The book that changed my life

Honestly, I'm not a bookworm. I don't like reading novels, poems or whatever articles. I hate seeing bunch of words with no photos at all. Believe me, I don't have good reading skills. I observed it when I was in highschool. We have this subject where we read different articles then there are questions below regarding the article and I really suck on it. I can't easily understand what I read. Reading comprehension is one of the parts of entrance examinations I'm afraid of. So that's the reason why I'm not fond of reading.

But I came to a point that I become interested in reading. Do you want to know what's my inspiration? Friendster. Yes. On the profile section, there is this Favorite Books field where you can put the your favorite books. Everytime I see my friends' profiles, I envy them that they have something written on that field. So I decided to read a novel just for the sake of having something to put on that field.

It's not easy at first especially that the first novel I read was Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. It's translated to English from French and it uses old English. I needed to repeat a page for about three to four times just to understand it. Crazy, right? But believe it or not, I was able to finish it in three weeks! It's an achievement for me. haha. Then I started to read more novels, and the latest I read was Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho.. I think I improved because I read it in just three days. I was even amazed with myself. And that novel somehow changed my life.


Veronika Decides to Die is a story of a lady who has an almost perfect life yet she wants to kill herself by taking tranquilizers. Her first attempt didn't work out and she woke up in a place for mad people. During her few remaining days there, she met different people who taught her different things about life. She experienced everything she haven't experience all her life like hatred, love and sexual awakening. While her life is coming to an end, she slowly realizes that she has lots of reasons to live, and how much she really wants to live her life.

The novel shows that despite of having a perfect life, a person still needs something to be happy. We should not just limit ourselves to what kind of life we have now but we should also learn to explore life, learn to know more people, and learn from them. We should learn to go beyond that to be able to experience life's hidden treasures. Killing yourself is not the best solution to any problems. There are lots of people around you to help you. You just have to open your eyes and heart to appreciate them.