Book review: Every Day by David Levithan

What began with single quote, ended up with one of the most memorable written stories I've ever read.
I found this book purely through accident as I was browsing through Goodreads. This book is also my first book I ever purchased online. I kid you not, I actually thought it was so good that it deserved to be purchased. If I could summarize this book in a few sentences, this book would be a book in which I would simply hang individual pages on the wall -all framed up-. The quotes are simply marvelously I-will-make-your-heart-flutter kind of quotes. If you ever needed a book or a love story to make you feel the butterflies, it would be this book. The only qualm I have about this book is that it should have a sequel. The story seems, to my dismay, to be left hanging. Last two words for this book: Read it!

“I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present because that is where I am destined to live.” 
― David Levithan, Every Day

Humanity & Convenience

I was born in the booming age of technology. I have seen how technology, like the internet, has grown throughout the years. I have experienced my fair share of internet related issues. For example, on the unimaginably slow (by today's standards) dial up internet we all once had, where streaming videos were simply unheard of; downloading movies was a thing for the distant future. Also, on how I always needed to scramble to find a pillow big enough to muffle the horrendous and unmistakable wailing tone of the dial up modem whenever I lost connection and needed to reconnect in the middle of the night.

Technology has brought great conveniences to the lives of many, things seemingly impossible a few years ago are achievable within the boundaries of a few swift clicks of the mouse. Interactions with human operators through the phone are now seen as the last dreadful resort in resolving issues which tend to end up with additional distress and more unresolved issues. I'm sure you've read something written like this a couple of million times in your office cubicle, wondering of the questions of life in the midst of our procrastination, but I'm not one who would be qualified to judge, as I'm writing this at work. *grins*

The question remains: are we trading our humanity for the convenience of technology?
Writing letters are unheard of these days and are often reduced to marriage invites (which I'm getting a lot, another topic involving age) with pre-written scripted sentences mass produced for millions of people around the globe. Where has humanity gone wrong in our conquest of technological convenience? Is there a way out of this? How far are we being reduced to a society with an ever reducing threshold for patience and an ever increasing satiety for everything convenient? Even our human interactions have been shaped by this growing trend. Friendships are out of convenience. Marriages are out of convenience. Even meeting our family members for dinner become a matter of convenience.

As mentioned by Philip Larkin in his famous line from "An Arundel Tomb",

What will survive of us is love. Letters fulfill and safeguard this prophecy. Without letters we risk losing sight of our history, or at least our nuance. The decline and abandonment of letters - the price of progress - will be an immeasurable defeat

To end this, I leave with you a final question (hypothetical), to win in this endless race of technology, are we trading in the warmth and humanity of our souls?