Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Time Travelling

By now you’ve figured out that most of the stuff I read I often just pick up at the airport book shop. I’ve mentioned the great book store in Terminal One at Toronto’s Pearson Airport called Watermark. They reorganized the International, US and domestic flight gates so I don’t get to go to the big one anymore and the other stores just don’t have the same feel. One of the reasons airport bookstores are good for travelers is that most of the stuff they sell is in paperback (I prefer premium paperback) which is easier to carry around. I should tell my friend Mike, who’s the CTO of Indigo to try and do something about that. They must have a way of getting into the airport and exposing travelers to Heather’s Picks. They always have excellent selections of premium paperbacks. I digress.

I had seen The Time Traveller’s Wife a couple of times on the shelves and walked by it. For some reason I picked it up during one of my European trips last year (can’t remember which one).

What a great story. The one thing I think I love most about this book is it is just so different. The story of a man who has a “genetic disorder” that causes him to go back and forth in time where he meets his future wife at various stages of her life (childhood, the teenage years); the jumping around takes a little getting used to.
Even though it is a love story through and through it’s not a chick book. I know a number of men who read it and really enjoyed it. Don’t let the seeming sci-fi time travel aspect of it put you off. It is a very human story that deals with the basic emotions that everyone goes through as they fall in love and commit to serious relationships. You become immediately hooked in and then immersed in this story and the people in it. I have to admit that I did find the ending kind of rushed but the fact that it wasn’t a nice neat ending was surprisingly gratifying. It’s hard to explain. Just go ahead and read it. I don’t’ think you will regret it.

Though I read The Time Traveler’s Wife last year, I thought I would post on it because I think it’s also a perfect summer book and I am getting into summer mode. I have one more trip scheduled (2 days in Torino next week) and then I am planning to spend the summer in good ol' Toronto. So after I finish Harry Potter I’ll need something to get me through the rest of the summer. I’ll probably pick up A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini (remember The Kite Runner?). Let me know what you’re going to read this summer.

The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Published by MacAdam/Cage

2 comments:

utah2004 said... [Reply to comment]

Hi Nikki,
After reading your comments about "The Time Traveler's Wife", I found a book review that describes it in some detail. It looks very intriguing. What an unusual and unique idea for a story. I think I'll get a copy.

Clark and Helen

Anonymous said... [Reply to comment]

I agree. I'll be looking into that one as well.

One book I just reread and highly recommend is A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain, by Robert Olen Butler. It is a book of short stories about Vietnamese ex-pats trying to make their way in the U.S. and won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize. To quote from the book-liner:

"The unspoken legacy of the Vietnam War - the ordeals of the Vietnamese - is powerfully evoked in these fifteen stories, each narrated in a different voice. Old or young, humble or arrogant, puzzled or proud, these are characters for whom the absurdities of contemporary American popular culture and searing memories of war uneasily coexist ... Blending Vietnamese folklore and American realities, lyric, dreamlike passages and comic turns ..."

Another pair of books of short stories I recommend are Veronica and the Gongora Passion, by Zulfikar Ghose (1998) and The Middleman and Other Stories, by Bharati Mukherjee (1988).

Cheers,
Jim