Making sense

Anne Lamott, on writing ...

"We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.”

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

FiftyFifty Reading Challenge - Book #3 - Middlesex

I had to abandon the YA title, "The House of the Scorpion," by Nancy Farmer. I had gotten to page 60 but wasn't digging any part of that book. Ugh. Hate to give up on a book, but time is too precious, right? I want, really want, to like YA books, but they're not working for me.
So I turned to my bookshelf, filled with titles and titles and titles, most of which I have read, but many of which I have not: books purchased On Sale or when Borders was shutting down, or for their cover designs that attracted me like a moth to light. Yes, I do judge a book by its cover.
Searched through my fiction section. Found "Middlesex," by Jeffrey Eugenides. A sticker on the top right of the book: Oprah's Book Club. Translation: I'll probably like it.
I started reading. Paragraph one begins:
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."
Now that's quite a hook, ain't it?

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