Reading Update

Nothing quite like the story of a Brazilian prostitute in search for love redemption in Geneva to entertain my morning subway ride. Page turner, wouldn't read it twice. Hard to focus on the plot sometimes with kids around staring over your shoulder at repetitive adulterous words. They teach 'em English really young these days.

Most memorable passage is definitely the intro and (predictably?) it doesn't even belong to Coelho:

For I am the first and the last
I am the venerated and the despised
I am the prostitute and the saint
I am the wife and the virgin
I am the mother and the daughter
I am the arms of my mother
I am barren but my children are many
I am the married woman and the spinster
I am the woman who gives birth and she who never procreated
I am the consolation for the pain of birth
I am the wife and the husband
And it was my man who created me
I am the mother of my father,
I am the sister of my husband
And he is my rejected son
Always respect me
For I am the shameful and the magnificent one

Hymn to Isis, third or fourth century BC, discovered in Nag Hammadi

Now it makes me wanna listen to Meredith Brooks.