I started reading The Gourmet a few weeks after internship started, only to complete it about a month or two ago (I had this post saved in draft for a terribly long time, lazy).

The Gourmet is narrated by Jean, a renowned food critic in France, who is lying on his deathbed at the start of the story. He is at the verge of slipping into eternal unconsciousness, but is held back as he still desires a "taste", a "flavour" that he cannot quite put a finger on. His devoted, neglected wife, devastated at his impending demise, is ready to accede to his every request.

The Gourmet is divided into chapters named after a particular type of food; meat, fish, whisky, etc. Jean centres his narration on food, every description is detailed and colourful. Jean hardly talks about anybody else with emotional depth, and even if so, rare and brief. The existence of people insignificant and secondary to him.

His love does not extend beyond food. You can see this in the other chapters, where his children, wife, mistress, housekeeper tell their tales. His angry children, void of fatherly love; his lovelorn wife, neglected and lifeless; his mistress, only an object of lust. No matter their emotions, they have one underlying thing in common: their desire for Jean's affections.

How could Jean, a selfish, soulless man, have stirred so much complex, conflicting emotions?
Humans lust for things they cannot acquire, and Jean's unchanged nonchalance only intensified their want for his love. Does getting something seemingly beyond our reach give us a greater sense of satisfaction when we eventually do? The value of the unattainable is great.

Does love make one falter and vulnerable? Jean died, he lost his place on earth, the pleasures of life - but he found his "taste" and died in whole, while the others will have to live on with a void for they will never have a "taste" of his love.

I did not find The Gourmet particularly enchanting, but it was a good, short read. I think Jean's search for his final desire was what kept me reading on. Muriel Barbery has brought food to life with words, but I think I'd prefer tasting it (re-read this sentence and found it extremely cheeessssssy).
this is my first post on this site, i had this waiting as a draft for weeks, wrote ~ninety per cent of it as an email to jing zhi (it felt natural to type 'dear jing zhi' first) at work one morning, the email box draws words i like from me, i thank her for this, it became a productive space when i started exchanging emails with her

i'd always thought of having a separate blog apart from my personal one dedicated to talking about the books i've read, loved/disliked, when i'm done with a book i'm fretted with conclusions, revelations about it, about myself, i can't seem to put into speech towards most people around, yet i am weary almost all the time, apprehensive about the perfectionist that crawls under every second i spend on writing, and the poison of these thoughts gradually ate at the value of my wanting. but when the dearest girl mentioned it the positivity of the idea was reawakened, for she is the one person i can have genuine conversation with, conversation that revolves around everything in the world, not just the meaningless things we teenagers think of as important currently, things that will pass, but opinions about timeless objects, art, souls like characters, music, life, death, art, books. when i know someone else as virtuous as her believes in the same concept of writing, writing because we want to, because 'there is a voice inside me that won't be still', [bad feeling] goes away

sorry for being pompous, we won't apologize anymore after this


jing zhi lent me this book with all the grace in her heart. if it were i and someone else on the receiving end, i'd have been reluctant to share this, because this is a book that stays with you, reminds you of the fragility of life, of a love that is noble yet only imaginable (how can you possibly think of it as real, i'm a cryptic of love and the likes), makes anything else feel irrelevant at least momentarily, like my mom's daily, constant stories that sounds all normal in the beginning but turn out to be indirect ways of reemphasizing her many ideal attributes. it is a book that 'comes alive', when reading it i could hear, feel things, not like with other books where i could only see, paint a visual picture of the characters in my head

there are three main characters in the book, and since it is a love story at its base, they are a girl, hazel grace, a boy, augustus waters, and cancer which plagues them both. whenever i think of augustus i feel like he is a handsome fellow, because hazel, who is the narrator, said so. is it weird that i imagine him in a checkered abercrombie and fitch shirt all the time. at this point i also feel like i should use 'was' instead of the present tense for, spoiler alert, he dies in the end. a book by peter van houten, who is a fictional character, called an imperial affliction, which is a fictional book, is what augustus thinks brought him and hazel together, but i feel not, i think what the author is trying imply from this sentence, whole relationship, is that people are constantly trying to find excuses for a meeting, a getting-together, like a thing marking a start of a relationship gives it a less juvenile ground when in actuality it could be conceived from mere nothingness, mere wanting and desire. ok i don't actually think he meant for it to mean that but i feel that way

anyway 'aia', an abbreviation used commonly in the book for 'the book that brought us together', is narrated by a girl called anne who also has cancer, this girl happens to be peter van houten's daughter, and at the end, mid-sentence, the story ends. this is also one of the sub-plots of the book, the pair of 'star-crossed' lovers uses augustus's cancer wish grant (because hazel used hers years back when she thought she would die on a cliche trip to disneyland. i will never want to use any wish on disneyland, i will want to visit all the cafes in cesky krumlov, drink all the teas in the world except ones with mint) to meet peter van houten in amsterdam to find out the ending out the book, an epilogue if you will, as things without proper resolve at the end feels shitty, i should think especially so for a cancer patient. he appears to be a jerk when he meets them but i think only because he's scarred by the promise he made his daughter before she passed which he was unable to fulfill for twenty years, makes me think that if his daughter was still alive she'd be at a nice age of twenty-eight, beautiful, classy, learnt, feels hopeful, but she's dead, things are not hopeful again

i was half-hoping that 'the fault in our stars' would end mid-sentence too, this way 'aia' would truly mean something greater in it, but it did not. i like the ending nevertheless, i did not cry as much as i thought i would, i think when you expect yourself to cry your brain keeps some tears in, the tears that are emitted upon the sudden knowing that you are crying then and there, if you knew beforehand you were going to cry, those tears don't come out, they are saved for another occasion which is good i think. my heart has a fresh wound though

at a lot of points in the book i wanted to highlight something, i nearly did, but then walking towards my desk where i stash my highlighters i realised that it was not my book, i felt sad, also felt like telling jing zhi that i don't mind her highlighting my books, i want to know what quotes meant things to her, want my book to be filled with imprints of a person i know 'gets' it even if in a totally different way from i. i'm not saying this because i want to highlight her books too

i will stop talking about this book here, i feel like my procrastination has led me to forget things about it hence if i keep writing this 'review' it won't be genuine anymore. 'review' seems like an inappropriate word to describe this, we are not rating novels here are we. months~ later i would read this again, feel different about the quotes i like now i think

i recommend this book highly
especially for those who are too optimistic
anyone who likes a happy, yet not so happy ending

iris x
I am currently reading Anagrams by Lorrie Moore, still halfway through The Gourmet and Prisoner of Azkaban. This is not a book review (Iris, I hope you don't mind, thank you for the wonderful layout by the way), but just a little start-up note.
I told Iris, we should have a personal book review blog - I always feel compelled to share my thoughts after finishing a good read, and what better way than to share it with someone equivalent and dear to me on a platform that we can always revisit.

A colleague who sits directly beside me asked me about my plans for the weekend yesterday. My standard answer for anyone, everyone in fact, would be "staying at home" - I added "reading", hoping with small measure that he'd think I'm a little learned and not just some stupid dumb airhead intern who messes up every morning.
He also asked me what kind of genre I liked - I told him, self-deprecatingly, "romance". It is my favourite genre.

What I don't really like about romance, however, is that it gives people an unrealistic, delusional view about love. I love sappy love stories and happy endings (even though most people think it's very "shallow" and "narrow-minded") because it makes me feel happy to know that the protagonist is happy - I am also going to put shred my already non-existent dignity into smaller pieces by admitting that I hope I'll have some sort of happy ending myself. This is why Hollywood makes so much money, it capitalises on our little fantasies. Many sit in anticipation for the arrival of their happily-ever-after, thinking that life warrants them some sort of happiness; searching for love has become a focal point in people's lives.

That, however, is a small part. I am no longer satisfied with just reading mindless happy endings - I want to have some sort of enlightenment or revelation after finishing a read. I want to highlight lines that touch me (this is Iris-inspired), but I have a sister who rummages through my books randomly (so annoying) and her seeing my highlighted paragraphs feels like an invasion of privacy.

I am sorry for sounding like a pretentious know-it-all; I am not a very likeable person by nature.
I just want to end of this post with a cheesy note to Iris: thank you for being my friend and a part of my life.

JZ