Last Christmas, my younger sister Bautina (Jocelyn) granted my wish to give me a book entitled “A Thousand Splendid Suns” written by Khaled Hosseini as her Christmas gift.  But it actually took me four long months to decide whether to read it or not.

It took me that long to decide if I wanted to read the book or not because I do not want to subject myself to the same roller-coaster emotions I felt when I read Khaled Hosseini’s first novel (The Kite Runner).

True enough, the story twists and turns its way through the turmoil and mayhem that ensued Afghanistan for the past decades.  The story mainly focuses on the forlorn lives of two women thrown together by fate (Mariam and Laila).  Their lives became irrevocably entangled together despite a 19-year age difference being both the wives of a brute shoemaker.  It is a powerful story about bonds of friendship, the power of human love, the beauty of blood relations, the appalling cultural inequality and the struggle to survive.

The anesthesia-less Caesarian childbirth part, the food deprivation section of the story plus the graphic brutal physical and emotional abuses experienced by both characters will fill your hearth with horror.  Even now that I have finished reading the book, I still felt the sorrow, frustration and helplessness of the women depicted in the manuscript.  It made me feel like I had gone on a journey with these two suffering women and had been beaten down and raised-up emotionally alongside them.

The words and images are rooting through my body, it made me furiously angry that such hopeless plight can exist in such a repressive regime.  This book is not for the wimps!  It’s not for the faint of heart!  It’s very shocking.  It’s very disturbing.  It’s very powerful.

Ang galing! Nakaka-takot!  Nakaka-lungkot!  Nakaka-iyak!  Nakaka-inis!  Basta nakaka!

I was too haunted, I wanted to stop reading.  I was also too curious and hopeful, I wanted to continue reading.  This is the ambiguous emotion I felt while reading the book entitled “The Kite Runner”, a masterpiece authored by Khaled Hosseini.

This is a very powerful novel.  I feel as if every page is a sharp knife cutting deep into my heart, slicing it relentlessly in the most painful way one can conceive.  I was totally immersed in this very gripping story.  I couldn’t stop myself  until I reached the last word of the last chapter.  The book grabbed me until the very end, where I felt not happy, not sad, but hopeful.

Reading the book was like an incredible journey towards Afghanistan, its splendor and its turmoil.  I was taken to magnificient Afghanistan and its horrible nightmare of oppression and violence.

The character of Hassan equals the most brilliantly crafted personality ever to grace the pages of any novel I have read.  Anyone who has a heart cannot resist being moved by Hassan’s moral fiber, his innocence, his nobility in the face of injustices, his loyalty in the face of betrayal and his untimate sacrifice for a friend who has turned on him for no reason other than his own inadequacies.

I admit that I am one who does not read a lot.  But I must say that this is one of the best pieces of modern day literature I have ever read.

I felt the book.

Lalaine Legaspi, an officemate and co-manager from the present company I am working with is responsible for introducing a very enlightening book that is worth reading over and over again.  Maybe, she realized that I am such a dickhead of a worker and needs a lot to enlighten.  She persuaded me of reading a book and even let me scrounge and bring home her copy.  But after perusing each page, I just realized that I must own one for me to pick and read whenever I feel like doing.

‘Only The Real Matters’ by Francis J. Kong is a precious laudable reading material that kept me sound and busy last weekend.  This is actually the 4^th time that I have completely read the book.  The writing is simple, the stories presented are cleverly uncomplicated and the values expounded are totally not preachy.

A collection of Mr. Kong’s notable essays and vignettes, ‘Only The Real Matters’ presents insightful glimpses of various successes and triumphs of people in the world of business without overlooking the values of Christian living.  It also imparts notable work ethics that every person must possess to be successful at work and life as a whole.

I may not yet be successful but this book makes my elusive common sense… common.