104. Captivating; Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul, John & Stasi Eldredge

Something like a self-help book for women, based on Biblical background. It's very very interesting at the beginning, because their ideas and discussion topics are so fresh, provoking, and well, captivating. It discussed about women's personalities as God's, women's needs (such as to be pursued, to be romanced, etc) are God's needs too... and that God too, romanced us, like lovers do.

As I said, initially it was very interesting to read it from that kind of point of view, to see women as God's finishing touch (as women were created last)... there were some very eye-opener ideas that I enjoy. However, by the time I read half of the book, I found myself frowning alot... and put a question mark at some of the paragraph because I felt strongly against what the authors wrote... particularly on the idea that "there is an incompleteness that haunts us, makes us yearn for one another... you complete me.... it's part of the man-woman design"

Then there's also about women's vulnerability, that women needs to show their men that they need them, feminity arouse masculinity.... puhhhleeeaaasse.

Anyway, overall, an interesting book. But I dont agree with all what the authors wrote, which I am entitled to. And I am abit indifferent about whether this book is something I would recommend to other people. I think I'd only recommend it to people who are open-minded, people who are already strong to begin with, so they don't get swept away by the authors' ideas.

103. How to Get Along with Difficult People, Florence Littauer

Pop self-help Christian book on dealing with various of challenging people at church. It's interesting, but I dont think it covers enough different personalities and approaches as how to deal with them. Entertaining and helpful, but not too deep. Easy reading.

102. The Pig and I; How I Learned to Love Men (Almost) as Much as I love My Pets, Rachel Toor

The book was given to me as a gift from a friend after my break-up. It was very appropriate to me at the time; to learned about someone else's love history and boy troubles. I learned a number of few things about love, relationships, and most importantly, pets. I can identify with the author's feelings when it comes to loving a pet more than we love our men. A lovely, wonderfully written, meaningful book altogether. It's one of those books I'd love to keep in my library.

"But what he did, most importantly, was to believe so strongly in my ability to do anything - and to do it well - that i started to believe it too. Love is when someone sees you for who you are, understands what you want to be, and helps you get there..."

and nearing to the conclusion of the book

" In Plato's Symposium, a group of men spend an evening drinking together and each, in his way, gives a speech in praise of love. When it's Aristophane's turn, the comic poet tells a creation myth.

Originally, according to Aristophanes, we were all little round blobs, circle people with two ets of arms, two sets of legs, and one head with two faces, facing in different direction. They could walk, but when they really needed to move, they rolled.

At a certain point in prehistory, these roly-pollies got uppity and foolishly tried to launch an attack on the gods. The gods were not pleased. After much thought, mighty Zeus decided to put the human blobs in their place. So he smote them in two. They were split, right down the middle.

Humans were ever after condemned to search the earth, looking for their lost 'other half'.

The notion that originally we were one, we were whole, and that the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love, has messed us up in profound ways. The idea of looking for someone else to complete you, whose identity can merge with your own, is pernicuous. Aristophane's joke is on us.

Rainer Maria Rilke provides another more serious account of romantic love in his Letters to a Young Poet. Rilke warns that truly loving does not mean surrenderng to another person. Young lovers, he explains, mistakenly tend to glom onto one another until they 'can no longer tell whose outline are whose'.

Rilke's metaphor for a more evolved - still perhaps unattainable - ideal of romantic love is when 'two solitudes protect and border and greet each other'. Two solitudes who touch. How infinitely preferable an image to that of two desperate halves trying to smush themselves into one blob.

Two solitudes. How lovely. But really, how many of us, male or female, are truly realised, self-contained units? It's easier to search for somene to fill the gaps, to made up for what we are lacking in ourselves - to abdicate the responsibility to complete ourselves and just find someone who might, we think, do it for us.

This is what we must resist. The ancient Rabbi Tarphon cautioned: 'It is not necessary for you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it'. Whether it is the work of servive to some higher power, perfecting the world, oneself, or a relationship with another person, the admonition is well worth remembering. And repeating to ourselves. Perhaps the key to a good relationship is work, work, work. And then play, play, play. We must not forget to play. The work makes romantic love managable, like weeding a garden. The play makes it an earthly delight."