"Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man that a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living  spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day  to have a new and different sun.

The joy of reading

I have just finished reading The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett in which he writes as if he were the Queen who has just discovered the joy of reading. In this short yet thought-provoking novel, the Queen becomes wholly absorbed in the supposedly self-indulgent pleasure of reading and finds herself understanding her surroundings and subjects in a much more sensitive manner than her previously less-literate self. Those working close to her object to her new found pastime, seeing it as selfish and inappropriate due to its idol nature and lack of visible positive change to those in contact with the Queen. After a while her time spent reading evolves into time spent writing as she feels that this is a healthy compromise for all affected by her leisure pursuits. Writing, she considers, is an act of doing as opposed to just being and therefore less selfish as something physically happens out of the action. Fictitious as it is, the notion that reading or allowing yourself to be completely absorbed in an interest is selfish and disconnecting from ones surroundings is a sad one. I have always valued time spent on personal pleasures, such as reading, valuable and rewarding. There is a very fine line between selfish and looking after yourself but understand the line of selfishness to be crossed when other people are negatively affected by the action in question. It is 1.30am on a Saturday night and I have just spent the last two hours reading myself, instead of joining good friends in town. I am sure they have not lost out by my absence and I feel I have not missed out as I have enjoyed my "old-before-my-time" night with book and mug of peppermint tea in hand.

Random Acts of Heroic Love by Danny Scheinmann

"How strange Leo though, that they should have been involved in two bus crashes. Could that really have been coincidence or had fate been chasing Eleni? What if fate did exist? Eleni was frightened of only one thing in Latin America: buses. Not illness or crime or any other horror, only buses. And in the end the buses had got her, perhaps somewhere deep inside her soul she had known her fate.

On the other hand, Leo reasoned maybe it had nothing to do with fate at all. It could work the other way round. We might be so frightened of something that we bring it upon it upon ourselves. You're  standing on a ledge and you have a fear of falling, the fear makes you lose your balance. You're frightened of dogs, the dogs smells the fear and bites you. That makes some sense, but how does this apply to the bus crash? That would imply the existence of the paranormal. Leo couldn't stop himself entertaining the idea.

Was Alexandra right? Could God have been harvesting for heaven? Or was Eleni just in the wrong place at the wrong time?

His mind was racing, searching for as explanation or the inexplicable. Fate, telekinesis, luck, religion - now there  was no territory that he would not explore. He was like a leaf buffeted in the breeze, unable to find his way back up the tree that had given him stability."