Saturday morning and I am covered in hives from my allergic reaction to eating bad pho last night. Even though I could sense that there was something wrong with the meat I kept eating anyways. Thanks to that, I’ve had an allergic reaction to something in the soup. Not a reaction in the sense of my throat getting blocked but rather being covered in hives like I’m having a massive mosquito bite all over my body. Yes, very uncomfortable. But even worse to wake up and realise you still have the left over hive stamp all over my face. Never had a problem with acne, but I now know what it feels to have bad acne.

So I’m hoping that it will go down soon as I have a lunch date with my old friend Wendy and Evan is playing at Utopia. I will never go back to that pho place anymore. I should have heeded the warning.

Which brings me to writing about the latest book I conquered A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. I bought this novel in a collection of series involving books that had been banned sometime during their moment of publication. I have tried to read it 2 times before succeeding for the third time. Only because I had watched the movie, I thought it would be similar. But oh was I wrong. The language was the first thing that threw me off balance. Burgess novel is essentially about violence – acts of violence. Rather than describing violence in word – which I can imagine could be a gut wrenching read – Burgess gets words from Russia and uses it consistently throughout A Clockwork Orange. I only found out that he had derived those words from Russia after reading the novel. I initially thought it was just made up gibberish but in fact if you can understand Russian then chances are you would be able to understand this novel a lot better than an english speaking person – taking that you can understand English.

So once I got used to the language it was an engrossing read which brings up many deep issues in society and which are relevant now. It asks is man better off with the ability to choose to do bad or no choice but to do good? A Clockwork Orange explores it in a way that is extreme so you would choose the former condition. Also worth checking is Stanley Kubricks A Clockwork Orange film which lifts the novel and makes the film stand on its own two legs. The novel on its own is worth in reading itself for its play with language and word play used very creatively to paint acts of violence.