Day 100 - Shawshank Redemption + The Last Post in this series

HELL YEAH, WE ARE FINALLY HERE.

(Prologue: This is going to be a normal Ep 100 post. My thoughts about this series, the things I wrote about (and didn’t), the days I really did write well etc will all be covered in a different post.

rita-hayworth

That is Rita Hayworth. She was the one that Andy Dufresne began with. For 27 years he toiled, and made it out. It’s an amazing novella! I kind-of knew the ending but was blocking it off so I could still enjoy the book. The revelation is not the climax and I think that’s where the story really excels. In telling the story of two men, vastly different from each other, but stuck in an unfavourable situation and still trying to make their way through life despite it.

It also covers all the problems with the prison system, how it is designed and what happens to incarcerated men after they are left outside, in the world. This is a recurring theme that I have read about in a few books now. I remember George Orwell’s short story about a travelling nomad living and sleeping in different beds each week. I remember Down and Out in Paris and London, again by Orwell, which talks an insane amount about how the poorest people lived in the 20th century, a bare 70-80 years ago. This is even slightly touched on in Malcolm X’s autobiography.

Here’s my goodreads review of the book. It’s rather short at about 140-150 pages and I was able to finish it off during a hectic week by just reading everything on my phone and not waiting to settle down and read. I think that’s the only way I can keep up with reading and also manage work and life despite it. I absolutely must use every single moment of my waking time. It’s cumbersome to do that, but Onward and Upward, that’s the only way I can go now.

I now have two completely new albums that I have discovered (led to, rather) and like. The first one is Silverstein’s This is How the Wind Shifts.

The second one is the album containing my recent favourite. Incubus’s If Not Now, When?

I read Incubus’ wikipedia page, and I was really surprised to find out that the band was formed in 1991 when they were in high school! The 90s were indeed a different place. I wonder how the high school bands of today are doing.

I am back to listening to Humbug now, in fact Cornerstone is playing the background as I write down the last few words of this 100 day post series. It’s a bitter sweet moment. I am relieved to have finished off a challenge that I took on on a whim and didn’t give much consideration to. I slightly panicked when I realised what I had committed to and wanted to get out. I settled down after about 3 weeks and wrote about whatever I could find. I struggled for content and had to make do with mediocre posts. And through all that, I still wrote a 100 blog posts in 100 days. This is BIG for me!

POST #100 is OVER