Love's not just blind; it's deaf, too!

Pages read today: 120 for Meredith (completing Why We Broke Up), 44 for Ilya

Don't let Ilya persuade you to feel too sorry for him or feel that I'm reading all easy peasy novels over here.  While it's true that my most recent read, Why We Broke Up, includes pictures, wide margins and fairly large font, that has not been the case for any of the last 9 entries.  Besides, we are each in control of the books we choose, so perhaps Ilya will start learning to choose more wisely.  From what I've gathered, it seems he is strongly disliking Lord Jim, which is why it's taking him so long to finish.  Personally, I say if it's that bad that it's drawing out this long, time to cut your losses and move on!  But to each his (or her) own.

Why We Broke Up was exactly what I needed after the last two intense reads of mine and it was much better than I had anticipated.  I loved it, really.  There was a short adjustment period getting used to Daniel Handler's unique writing style but once I got into the rhythm and got the hang of it, my word... it was pure genius!  This was my first read of Daniel Handler's but I'm sure it won't be the last.  It's hard to explain his style and there are so many creative, beautiful, hilarious, brilliant lines in the book it's hard to single out just one.  So instead, let me just say that you should read this book.  While yes, it was a lighter read than the last couple (only because it wasn't dealing with death!!), it still had a lot going on and a lot to digest/analyze.  Each chapter details one of the items Min (short for Minerva, but do NOT call her Minnie!) has in the box she will be dropping at her ex-boyfriend's house - a box of items from their relationship, each item having marked a joyous moment while in the relationship, and in retrospect marking obvious signs of trouble with the relationship.  When I first got wind of it (a friend had read it on goodreads) I was unsure what to expect.  It seemed like it could just be a teeny bopper book.  I'm glad that I didn't get stuck in thinking that and decided to read it, because that's not how it is at all.  It's actually quite masterful - a beautiful portrayal of what happens during and after a relationship, both for the direct participants as well as the bystanders.  How blind love is and how 20/20 hindsight is.  How painful it is as a bystander when a loved ones' relationship is so clearly a train wreck.  What could you even say to them that they would hear?  Most likely nothing, because love is blind and deaf; and to me, this is also a lesson for life itself.  Things aren't always as they appear and depending on the lens through which we view them, they can seem to be completely different things.  Honestly, just read the book.  It's too difficult to do it justice in a post.  

Also, I found out tonight that Hulu Plus had the Documentary version of Touching the Void, and I took advantage of this opportunity and watched it (Ilya and I definitely watched it at some point before, but I didn't remember it at all when I read the book and only vaguely remembered it while watching tonight).  The Documentary definitely had its merits and even a certain advantage over the book insofar as Joe, Simon and Richard (their travel mate who didn't climb with them but stayed behind at the base camp watching their stuff) all took part and provided details and insight into their experiences.  However, it was not as emotionally charged for me as reading the book and as always with any movie of any kind, there were several big ticket events left out.  Don't get me wrong though; I still bawled my eyes out like a baby when Simon and Richard found Joe (how can you NOT?!).  Overall, the book is much denser, richer and just plain better overall (in my opinion), but the Documentary is worthwhile for hearing the commentary from all of the men.

My next book is up in the air right now... The unread library books still currently in my possession are We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Road and A Week in Winter, none of which are inspiring me to read right now.  I am able to download ebooks from the library on my Nook but everything I really want to read right now has at least 20 people in line ahead of me so I don't think I should hold my breath waiting for any of those to become available.  I did come up with a list of a bunch of others that are allegedly on the shelves of our local library right now and Ilya and I plan on making a trip out there tomorrow morning.  We'll see where that leads, though I'm hoping between tonight and tomorrow morning I become responsible enough to just suck it up and read  We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Road as my next two entries, as they are due back to the library fairly soon.  Who wants to be responsible though, right?  We've had enough of that lately between selling our smart phones and downgrading our cell phone plan by switching to dumb phones (I didn't even know they still made those but sadly they do and they cut the bill down by half) and cutting down the number of visits from the dog walker per week (don't worry about Gizmo...Ilya will come home on lunch to let him out of the crate to do his business on the other days).  We have an irresponsibly huge amount of debt (I will take the credit for that...sigh...) so this is just how it has to be for a while, but man does it stink!  Along the same lines, I would love to just buy the books I want to read on my Nook (or even in real book form) so as to not have to wait, but that's just not a very smart thing to do right now.  Realistically, I should read the 3 books I still have out from the library before running out to borrow another 7 or 8.  But that's an area I'm just going to allow myself to have fun with, because it doesn't cost anything to hoard library books! (well, I guess that depends on the length of time of the hoarding) 

So that's where I shall leave it for the night, with thoughts of hoarding library books.  As Ilya loves to say, keep the pages turning! (which makes me think of the intro for Days of Our Lives for some reason...)