The True Want for Happiness

            I just finished the book "The Lady in the Car with the Glasses and a Gun." The book, while somewhat stodgy at first, turned into a delicious thriller with twists and turns so sudden that it was almost impossible to see them coming and an ending that both satiated and hungry the reader. When I last left Dany Longo she had been mysteriously attacked, but that was all that was wrong. But we learn that was only a chip of the iceberg that was her problems on the journey. It seems that wherever Dany goes, people believe they have seen her before, that she has already visited all of the places she's been: the gas station, the Renaissance hotel: the beach: even the cafe she stopped to get an espresso at. But that's not all, Dany opens the trunk to find a dead body of a notorious womanizer of Paris wrapped in a rug and deposited with a gun. Dany attempts to solve the mystery of the man's murder and her apparent escapades about France. When she stumbles upon the answer, her boss attempts to kill her and it is revealed that is was he and his wife who killed the man and attempted to pin it on Dany, so convincingly that Dany believes she did it. Dany hears his story, leaves and gets married to a man in England.
                 The ending seemed strange to me, after all of Dany's adventures, her mental instability and mania: her constant desire to be on her own, how could she just settle down and marry someone? How could her weekend of paranoia and thrills not affect her? But then I realized that the trip was what Dany needed to move on from her "just there" state of being perennially worried for no reason. The trip's insanity was the climax of her madness, the thing that pushed her to the edge. If she had submitted to the mystery and accepted her apparent guilt for the murder and hide the body away, she never would have moved on from the horrible monotony her life held before. By solving the mystery she took an active role against being the victim of circumstance as she had before (her parents death, her lack of funds, her lack of love) and her life turned out much differently. This led her to happiness in the end, as she passed the test of being passive and lacking any zeal for life (as she had been) or being actively involved in her life, not just accepting what was given.
               To conclude, in order for Dany to settle down, and be seemingly "normal." She had to confront the thing about herself that was holding herself back in a finite and important way. She was tested on whether she truly wanted to be happy and, passing this, got everything she wanted.

Elementary My Dear Watson

                   As a wise woman once said, "life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you might get." I guess the same goes for books because I did not figure on reading half of the things that I do. For example, today I began reading A Study In Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Or a you plebeians might understand, a Sherlock Holmes book. This is the first Sherlock Holmes book both in chronology and in my reading life. My parents have always tried to get me to read the Sherlock Holmes series, indeed my mom pre-downloaded  A Study In Scarlet to my birthday present, a kindle (on which to read Sherlock Holmes, presumably). I put off the reading as long as I could but was accosted by the awful fate of having nothing to read except for the dreaded book. However, as I said before, "you never know what you might get" because I LOVED it. The book was witty, challenging to read, introduced me to new vocabulary and the story was fascinating. I was worried about many things that classics are prone to include, such as flowery paragraph-long descriptions of a chair and other equally non-central objects, slow paced plot lines and overly cautious and wordy dialogue that holds a challenge for the impatient mind of a teenager. However the descriptions were brief and succinct, the plot line was fast paced with the murderer found in around 100 pages, and the dialogue exciting and short. To speak briefly, it was a surprise that the book was enjoyable.
                     Not only was it enjoyable, it was also relatable. The book is told from the perspective of Dr. Watson, a seemingly staid man who finds adventure with the insane Sherlock Holmes and begins to escape from his mundane and painful life as a listless army casualty of the Afgan war. They meet on a quest for a house and end up roommates of sorts. The story between the two friends is relatable, as no one that I know solves murders in 1800s London. Sherlock Holmes is the crazy friend who is always niggling you into doing outlandish things and often embarrassing yourself in public, but he always gets you out unscathed and ready for the next adventure. I have friends like that, and to some people I am that friend. All the Sherlock Holmes of the world do is get you out of your comfort zone. And at the end of the day you've had fun in their crazy carefree whirlwind of a life. However, the fact that they can all of this and survive while you worry yourself with the repercussions is sometimes annoying, as Watson complains about cleaning up Holmes' messes. So the book was also relatable making it an easier way.
                     The friendship between Watson and Holmes was not just relatable, but a key factor in this first book. Conan Doyle is setting up the two companions for a long haul in the books to come, so establishing their friendship was one of the main purposes of this first book, I infer. Murder is a messy business and trust is key to any working relationship. There's a reason people synchronize watches, its to be on the same page, and that's what needs to happen with Watson and Holmes. So Doyle establishes their friendship subtly, as real friendships are made as well. First it starts with accepting the friendship, this happens when Watson sticks with Holmes when the crime is discovered. Watson has been at war, he has seen horrible things and doesn't need to be around more killing, but he sticks by Holmes, showing that he knows that Holmes needs him as much as vice versa. The second point is when Watson backs Holmes up with a gun, again the war has traumatized Watson but he is willing to look past that and roll with the adventure. I can see their friendship growing stronger throughout the books.
                      All in all, sir Arthur Conan Doyle has created a timeless masterpiece of fiction that I'm so glad that I read. Both the lack of values that I dislike in classic and the relatable budding friendship between Watson and Holmes make it exciting. Bring me the next one!