What book, essay, etc. that changed your life or how you view the world?

A book is filled with pages, pictures and words but it's far more magical than what it seems. Look closely and you will see words of magic and boundless mysteries. Books lead folks to other lands; Here, I've been a mermaid, an elf and even a gorgeous princess but what’s more special and magnificent about that is the fact that I even learned to be myself even more. Reading a story is a special thing, the ones that I have read they do not stay inside the books, they stay inside my head and forever will be. Though it's only paper from end to end, a book is a very special friend.

Reading is not a leisure pursuit for me it’s more of a stress reliever though I don’t do it often. What fascinates me the most with these so-called-books is that every time I get a hold of it, it takes me to a whole new dimension; a vast dimension filled with fantasies, dreams, places and events. It also has the ability to take us to a new era and generation and make us experience something that may not transpire in our bona fide life. It’s like going to an entire new adventure without leaving the place you currently in. Aside from infusing knowledge and different escapades it also imparts something about the society and such lessons that makes me ponder a propos to life and how to view our being as its is and have a wider perspective towards existence. Thus making something from pieces of papers, which is so plain and dull; to an entity that could change and be a part of our lifestyle.

Ouran High School Host Club

Author: Hatori Bisco Artist: Hatori Bisco

One day, Haruhi, a scholarship student at exclusive Ouran High School, breaks an $80,000 vase that belongs to the "Host Club", a mysterious campus group consisting of six super-rich (and gorgeous) guys. To pay back the damages, she is forced to work for the club, and it's there that she discovers just how wealthy the boys are and how different they are from everybody else.

Ouran High School is a school for the very rich and only the very rich. That is, until Haruhi Fujioka becomes Ouran's first scholarship student and sole poor student, which is quite an accomplishment. Tuition isn't the only thing Haruhi needs to pay for, though; the uniform alone is far too expensive for Haruhi's father's meager wages working at a local gay bar. Instead, Haruhi elects to wear long slacks, polo shirts and a vest, along with thick glasses.

Looking for somewhere quiet to study (all three libraries are irritatingly noisy), Haruhi stumbles accross the Third Music Room, home to the Ouran Host Club, a club made up of six attractive male students who spend their time entertaining the school's girls for profit. Haruhi tries to get out of there quick, but accidentally knocks over and breaks an extremely expensive vase and ends up very deep in debt. Haruhi is named the Host Club's "dog," and now must work to pay off the debt. Discovering that under the tousled hair and thick glasses, Haruhi actually has quite a bit of potential, the Host Club's self-proclaimed King Tamaki makes Haruhi a host, without realizing one important detail: Haruhi is actually a girl.

Even when the rest of the Host Club discovers her secret (which she wasn't really trying to hide, it just sort of turned out that way), Haruhi continues to hold up the charade with the rest of the students, using the boy's uniform provided by the Host Club and working to pay off her debt.

"Lineage counts first, wealth a close second"

The school's unofficial motto, meaning students with stellar family backgrounds are given top priority over those from rich families but low social status.

The best part of Ouran is far and away the terrific cast of characters. By having all the different cliché it attracts a wider range and a larger set of audience thus making everyone the chance to relate to the story. Although the whole story mainly revolves around on Haruhi being able to pay all her debts the series was also packed with lots of unfortunate events that lead to Haruhi and the rest of the Host club on solving all the problems and turning everything up and at the end showing the readers a bit of a lesson from what happened. Every episode has one of those super-schticky slow-motion touching-music lessons about the all important world of high school. And actually the basic moral that the author really want to convey to the readers is that the power of youth, love, insanity, etc will pull you through, if you just have the courage.

Some chapters also tackle on the issues in our life that most people debate on like the gender-specific strength. In that chapter, Tamaki argued that unless a girl can defend herself with some form of martial arts or other self-defense ability, she is essentially can't fight a guy. Haruhi, on the other hand, believes that being a girl doesn't make her less capable in a fight against another guy. Due to that incident it made a fuss among the host club and they did a lot of things just to show Haruhi and let her realize what her fault in that situation was and why was it a big deal. In a way this is a good thing because when all things are being equal, the only thing that can defeat a person is the victim’s mentality. A person who believes that he/she has equal chance against another person usually tend to put up a more valiant effort compare to the contrary.

This graphical novel (manga) is really a must read if you love reading a comedic series. With its great script and humor, many people will find themselves chuckling or laughing over the situations Haruhi and the rest of the got into. But what I really learned and realized from this is the fact that money can’t buy everything. And this is what the other members of the Host Club subconsciously learned too (I guess?) from Haruhi by having the chance to spend their high school life with a commoner. With this, it showed me that you can’t buy happiness and love. Though you could buy material things that could make you happy it is still not the same from actually being happy and attaining happiness from someone like your friends.

In the story, you would discover the secret dilemma among the extremely rich host club members and how it is affecting their lives; however, they somehow overcome all this through out the story with the help of each other. Some of those predicaments were, although Tamaki Suoh is extremely rich and powerful he still seeks for something, something that all children hope for, which is the love from her mother and her presence. This right that is naturally should be given to every child is taken away from him by his own grandmother. Tamaki was forced to live with his Japanese father separately from his French mother because of a deal between his mother and his bitterly cold paternal grandmother. Despite his grandmother being the reason he can't see his mother, he is very gentle to her, and is constantly trying to get her to accept him as a part of the family. And on the other hand, Hikaru Hitachiin and Kaoru Hitachiin who are also both part of the club and are also tremendously rich are identical twins. Their parents are often away due to business related matters and because of that they developed a deep dependence on each other through loneliness and resulted for them to curb themselves from other people thinking that no one would ever understand them but all this time what they want is to find someone who could actually tell them apart.

And so, right there and then from the situations I cited it shows that money doesn’t bring pure happiness it may also lead to misery just like in their cases wherein mostly the main reason for their lonesome rooted from money. Consequently, that only shows that no matter how rich you are and how happy you may seem with all the wealth you possess you would still feel empty as if you still lack something and that is something money can’t buy.

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Peace out!,

Julirose