Reading project

I've seen people do this 100 Books thing on my flist, and I really should do that. Although 100 books are A LOT, considering that I didn't read nearly as much in the last couple of years. But for an English/German major it seems like a really good idea. So here's

A Lot of Books 2008
1. The Time Traveler's Wife

Some non-spoilery thoughts:

I was hooked by this book before I'd even finished the first page. It's incredibly readable, which is both surprising and not. Surprising because I've had zero interest in romance novels so far. I simply don't care much about boy-meets-girl/family/marriage/pregnany/friends/parties stories. I can't remember when I've last read a book that was set in a non-fantasy/historical world. And yet I was entertained by the mundane parts of this story just as much as by the sci-fi/fantasy parts. It helped enormously that Henry, Clare and their friends are these sort of bohemian, wanna-be rebel, punk type liberals (in a word, they're not really who I expected as the cast of a romance novel, and they're very charming although they should be terribly unlikeable.) I was deeply fascinated by the Nineties in this novel, as I realized that I remember this decade only half-consciously.

As for the fantasy/sci-fi part, I hate the people who in their reviews say that this "isn't that cheap sci-fi stuff, it's literary". Damn it, it's exactly that "cheap sci-fi stuff", you pretentious asses. It's high-quality, sure, but that doesn't turn it into a different genre.

I've also read that people don't like the book from a feminist POV, and I can see why, but I don't really care, because it's entertaining and new.

What surprised me most is how okay I was with the determinism. I didn't even find it depressing or frightening. There's almost a sort of pleasure in the whole inescapability of it all, and that's new, and I kind of wonder if it's symptomatic of some tendency in our society or just A. Niffenegger's way of saying, "hey, it doesn't always have to be a story about the indomitable free will of human beings fighting against the oppression of fate."

Reading project

I've seen people do this 100 Books thing on my flist, and I really should do that. Although 100 books are A LOT, considering that I didn't read nearly as much in the last couple of years. But for an English/German major it seems like a really good idea. So here's

A Lot of Books 2008
1. The Time Traveler's Wife

Some non-spoilery thoughts:

I was hooked by this book before I'd even finished the first page. It's incredibly readable, which is both surprising and not. Surprising because I've had zero interest in romance novels so far. I simply don't care much about boy-meets-girl/family/marriage/pregnany/friends/parties stories. I can't remember when I've last read a book that was set in a non-fantasy/historical world. And yet I was entertained by the mundane parts of this story just as much as by the sci-fi/fantasy parts. It helped enormously that Henry, Clare and their friends are these sort of bohemian, wanna-be rebel, punk type liberals (in a word, they're not really who I expected as the cast of a romance novel, and they're very charming although they should be terribly unlikeable.) I was deeply fascinated by the Nineties in this novel, as I realized that I remember this decade only half-consciously.

As for the fantasy/sci-fi part, I hate the people who in their reviews say that this "isn't that cheap sci-fi stuff, it's literary". Damn it, it's exactly that "cheap sci-fi stuff", you pretentious asses. It's high-quality, sure, but that doesn't turn it into a different genre.

I've also read that people don't like the book from a feminist POV, and I can see why, but I don't really care, because it's entertaining and new.

What surprised me most is how okay I was with the determinism. I didn't even find it depressing or frightening. There's almost a sort of pleasure in the whole inescapability of it all, and that's new, and I kind of wonder if it's symptomatic of some tendency in our society or just A. Niffenegger's way of saying, "hey, it doesn't always have to be a story about the indomitable free will of human beings fighting against the oppression of fate."