutes is a boiled egg."

Love in the Time of Cholera

Love in the Time of Cholera (1988)
(El amor en los tiempos del colera, 1985)
434 pages

by: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Nobel Prize for Literature (1982)

"He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers gave birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves."

I highly recommend this book to those who are enthusiasts of the concept of unrequited love. Some find it boring but it wasn't for me. Probably one would find it as too detailed. It is indeed filled with vivid descriptions, which is likely of GGM. I wasn't surprised that it became a bestseller in NBS and Powerbooks last March. I can't help but be moved by this dramatical and lyrical masterpiece.

This is about lovers, Fermina and Florentino, who fell in love at young age. However, young Fermina had to marry a well-off doctor. It might seem common but the lines were so touching. Florentino here is romantic that after the husband of Fermina died, after 622 affairs and at the age when death could loom anytime, he declared his love for her once again - a love he knew had always been there and meant to last forever.

My favorite part, however, was not about them. I was moved more by Florention's last love affair with America, a young girl who loved him with all of her heart and soul - love that was innocent and genuine. Unaware of the truth that the man she loved could never reciprocate the feeling, she served him sincerely and leaving the old Florentino guilty. When America died while Florentino was in a cruise with the love of his life, Fermina, he ignored the news of her death because he knew that was the only way to keep him alive. It was when they were about to go back that he remembered the dreadful death of America and he locked himself up in the bathroom and cried - it was then he realized how much he loved her.

*This is the book featured in the movie Serendipity - the way Jonathan (John Cusack) could retrieve Sara's (Kate Beckinsale) number.*

"Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal hastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity."