day two hundred and forty-eight

i finished ender's game (#7) while waiting for my ferry to kingston the other day. since this one was recommended to me by quite a few friends i was really looking forward to it. and i did like it, but frankly not as much as i thought i would. maybe it had been built up too much and it couldn't have possibly met my expectations. or maybe it was too sci-fi for me. but the more i think about it, i think it's that my favorite books have always been relatable. maybe i would see something in one of the characters that made me reflect more deeply upon my own motivations. or the story would be built upon foundations i spend a lot of time thinking about already. ender's game was really neither of those for me, so i wasn't as excited to get through it as i have been with others, but the ending was beautiful. and there were a few good takeaways, the greatest of which concerned how we might learn to think of our enemies. perhaps my favorite line of the book:

"in the moment when i truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment i also love him. i think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."

a book about war revealed itself to be, in fact, about love. so it won me over.