1.21 jigowatts

I can’t remember the last time I was so involved with a book. I looked forward to going home and reading some more. Two nights in a row, I passed up watching Diff’rent Strokes DVDs with Rob. I read a short story during my lunch break the other day, and I like, missed the characters in my book.

My copy of “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is hardcover, so I’d been leaving it at home, except for Wednesday when I took it with me to Rob’s class to read during the second half, which I don’t participate in.

My mom got it for me for Christmas 2003, I believe. I hadn’t cracked it yet because there was always something else on my list, and also, it’s pretty bulky to carry, so like, I didn’t want to take it with me on a trip or anything.

When I read “Atlas Shrugged,” I was jealous of Ayn Rand’s ability to structure a novel of that length so tightly, and with a cohesive theme. It all fits together like a wonderful puzzle. Now, I’m jealous of Audrey Niffenegger’s imagination. Even after finishing it, I can’t stop marveling at how original the premise is.

There’s no time machine. The time traveler has a chemical imbalance or genetic disorder, or something, that makes him disappear and reappear somewhere else in time. It’s painful and he can’t control it. He has watched himself as a child and as a grown man. In his 30s and 40s, he visits his future wife from the time she is 6 until she is 18, but in his own chronology, he first meets her when he is 28.

I loved it.

That’s not to say that I can’t find a single bone to pick. There are certain moments of dialogue I don’t quite believe, and I think it’s pretentious how the two main characters spout off in French or German with no translation.

Plus, I think it’s a mistake of the author to go into detail (any detail) about paper making. The author herself is an artist, and she uses terms I don’t know – that don’t mean anything to me – to describe the process. It’s not like throwing in a word here or there for authenticity, where it doesn’t matter whether I know its definition or not. It’s a couple of pages that might as well be in French or German.

Next, I had planned to read the mystery written by my creative writing teacher, but I just got a free copy of “Persepolis,” a graphic novel, in campus mail the other day. It’s the 2006 group reading selection and it’s very pretty. Maybe I’ll read my teacher’s book at home and the graphic novel on lunch breaks.