Shutter Island

I finished reading Shutter Island this past weekend. Finally, since I had to start it over twice. It actually turned out to be a decent book. It reminded me of the movie, Fight Club, in a way.

It's actually kinda scary. Schizophrenia, that is. How the mind can perceive the world to be one way, only that way might not be the actual way and who's to say one way or the other.

It's like your most trusted friends and family, placing a piece of fruit in front of you. They ask you, "What is that?" You easily reply with, "an apple." They give you a long hard stare and your Mother, sighs. No Hun, it's an "orange." You turn and insist, "No it's an apple!" As anger and confusion begins to set in you start to question yourself for these are your most trust friends and family, why would they lie? How long before you too believe that the piece of fruit is an orange and not an apple? If you don't agree, even though you disagree will they deem you crazy? Will you deem yourself insane?

The book really gets you thinking and wondering, is this life I'm living real or fantasy?

"Teddy felt her in him, pressed at the base of his throat. He could see her sitting in the early July haze, in that dark orange light a city gets on summer nights just after sundown, looking up as he pulled to the curb and the kids returned to their stick ball game in the middle of the street, and the laundry flapped overhead, and she watched him approach with her chin propped on the heel of her hand the cigarette held up by her ear, and he'd brought flowers for once, and she was so simply his love, his girl, watching him approach as if she were memorizing him and his walk and those flowers and this moment, and he wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could, when you felt as if you'd been born for only one moment, and this, for whatever reason, was it."

Right after I finished the book, I HAD to see the movie. Overall it was a pretty good book to movie interpretation. Only a few things were left out, however you got the gist of what was going on. I strongly suggest you read the book before you see the movie. As it is with any book, it just makes the movie that much better.

I won't give any details on the book, because I don't want to spoil it. I find that reading books blindly without knowing what it's truly about makes it that much better!

Up next, is The Friday Night Knitting Club. I'm about 50 pages into it and it seems to be a decent book. I'm more excited to start reading The Death and Life of Charlie St Cloud. The movie comes out on July 30th. From what I've read, and I think I've read too much, to be honest, it's going to be a tear jerker and really good!