Friday, January 13, 2012

Book Report: The History of Love

Eager to delve into the salty seas of literary pearls this New Year, I checked myself out a copy (upon Eagle's chit chat recommendation while waiting for the next available teller at the local credit union we both engage with) of The History of Love by Nicole 'Rhymes with Strauss' Krauss. Twas a good read, all in all. Though I will confess that, in my eager beaverness, I dove a little too deep, too fast. (wait, beaverness?) As in, I sat myself down at my local tea shop/smoothie shop and read 70 pages at a time, reader me running at full gallop. And while my eyes certainly registered all letters, spaces, punctuation and singular typo, my brain did not. Picture if you will: a wild frontier with two horses all geared up, clopping away at full speed, thingies that connect their harnesses to their intended load dragging behind them on the ground, and left behind in the dust, me, standing in my grounded chariot, coughing and rubbing her eyes. (Horses = my eyeballs. Me = well, me, my brain. Eyes = the eyes of my brain.) So then I found myself more than halfway through the book and seriously confused.
Enter in Internetted study notes. Never in my scholastic career did the need arise for me to make use of such crutches! Yet here I am, the setting sun of school long behind me, and I'm fumbling in the dark trying to unclasp the secrets of said lovely novel. So, yeah, I had to read the summary of the book to actually understand the book. The book, for the record, is not complicated. There were just some key facts that I glossed over in my sophomoric attempt at speed reading that made it, well, confusing.
Speaking of speed reading and the history of love, of my love to be exact, I once dated a speed reader. She was not a speed reader by profession, but by hobby only. Which maybe added to the irritation I felt over how frickin smug she was at how frickin good she was at it. Ack! I can remember sitting next to her in bed, both of us nosed in our own books of choice, but me only just barely, hanging by fingernails, mine, on the the thin ledge of words lined up on the pages because I was so distracted by the affrontingly triumphant sound of her page turning! It was happening so fast! And so loud! Oh, the sound! A gold trophy scraped down the length of a chalk board in an otherwise quiet bedroom. And to top it off she had the audacity to enjoy herself via actually being able to understand the tale at such break neck speed! Ack! I'm tensing just reliving the memory!
Interestingly enough, my repressed competitive streak and equally repressed/completely underdeveloped resolve to share how I was feeling at that point, were somehow - get this - linked to how I related to her throughout the entirety of the relationship. And ultimately led its untimely demise.
I am happy to report, though, that knowing she could read what took me one hour to write in under 30 seconds is no longer filed under 'THINGIES THAT GET MY GOAT.' Nor am I as fervently chomping at the bit to plow through the next book, Everything Is Illuminated. I intend to take my time on that. Which is probably doubly in my favor as the plot lines, I'm told, are pretty much (and controversially) the same.

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