The problem with books

is that I can't stop reading until I've finished it.

I would relate the following feeling to waking up to my phone's alarm, only to get out of my double-decker to press the Snooze button, and then escaping the muddled rush of the morning to return to the inviting, unchanging warmth of my bed. Here it goes:

I was reading Jia: A Novel of North Korea, and doing what books do, I felt like I was being transported to another world - one of fear and danger and of fighting to live for the sake of it. My mind was going crazy taking it all in and producing a vivid movie in my head.

After I had finished about more than half the book, I decided it was time to put it down and do what I had to do - stuff for the Exco and upcoming Council webpage. But my mind was still in a whirl from the book. I felt kind of lightheaded; my brain just wasn't working. I couldn't focus.

I opened my email and looked at the list of new messages - it was longer than it had been in a very long time (I check my Gmail super frequently since I'm online so much). I read some email about the Home Team Associates Programme that was for selected students who had fulfilled some certain requirements - oh gosh, I do want to tour the prison cells and all that, but I've got the ELL internship on that week!

(On a side note, this email startled me for a while because I had just been reading that North Korean book which was talking about prison cells and guards and policemen, and here I was, being invited to check out what they do at the Police Force, Prison Service etc. HAHA)

Anyway, then there were the list of other emails I had to attend to, not short at all and demanding a considerable bit of attention and work. Of course, I love Council and doing Council stuff really is a passion for me, but this time I felt like my mind just couldn't adjust. There were stuff I had to edit and rewrite and other documents I had to look through very thoroughly, and I just couldn't concentrate. My mind was a spinning whirl.

Then I decided I might as well appease my mind if I wasn't going to be able to focus and do my tasks well anytime soon. I closed my laptop lid, jumped back on the couch and went back to Jia.

Weirdly enough, I felt like I had returned to the world I belonged to. The long emails were a multitude of words mixed into a blur, but I was very clear about everything that was going on in the other world - the world of Jia. And my mind was nowhere but there, in North Korea and in China, where Jia had escaped to.

But seriously, an ending that leaves the reader hanging?! That's as good as not finishing the book! I can't rest without a closure. Perhaps it's because it's a real story. This book was published in 2007 - wonder how things are going now.

This is the first book of the year I've read, excluding the Lit texts and Kane and Abel, which I had already read in Sec 2.

Gosh I can't afford to get addicted to books again!