WHY YOU SHOULD READ
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
This book, aw this book. It’s the kind of book that you kind of feel like you accomplished something after reading it. And no, it’s not unbearably long. It reads quite fast actually, because the chapters are short.
Now, this is the story of four people that in some way are brought together. You have Tomas, a womanizer, his wife Tereza, who really needs a bit more self-esteem, Sabina, who is Tomas mistress and BFF, and finally Franz who is in love with Sabina. Nice love squary right? Oh! The dog is important too! She’s called Karenin, after Anna Karenina’s husband. You know, from the Tolstoy book? Keira Knightley’s in that movie, it just got out, Anna Karenina, you know, the bipolar? Though I’m getting sidetracked here!
So, basically, this is the story of their lives enfolding, and something really interesting about this book is how the narrator is present in his writing. Sometimes, you’ll have whole chapters where he’s just blabbing about stuff, and not talking about the story itself. It gets pretty interesting to read, honestly. Oh and if my memory serves right, there’s a whole chapter—mind you it is short—on crap, so talk about getting on a tangent, right?
So yeah, it’s a great book and you ought to have read something of Kundera at least once in your life. Also, if you’re an animal lover, you’re going to cry like a bitch at the end! mouhahaha
Quotes: “Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”
