The 5 books in the life of Miss Mocca

They say books are the windows of the world. To escape from my real life I choose novel or fiction to peek and enter the realm of fantasy and innocently indulge in a make-believe characters and stories. There are pages, words, plots, that stay longer on my mind cos it’s so damn superb mind blowing. Not that it changed my life 180 degrees, but it gave me new perspective, new hope, justification or sometimes tickled my writer’s instinct.

No need to read between the lines, here are my list of 5 memorable books in alphabetical order:


1. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
I read this last year on my trip to Bangkok and Hanoi. When I told my dad I’m going to have that trip he was kinda against it. Furthermore, daddy commented that traveling was such a waste of money and time. Then come this book. It was like my validation for taking this trip on the first place. We are entitled to getaway, seeing new things, new world, learning new stuffs, get out of our comfort zone. If it makes us happy, do it!




2. Harry Potter book 1 by JK Rowling
“Alohomara!” “Wingardium laviosa!” “Reparo!” I gasped on every pages of Harry Potter’s first series. Who is this JK Rowling? How did she come up with all the names, the spells, quiddicth cup and so forth. I didn’t know imagination could go that wild. I never thought witches and wizardy world is spellboundly amusing. Ah! Wish we had sorting hat and Dumbledore on this muggle world.




3. Laskar Pelangi by Andrea Hirata
“Saat itu aku menyadari bahwa kami sesungguhnya adalah perkumpulan persaudaraan cahaya dan api... Kami adalah lapisan-lapisan pelangi terindah yang pernah diciptakan Tuhan.” I have never felt so much in love with Bahasa Indonesia when I red this moving childhood tale of Andrea Hirata. He describes things, people, situation with a bit of exaggeration but it’s still sound poetic to me. After all, he’s a melayu man, they tend to do that. Remember pantun?


4. The Pelican Brief by John Grisham
This is the first novel I successfully read for the first time! I remember how my sister so caught up reading novel and I couldn’t understand why. It’s just story about romantic, menye-menye things that I was too young to dig it. Then one day, she brought Mr. Grisham home. I knew this one was different just by the look of the cover (it the same as the movie poster). And I was right! For the first time I learn chasing “scene” on books turn out to be much much more interesting in words than in visual (have you seen the movie? Despite Denzel’s performance, it was just “eh!”)


5. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
“Aku tidak ingin meninggalkan dunia ini dalam cengkeraman rasa takut. Aku ingin mengetahui semua yang terjadi, menerimanya, merasakan kedamaian, baru pergi.”
A beautiful beautiful story of life. The fact that it’s a true story making it so even more heart-warming. How come someone so ill could maintain his optimism? Not blaming god, not becoming a grumpy old person. As far I remember, this must be the first book that made me shed a tear. And yes, I read the Indonesia version.