The Final Descent

I took a bit of a long trip this morning--long for me anyway--out to the Bali Mall Galeria, which is just at the nearest edge of Kuta. I had not been there in quite a long while, as the last time I went there the trip exhausted me in the extreme and I fell down in the mall. Although I used to make this trip once a week to grocery shop at the large Hypermart in the mall, I decided on that last occasion that my Galeria days were over. 

Feeling rather well this morning, however, and relatively energetic compared to my usual slug-like state, and moreover thirsting for a good book to read, having failed to find the same at stores nearer by, I set forth. Also, I wanted to take my new bike out on the highway where I could get a feel of it at higher speeds. 

And happily, I have no ills to report regarding this trip--no aching back, no rubbery legs, and no fall in the middle of the mall. The only ill, really, is that I could not find an interesting book title, even among so many choices at this particular Gramedia store. Therefore, I bought an interesting book that I had already read some time in the past on iPad, with the difference that the copy I bought today was a paperback edition in Indonesian. This novel, The Final Descent, is the fourth and last in Rick Yancey's Monstromologist series. I had read the first three in Indonesian and the fourth in English, as it had not yet appeared in Indonesian at that time and I couldn't wait. Doing so in this way, however, kind of broke up the tone of the series for me. One gets used to digesting story and character in a certain language and the sudden change seems to inject an element of sudden distance. Who are these English speaking characters? I dunno. It's hard to explain. 

 I have a particular fondness for this series--its inventiveness, its deft juggling of genre, and so I'm looking forward to re-reading The Final Descent, which, if I remember correctly, offered a rather dark, ruminative conclusion to the story. The good news, as always, is that the deteriorated state of my brain precludes me from remembering books I've read or movies I've watched. I am left merely with a vague impression. As a matter of fact, I noticed the appearance of a movie on Netflix called Olympus Has Fallen the other day and realized only halfway through watching it that I was actually re-watching it. This did not spoil the movie for me, however, as I still could not remember what happened in the movie. I just became aware, poked by some little scene or some bit of dialog, that I had seen it before. Oh yeah! I thought. I wonder if I liked it.