#inferno — Public Fediverse posts

Three Days in Hell: The Longest Book I Ever Read

“The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”

Dan Brown’s Inferno

Content note: This post discusses a fictional character’s experience of sexual assault as depicted in Dan Brown’s Inferno. Please read with care.

There are books you read slowly.

There are books you read because you have to.

And then there are books that completely take over your life.

For me, that book was Inferno by Dan Brown.

It was the longest book I had ever read, and somehow, I finished it in three days.

Three days!

I wasn’t trying to break a reading record. I simply couldn’t put it down.

Every time I told myself, Just one more chapter, Dan Brown would leave me with another mystery, another clue, another question.

So I kept reading.

And reading.

Until suddenly, it was way past my bedtime.

Florence, Manila, and the gates of hell

One of the things that made Inferno so memorable for me was the way Dan Brown used places as part of the story.

Florence was fascinating.

Dante, Renaissance art, architecture, hidden passages and mysterious clues made the city feel almost like another character.

Then the story brought me to Manila.

And that caught my attention in a completely different way.

As a Filipino, reading about Manila felt different from reading about Florence. Florence was a place I could imagine through history and art. Manila was a place I knew.

In the novel, Sienna Brooks recalls her experience after joining a humanitarian mission in Manila. Through her eyes, we see a much darker side of the city: extreme poverty, overcrowding, pollution, crime and the exploitation of vulnerable people.

Her experience becomes deeply traumatic, eventually leading to the part of her story where she describes what she experienced as passing through the “gates of hell.”

It is a difficult part of the book, particularly because her experience eventually includes sexual assault.

I remember thinking about Manila while reading it.

Because Manila is complicated.

It can be chaotic, exhausting and heartbreaking. But it is also warm, resilient, generous and incredibly alive.

Poverty exists beside wealth. Hardship exists beside humor. Desperation exists beside kindness.

So while Brown’s depiction of Manila was disturbing, it also made me think about how differently the same city can be experienced depending on who is looking at it.

More than just a thriller

What kept me turning the pages wasn’t just the suspense.

Underneath the mystery were much bigger questions about science, population growth, morality, humanity and the consequences of our choices.

The book asks an uncomfortable question:

What if someone genuinely believed that doing something terrible was necessary to save humanity?

And perhaps the even harder question:

Who gets to decide what “saving humanity” actually means?

Those questions stayed with me.

That is what I love about books that go beyond simply telling a story. They entertain you, but they also leave little questions behind in your head, quietly refusing to leave.

Three days later…

I finished the entire book in three days.

And when I finally closed it, I had that strange feeling you get after finishing a really absorbing story.

Part of you is satisfied.

Another part doesn’t quite know what to do with itself because you’ve just spent so much time living inside someone else’s world.

For three days, I had traveled through Florence, followed clues through art and history, found myself thinking about Dante, and eventually arrived in Manila through the eyes of a fictional character.

All without leaving my chair.

That, to me, is one of the beautiful things about reading.

A book can take you places your feet have never been.

And sometimes it can make you see places you already know in an entirely different way.

And then there was the book itself…

There is one more little story about Inferno that makes me smile whenever I think about it.

I bought the hardbound copy myself. It was one of those books I wanted to have on my shelf, especially after finishing it in just three days.

But I eventually lent it to a dear friend.

He didn’t steal it, of course. I willingly lent it to him.

It’s just that somehow, through the mysterious ways of life, the book never found its way back to me. 😂

And honestly, I’ve never really been upset about it.

Maybe because the book had already given me what I wanted most from it: three unforgettable days of reading, getting lost in Florence, being surprised by Manila, and thinking about some very big questions about humanity.

Still, every now and then, I remember that hardbound copy and wonder where it is now.

Maybe it’s still sitting quietly on his bookshelf.

Maybe he has forgotten that it was mine.

Or maybe, after all these years, he still remembers the friend who lent him one of the longest books she had ever read.

Either way, Inferno became more than just a book in my memory.

It became a little story about reading, friendship, and one book that traveled from my bookshelf to someone else’s, and somehow never made the journey home.

And perhaps that’s okay.

Some books you finish.

Some books you keep.

And some books you lend to people you care about, never knowing that the book itself will become part of the story you remember years later.

I finished Inferno in three days. I just never finished the story of where my copy went. 📖❤️

💖💖💖

Another round of price fixing between the major sponsoring LIR in Europe #bgp #lir #asn #sponsoring #glauca #inferno

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Bianco è il tempio dove Predator alberga tra gli spiriti materialisti del Buddhismo Theravada

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Inferno Drainer says it’s shutting down after helping steal $70M in crypto - “We hope you can remember us as the best drainer that has ever ex... - https://cointelegraph.com/news/inferno-drainer-shut-down-after-stealing-millions-crypto-wallet-scam-kit #cryptodrainer #monkeydrainer #venomdrainer #phishingscam #cryptoscams #shutdown #telegram #inferno

We are currently recreating the conditions that led to the greatest mass #extinction in the history of our #planet, exponentially more destructive than the one that ended the 160 million year reign of #dinosaurs that came after.

While we're currently doing so on a much smaller scale, we are doing so at a much faster pace.

"The #Earth will be fine..."

#Permian #ClimateChange #OceanAcidification

#AncientEarth: #Inferno #Nova #PBS

#link: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/ancient-earth-inferno/

#link: https://youtu.be/2SvZO_idnkM?si=-xGQWVcKYBBcsfMy

#MarcSilvestri on the #Inferno run in this book. Great covers and great story.

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#Marvel
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#XMen
#ComicBooks
#ComicBook
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#Comic
#Comicstodon
#GCBRI

Scrivo di Amiri Baraka .. ma scusate .. .. ..
di Sandro Sardella

scrivo di Amiri Baraka .. ma scusate se prima
https://www.labottegadelbarbieri.org/scrivo-di-amiri-baraka-ma-scusate/
#bottegadelbarbieri #labottegadelbarbieri
#Articoli #Poesia #abrigliasciolta #AlessandroGiannì #AmiriBaraka #blues #culturaafroamericana #DianediPrima #EverettLeRoiJones #inferno #jazz #jazzpoetry #LeRoiJones #LucianoRossetti #MarcoFazzini #MusicaJazz(rivista) #Pabuda #SandroGianni #SandroSardella

#Abruzzo, un #inferno #pianificato in #maniera #militare?

https://www.wordnews.it/abruzzo-un-inferno-militarmente-pianificato

#incendi #roghi #mafia #terrorismo #ambiente #natura #giustizia #morrone #pescara #pineta #chieti #acquabella #ortona #vasto #casalbordino #fossacesia #roccasangiovanni #vallevò #valdisangro

#Abruzzo, un #inferno #pianificato in #maniera #militare?

https://www.wordnews.it/abruzzo-un-inferno-militarmente-pianificato

#incendi #roghi #mafia #terrorismo #ambiente #natura #giustizia #morrone #pescara #pineta #chieti #acquabella #ortona #vasto #casalbordino #fossacesia #roccasangiovanni #vallevò #valdisangro

#Abruzzo, un #inferno #pianificato in #maniera #militare?

https://www.wordnews.it/abruzzo-un-inferno-militarmente-pianificato

#incendi #roghi #mafia #terrorismo #ambiente #natura #giustizia #morrone #pescara #pineta #chieti #acquabella #ortona #vasto #casalbordino #fossacesia #roccasangiovanni #vallevò #valdisangro

#Abruzzo, un #inferno #pianificato in #maniera #militare?

https://www.wordnews.it/abruzzo-un-inferno-militarmente-pianificato

#incendi #roghi #mafia #terrorismo #ambiente #natura #giustizia #morrone #pescara #pineta #chieti #acquabella #ortona #vasto #casalbordino #fossacesia #roccasangiovanni #vallevò #valdisangro