welcome!
Don't judge a book from its cover, but you can judge me from the books in my BOOKCASE.
Buku ini keren sekali! Sumpah keren sekali!
Middlesex, karya Jeffrey Eugenides, adalah buku international bestseller, pemenang Pulitzer Prize—penghargaan tertinggi di bidang jurnalisme cetak, dan menjadi buku pilihan di Oprah's Book Club.
Saya beruntung sekali bisa memiliki buku ini, apalagi mendapatkannya dengan gratis. Maka dari itu, alangkah tidak tahu dirinya saya kalau tidak berterima kasih pada teman saya, yang telah ridho bin rhoma memberikan bukunya—yang jauh-jauh didapatkannya dari menonton Kick Andy di Jakarta—kepada saya. Nuhun pisan. Kamu baik sekali, Ty!
Middlesex menceritakan tentang Calliope Stephanides—seorang yang berkelamin ganda—yang besar di pinggiran kota Detroit di tahun 1960an. Selama empat belas tahun Cal menjalani kehidupan sebagai anak perempuan. Suatu hari Cal mengalami kecelakaan yang membuatnya masuk rumah sakit, dan dokter yang menanganinya menemukan bahwa dia (juga) adalah seorang laki-laki.
Cal adalah seorang pseudohermaphrodite laki-laki, atau seseorang yang secara genetis adalah laki-laki, namun secara fisik perempuan. Dari tes endokrin, diketahui bahwa Cal mempunyai kromosom XY, level testosteron yang tinggi, dengan kurangnya enzim 5-alpha-reductase sehingga tubuhnya tidak memproduksi dihydrotestosteron. Artinya, ketika dalam rahim, ia mengalami perkembangan kelamin perempuan seperti pada umumnya. Namun, setelah memasuki masa puber, hormon testosteron mengambil alih peran perkembangan seksualnya.
Pertanyaan bagaimana bisa Cal menjadi seorang hermaprodit terurai dari sejarah dan asal usul keluarganya yang melakukan incest, atau perkawinan sedarah. Dampak perkawinan antarsaudara itu tidak muncul pada turunan-turunan sebelumnya, sampai akhirnya Cal yang mendapat getahnya. Kromosom kelimanya yang bermutasi resesif memaksanya menjalani kehidupan dan pendewasaan sebagai manusia berkelamin ganda.
poisoning is the most intelligent form of murder
BLIND EYE is a book written by James B. Stewart, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Blind Eye is a true story about Michael Swango, a serial killer, was suspected of having fatally poisoned more than 60 people between 1984 and 1997 as an intern or resident at a number of hospitals and health-care establishments. He may have poisoned and killed patients under his care over the past 10 years when he worked in Ohio, Quincy, Massachusetts, Virginia, South Dakota, New York, and Zimbabwe. In all those places, this affable doctor had been suspected in a number of deaths and sudden illnesses.
Swango did not often vary his methods of murder. With non-patients, such as his co-workers at the paramedic service, he used poisons, usually arsenic, slipping them into foods and beverages. With patients, he sometimes used poisons as well, but usually he administered an overdose of whichever drug the patient had been prescribed, or wrote false prescriptions for dangerous drugs for his patients.
When he was in medical school, he used to study while racing into the hall. Instead of studying days or weeks before the exams like the other students, he studied between exams. His classmates and lecturers called this method of studying as "swangoing" or "to swango". Now we all know it as "study in the last minutes", or "SKS: Sistem Kebut Semalam".
After finishing my exams, i heard someone said "Goddamn SKS!" Oh.. you really don't know how great swangoing is. I am a BIG fan of swangoing. I always do my assignments and study for exams a night before, and sometimes couple hours before. I always do that because I know something good about swangoing: it is POISONOUS! Swangoing kills. Everytime I do swangoing, I am always scared of failing. But that is what I like most. I love that poison. That sensation, you know.. makes me live, energizes me.
Michael Swango was a murderer, and I know that I could be murdered, not by him but by his swangoing. And everytime I saved, I felt EXTREMELY satisfied.
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W. H. Auden
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