Books: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
The calm that reading a book, lost in it, in a quiet place, solo, a cup of coffee on the side washes over me... not my best photo, but a genuine representation of the situation. A little slice of magic, try and read every day.
I'd heard of this book a fair few times, I'd been told it was a classic, it kept popping up on my social media...and finally, I read it! I powered through it quicker than a few books of late, I go through phases, and finished it up on a beautiful trip on a houseboat on the Hawksebury River surrounded by calm waters (lucky thing!).
The story itself has its own poignant message to be unfurled at the end of the novel, but the book is littered with sentiments I wanted to scrawl on scrap paper throughout. It ruminates on life's offerings, great questions, society, our emotions, our expectations... I was also a sucker for the artistic, European landscape and characters that filled the book. It juxtaposes the destruction and death in the wake of invasion and Communism. The art, philosophy, photography, documentation, and the way these people looked out on the world drew me in. The thoughts that lit up their minds, the way in which these thoughts could be so abstractly different from one person to the next... Milan Kundera has captured the human spirit, mind, capacity so very well.
It was actually a book which made me exclaim on more than one occasion just how thoroughly I was enjoying it. I declared to a gorgeous friend over brunch as she excitedly shared that she had already read it, to my boyfriend as I patted the book exuberantly or threw it down in bed...yes, true enthusiasm. I love that world, that feeling, a book can draw you into. Parts made my heart hurt, others made me angry with the unjust nature of it all, bits confused me...
It's a book I plan to keep on my bookshelf ongoing, to read again in the future and remember so many of the sentiments I reflected I would like to bring into my own life: a way of looking at our world, our relationships, the human condition, our mind, our life...