Crying Your Eyes Out -- in a good way!

Mikaela says:
I think I'm among the last middle-class white women in America not to have read The Time Traveler's Wife. A good friend gave it to me forever ago, but ... confession time ... I didn't like the cover. I know, I know. But I'm judgmental! I can't help it.

I finally picked it up in shame after another lady reader mentioned just having read it (hi, Lisa!). One paragraph in, I was hooked. Holy cow, what a good book. Beautifully written and fascinating, this thing is crack cocaine to women interested in love, life, meaning, and time.

I spent Saturday morning in bed finishing the book, and when my love interest came home from knocking on doors for a political campaign, he was confronted by the horrors of a woman left alone to cry -- for hours. Face puffy, voice hoarse from feel-good, unrestrained moaning and sobbing, I must have frightened him half to death (hmmm... anyone guess what time of month it is for me?). Fortunately, as he told me later, "How refreshing to see a woman cry and know I'm NOT the cause." He thought I was pretty cute, snot rags and all. Ahhhhh....

But seriously, folks, this one's not to be missed. I'm not sure what a guy would make of the whole thing. It's written by a woman, hence (in my mind) most of the poetry in the telling and the equal emphasis on man's and woman's voice in the novel. I think certain sensitive men might totally get off on the sci-fi aspect of the time traveling (handled effortlessly, by the way). Who knows. Who cares! This one may be just for the girls, but holy shit! Was it ever a good read.

What goes together like peanut butter and brown sugar?

Mikaela says:
(That's the kind of sandwich my mom would pack me for field trips. It's actually a GOOD thing that I ate at the school cafeteria every day!)

Okay, nothing.

But here's what really doesn't go together:

Watching dark, twisted movie -- Shallow Grave -- and re-reading Anne of Green Gables.

















Definitely schizophrenic. I don't recommend it.

Here's a sample:

Movie: Scream, grunt, sound of blood spattering.
Book: "Oh, I just love it when the chorus sings 'A bee's day of gathering.'"

Shudder.

Then I finished the book and watched Jacob's Ladder just to round off the experience while eating Mario's pizza in bed.

(Hint: Try the Greek pizza, which I get sans black olive, usually with one half of the pizza as green chile & canadian bacon).

It does a body good! (Well, better than peanut butter and brown sugar, anyway!)