The Time Keeper and After The Quake

I love reading while traveling, it makes the flights endurable and it adds value to my trips, because it brings together two of my greatest passions, reading and traveling. This was one of those books that I just grabbed because the blurb looked interesting. It is VERY EASY to read - short sequences, direct language, simple plot - so it's a good one to read even if your English level is not that high. I mean, you'll learn English and still enjoy the fun of a good plot.

Here's an extract from a review, whose opinion I share.

The Time Keeper is one of those books that, despite almost farcical sequences, works because of its message. Albom’s style of writing is fluent, simple and with an emphasis on brevity. It explores time from various aspects: its creation, its use and abuse and how its value varies from person to person.

It is not easy to imagine a world without timekeeping and yet, Albom’s right: the more we count time — and there are many ways of counting it — the more misery it creates. “Man alone measures time. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.”

Another lovely, easy-to-read book. And a pleasure to read too! Here's an extract from a review too.

Each of these stories, as their collective title suggests, takes place in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake, but because none of them is directly linked to it, they allow Murakami to examine its effects obliquely, from within his own infinitely nuanced metaphysical world.

If an earthquake is what happens beneath the ground, beyond our sight and immediate comprehension, then so too are our individual lives shaped by psychological and emotional tremors that we find hard to grasp, and subject to numerous unpredictable and violent aftershocks.