#favorite book
On my flight back from Manila to Bacolod, I was seated at the Row 1 seats (near the emergency exit) and I was reading Perks of Being a Wallflower when the flight attendant began talking to me. For the whole duration of the flight, we talk about books and she asked me the question "What's your favorite book?" and I told her that it's One Day although I didn't explain to her why it's my favorite book. We were about to land already.
I honestly bought the book because of the (by then) upcoming movie starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess and friends who are also avid readers, recommended me the book and one even said that she was reminded of me and my guy best friend. Oh-kay. That was awkward.
One Day, in my simplest summary of it, is about Emma and Dexter, their friendship in a span of twenty years, and how we are given glimpse of their lives in those span of years by that special day: July 15, every year, when they first met. The two characters are very different from each other, Emma being a smart middle-class woman who has low self-esteem; and Dexter, the more privileged, well-traveled, self-absorbed man, yet they seem to cannot live without each other and there are always points in the book which I could say "Just be together, will you?!"
It's a book that makes you question the "the one that got away" or the cliche question that if a man and a woman are friends, at one point in their lives, do they question themselves "Can we only be just good friends, nothing more?"
Quite an interesting book, really. At some point you'll feel nostalgic, you'll laugh because maybe you probably have been an Em or a Dex at one point of your life, and you'll cry because well... no spoilers here, just read the book and how it ends.
Here are some lines in the book that I love.
"Emma composing long, intense letters crammed with jokes and underlying, forced banter and barely concealed longing; two-thousand word acts of love on air-mail paper."
"The main thing is that I think about you a lot, that's all. Dex and Em, Em and Dex. Call me sentimental, but there's no one in the world that I'd like to see get dysentery more than you." -- Dexter, from his letter to Emma in India
"Oh you know me, I have no emotions. I'm a robot. Or a nun. A robot nun." -- Emma
"If you're my friend I should be able to talk to you, but I can't, and if I can't talk to you, well what's the point of you? Of us?" -- Emma
"Dexter, I love you so much. So, so much, and I probably always will. I just don't like you anymore. I'm sorry." -- Emma
"When I didn't see you, I thought about you everyday, I mean every day in some way or another -- even if it was just "I wish Dexter could see this" or "Where's Dexter now?" or "Christ, that Dexter, what an idiot!" you know what I mean, and seeing you today, well, I thought, I'd get you back -- my best friend." -- Emma
"Finally, she loved someone and felt fairly confident that she was loved in return. If someone asked Emma, as they sometimes did in parties, how she and her husband had met, she told them "We grew up together."
So, what's your favorite book?

