Umberto Eco / How to Travel with a Salmon & other essays

Saw the recommendation from anobii online bookshelf and managed to get it from the library.

It's an interesting read.... did some brief readup on the author and actually this italian novelist / columnist was well-known for his novel "The name of the rose", but i couldn't find this book on the library shelves... but this book is a recommendation for anybody who wants some light reading, easy to digest (for pple who aren't very proficient in the language like me)...

i had good laughs while i held the book the whole of last afternoon.
U don't have to follow chapters, u can just flip to any page and start reading and u'll still get good stuffs.

I especially loved this one: "How it begins and how it ends".
Eco, during his university days loved movies and dramas, but becos of certain rules and regulations, he had to leave the theatre/cinema before midnight. Thus he did not have the luxury of knowing the ending of each and every movie/drama he went to. His friend on the other hand, was in charge of ticketing, and the numbers of latecomers alwiz let him end up missing the front part of the movie/drama. Thus he did not have the opportunity to know what went on in the beginning that laid the plots. So one day they sat down and talked about it. The anguish and disappointment they had was the same even though one was about the start and the other about the end. So they started to talk about it and filled each other about the parts they had missed. And Eco reflects after the event...

"Will we be happier afterwards? Or will we have lost the freshness of those who are privileged to experience art as real life, where we enter after the trumps have been played, and we leave without knowing who's going to win or lose the game?"

probably we will alwiz moan about things we've missed and we will alwiz be curious about things that we had missed. The curiosity may hang on us for many years till it was dug up again, and finally the key to your question was found... but later we realised... SO WHAT?

Life goes on. :)