InkHeart

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I know I said that I would have to consider giving away (or selling) books after I’ve read them, but I don’t think I’ll be doing that for Inkheart.

Yes it’s a novel written with young readers in mind, and I think that’s my absolute favorite genre of all time 🙂 Anyone who loves reading, and has a heart for books would definitely appreciate this novel. I guess it would be accurate to say that books are in the heart of this work of fiction.

However, I was a bit confused in the beginning because I couldn’t quite put a finger on what specific time the story was set to. 12-year-old Meggie and his book doctor father Mo seemed to be living in this world and this time, but what age specifically, I could not understand. The way the countryide was described, and how Mo makes a living, sounds so medieval. And why doesn’t Meggie’s dad have a real job like everyone else? Come to think of it, in all the characters in the book, it is only Fenoglio who has a “job” that is still relevant upto this day. Oh okay, maybe there are book restorers but I highly doubt it. I mean, if you were searching for jobs in Philadelphia for example, will you find a book doctor on the list? I don’t think so. Are there still jugglers and fire eaters that just go from town to town to earn a living? Okay, maybe there are. Yet, there are also elements of their setting that says they’re in the 21st century. Hmm. But you’d get over that confusion, or decide that it isn’t essential to the story after all.

I don’t normally review plots, characters, and other stuff you’d expect from proper book reviews, so if that’s what you’re after, go ahead and Bing it.

So why I do like Inkheart?

It tells about how reading takes you to places and allows you to go on adventures that otherwise would have been too dangerous for you. If you devote time to your reading and cherish each word, you can almost smell, touch and see into that world. Books feed the escapist in us, just as movies and TV shows do. 🙂

Each book is its own world and taking a character out and bringing them here would be like taking fish out of water. Pero, just like each person is different from another, some characters may be able to survive and adapt to our fast-paced world and make it their own. Malas nga lang kasi, it’s the bad guys who seem to have thrived in this world (dun lang naman sa book).

I envy Elinor and her house full of books. I’d always thought that when our family finally builds our own home, we’ll have a library or rows upon rows of bookshelves. But here we are, in what seems would be our permanent residence, and it’s too small to contain all the books we’ve every owned. But that’s okay. 🙂

We can’t choose the world we are born into, but we can definitely change our story.  Diba? In Twilight, if I remember correctly, Edward said something about just playing with the cards you’re dealt with. But we can play the game to win, even if we have the losing hand. Parang ganun din yun, it’s not too late to change the outcome of your lifestory. Is this what Inkheart was really trying to teach us? I don’t think so. But that’s what I was thinking of by the end of the novel.

Have you read it? What are your thoughts?

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