Damnit. Church. Books.

Damn it, I just lost my temper again. Despite my attempts to remain calm, I still lost it.

In anycase, I went to a church today. Yep, the very first time I entered one. It was for my grandmother's baptism ceremony, and my younger sister and I went to support her, as representatives of my family. It was unexpectedly more of like a choir practice session than more preaching. It was more because I didn't go for the earlier preaching, and only arrived in time for the baptism ceremony. Regardless to say, it was an eye-opener, but I think I won't be converting anytime soon. I like to remain a free-thinker, and in any case, I've read too many books questioning religion to want to go into Christianity.

Terry Pratchett's 'Nation' does this. When a huge tsunami sweeps his whole nation of islanders off the world, Mau is the only one left. When he realises this first, he wants to drown himself, but the wave has also swept a ship onto the island, of which there is one survivor (I don't count the parrot), a girl. With this girl, he pulls himself together and becomes Chief of a island consisting of increasingly survivors from the Wave. In this book, Mau is trying to do his best to recover religious objects from the sea.
Give thanks to the gods or you will bring bad luck, he thought. What, right now, would be bad luck? What could the gods do to him that was worse than what they had already done already? A wave of ange rose in him like bile, and he felt the darkness in him open up. Had the people called on the god when the wave broke? Had his family clung to these stones? Did the gods watch them as they tried to reach higher ground? Did the gods laugh?
His teeth chattered. He felt cold under the hot sun. But fire filled his head, burning up his thoughts.
'Did you hear their screams?'he yelled to the empty sky. 'Did you watch them? You gave them to Locaha (the god of death)! I will not thank you for my life! You could have saved theirs!'
-Page 115 and 116 of Nation.

Well, Asyraf asked about 'Remembering Raquel', a book by Vivian Vande Velde. Previous books by VVV has been interesting, so when I saw this new book, I took it up despite grimacing at the book sleeve. I normally wouldn't recommend books unless I was crazy about it, so I won't recommend this one. This book does incite a lot of emotions while I was reading it though, anger, satisfaction, regret, sympathy. I was angry at how tactless some of the classmates were, satisfied that Raquel had at least impacted a lot of people's lives for better, and not worse. I regretted with the father when he recounted how he should have been more caring towards the daughter, just that one time when he didn't respond as caringly as he normally did, she died. I sympathized with the best friend as she wondered if she could have done more, whether she could have prevented the death. So for this book, I'll give it an A1, for being so successful in creating realistic characters, feelings, emotions, and situations. But it's not a book someone in depression should read.

'But don't tell me that I am supposed to thank the gods that I'm alive to remember that everyone else died!' - Mau, page 116, Nation, Terry Pratchett.