Reading in Coffeehouses

So, last week, I still had about half of "Every Secret Thing". I tried to renew it, but I couldn't. I guess someone else put it on hold. So, I put "Kafka on the Shore" (Murakami's latest book) on hold. Got an email on Friday that "Kafka on the Shore" was in. So, I buckled down and went to my favorite coffeehouse in the Valley and spent about 2 hours reading. I finished "Every Secret Thing" and was able to return it on the due date. It was a good story. It does seem really messed up how much Patty Hearst was put through. She was kidnapped and spent a couple of years with her kidnappers and did all these things just to survive. So, finally when she gets back to her old life, you'd think that her main ordeal would be over. Unfortunately, it seems like it just began. Of course, about 85% of the book is about her time with the SLA and doesn't focus too much on her being in prison and such afterwards. She does tell about all that stuff. But what I find amazing is that 2 of the people from the SLA are also captured at the same time as her, and it seems that they get more leniency than her. And she was the one kidnapped! Public opinion really seemed to sway this case more than anything. People were so outraged and were so stuck on the fact that because it was Patty Hearst that she'd get special attention from the government and prisons and such, that it went the exact opposite way. So after her huge ordeal, they treated her like she murdered someone and she was only on trial for the Hibernia Bank Robbery.

Well, I guess all the events surrounding the time of the SLA and Patty Hearst really marked a point in history. I think it was the first time that the Stockholm syndrome was used for a kidnappee in the US. I think it proved a lot of things in the psychological sense and how she went through what she did. It's a pretty unbelieveable story. I don't know what I would've done under those circumstances, but it is fairly miraculous that she survived. Sounds like she was damaged mentally and physically, but somehow was able to move past it all.

Well, I'm back into fiction. So far, the 30 pages of "Kafka on the Shore" are good. I'll keep you updated...