It's Weird What I Hold Onto

Who here has read The Reader by Bernhard Schlink?

If you don't have your hand raised, you should. Because there's a portion of this book that just haunts me.

I thought the book was good when I read it, but I didn't think it was life changing or anything. But now it's 2 years later and sometimes I think about one of the characters and she breaks my heart.

Her name is Hanna. The whole book is about her trying to hide a secret. And how this one secret, this one shame, dictates her whole life.

I think the story culminates with this passage, when the main character Michael figures her out and the details of her life click into place.

He says:

She was not pursuing her own interests, but fighting for her own truth, her own justice... It was a pitiful truth and pitiful justice, but it was hers, and the struggle for it was her struggle.

She must have been completely exhausted... She was struggling, as she always had struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn't do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats."

And I just love this. Because, I don't know, I just do. It just resonates with me. I pity her and understand her at the same time. And I realize that this is precisely why I want to live my life as authentically as possible. And that this is precisely why that is so damn hard.

On a completely unrelated note, I can't stop listening to Adele's new album. I love it.

Song of the Day: Turning Tables by Adele

Bonus Song of the Day: Rolling in the Deep by Adele