Saving Fish From Drowning
There we go. I just finished one of the most boring novels ever–Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan. It was really not exciting. I don’t recommend it unless you have a lot of time to spare but one should make his/her own decisions. For me, the best bit to the book must be this quote right at the start:
A pious man explained to his followers: “It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. “Don’t be scared,” I tell those fishes. “I am saving you from drowning.” Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes.
- Anonymous
I find that incredibly amusing. Sadly, I did not see that tie in with the rest of the story. Perhaps because I was bored and didn’t bother to analyse like I would have for an English exam but all in all, I wasn’t too engaged in the story until I was about four-fifths of the way through.
I am proud I managed to finish it though. For I also found a bookmark left in the first one-fifth of the book by the person who borrowed it from the library before me.
Off on another topic, would anyone meet up with Internet friends? I mean, you see the news reporting stories of people getting kidnapped and raped by “friends” they met over the Internet. Doesn’t that intimidate anyone? But then I also learnt from school that the media gives off wrong impressions of crime rates to the general public, especially about “street crimes” like homicides and rape because that’s what viewers are interested in. So, what do you say? Better safe than sorry? What about the numerous other cases of good Internet friends meeting up to become “real life” friends?
