Praise? For the Time Traveler's Wife?

I love books; my mom loves books and so we came up with the brilliant idea of beginning our own book club. First stop on this express train, The Time Traveler's Wife. I had seen the movie and wasn't all that in love with it. The ending was horrible and it left me with so many, too many unanswered questions. Last summer the book was recommended to me by a friend who told me it would definitely beat the book and sometime in June I stated reading it.
I finished today as in on-my-way-home-on-the-plane. At first I couldn't make up my mind about whether or not I liked it the ending was too abrupt and almost worse than the movie. But I realized that if someone were to ask me which one I liked more I would have to say that I liked them for different things.

This post is about the book though. The language is beautiful and I was filled with the desire to jump on a plane to Michigan & Chicago just to see what Henry and Clare saw just to feel what they felt. The best part of this book was how much it made me ponder about time. This book twisted and played with my ideas of time. First off, it's not written in chapters but in dates sometimes with the characters being two different ages at once and they somehow play out in a weird chronological kind of way. I found myself wanting to spend more time with my eight year old brother my passion for journaling kindled with even more fire. I loved the tragedy of their whole relationship and the perfectness of it even with Henry's tragic flaw. I dared to challenge all the concepts of time that have been presented to me before in science fiction movies, in classroom lectures, and in church. The fact that nothing could change because of someone's decision was kind of mind-blowing. It was stronger than fate but still had some free-will attached to it. I kept wanting to tell Henry, "next time you time travel, try this, do this differently."

That's the beauty of books though, you can't change them. Books are created I believe, 30% for a reader's entertainment, and %70 for an author's pure pleasure. I have decided that I love the book and I wish I could pin-point each and every thing I loved about the book but that would ruin things for you. I do love the choices for the film's actors. Maybe it's because I had already seen the movie, but Rachel Mc Adams and Eric Bana were pretty close to what I had in mind for Henry & Clare and that's always satisfying.

All of my ♥,
Lauren

p.s. If any one has any ideas for good reads send them my way!