I love books almost as much as I love scrapbooking. I read all sorts but my preferred genre is what I call 'mind lit' . Hard to describe it but I can tell you what it's not.
It's not chick lit (which I'll read but which is always too light for me and just not that satisfying). It's not thriller or romance or suspense. It's not murder/detective stuff (like Jodi Piccoult which I read but which starts to follow a predicatable pattern). It's not sci-fi.
It sometimes is authors like Anita Shreve (but not always) or Maeve Binchy (though her later stuff is disappointing). It is stuff by family friend Catherine Chidgey (come on Cath we need a new read). It is stuff like Wild Swans by Jung Chang (a true story) or The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. It is books that engage you so you don't want to put them down. And when you do have to put them down to cook dinner you race back to them like you are greeting a favoured friend.
There's a book like that I've just finished. I've read it during the past 2 days ( not much housework done in the Thorn household this weekend!). It is The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. It's on the Whitcoulls top 100 list so other people must like it, too. I came across it when I heard the author being interviewed on the National Programme a couple of weeks ago. She was fascinating - a goth in her youth, into punk and alternative culture. Not your nature image of an 'author'. Wow, what an amazing book. Written not only from the persepctive of the time traveler but mostly from the persepctive of the wife who waits for him. Often.
Here's an extract ( a letter from the time traveler to his wife - to be opened in the event of his death):
"When I am dead. Stop waiting and be free. Of me - put me deep inside you and then go out into the world and live. Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element."
There are heaps of thought-provoking extracts like this scattered throughout.
Beg, borrow or steal a copy. It won't disappoint.
3 comments:
Loved it. Cried. And had to stop to do something. Came back. Cried some more.
I have that book sitting beside my bed waiting for me to finish that other tear jerker you recommended.
Might have to look at grabbing a copy of this.
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