Goodbye Middlesex - It was great reading you!

I just turned the last page of Middlesex. Of course, I saw it coming,...
the last 100 pages
the last 20 pages
the last 5 pages ...
part of me desperately wished that I'd misread the final page number (I always check page numbers before starting a book - call me anal!) and another chapter would be magically tacked on.
I did not want to let these people go! I'm sad. I miss Cal -- what happened to you Cal? Are you with Julie???

I don't want to pick up another book because I don't want these wonderful characters to leave my headspace. Oh, woe . . .

Just a quickie

It snowed here, finally, and my kids are loving it! And so am I!! The snow began last week but I was hesitant to celebrate because so far this winter, whatever fell from heavens melted in a day. Hurray -- last week's snowfall is still on the ground and it's been slowly piling up all week. Hubby and I took Sweetness & Light tobagganing and "weeeeeeeeeeeee", I went down the hill, too!! I felt about 8 years old.

I'm so into this book - Middlesex by Jefferey Euginides -- that I've neglected my blog, my writing, my kids, my husband, my sleep...
I'm not sure I would have picked it out of a bin at Chapters (though, technically, I did pick it out of a bin at Costco!!), because the blurb really doesn't do it for me. It's basically about a guy named Cal, a hermaphrodite, who narrates the story of the life of his grandparents, their immigration from Greece (insert Greek/Turk politics/wars/social strife), then moves onto the life of his parents, then his birth as a girl.... (I have to stop now because I'm only 1/2 thru the book).
If I hadn't heard a bit of buzz, if it hadn't won the Pulitzer, if it hadn't been an obscenely low price, I would have passed.
Thank goodness for small miracles! The prose is beautiful, the characters well-rounded, sympathetic and rich. I can almost feel Cal's grandmother's thick braids.
This is not a fast action story to skim, but a savour-every-word piece of art. I've reread several passages, just to wrap my head around the imagery.
Middlesex hasn't kept me up until the wee hours flipping pages madly, but it has kept me up at night thinking about the characters, their inner strength and struggles, and how so many in the world have similar stories to tell -- yet by and large, we, the general populace, remain happily ignorant of these situations (that isn't a jibe, just the truth).
Like Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, this one is going to stick with me a long time. . .

Whatcha Reading Meme

I was tagged by Amy.
Here are the instructions:
1. Grab the nearest book to you;
2. Open to page 123, look down to the 5th sentence;
3. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog;
4. Include the title and the author's name;
5. Tag 3 people.

The nearest book to me is the one I just started. I'm not on page 123 yet so I'm a bit miffed at being forced to read ahead (this is like cheating!!). But for the sake of the meme, ...


The novel is Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides - Pulitzer Prize winner (so it must be good, right?!)

"The only way my father could think of to instill in me a sense of my heritage was to take me to dubbed Italian versions of the ancient Greek myths. And so, every week, we saw Hercules slaying the Nemean lion, or stealing the girdle of the Amazons ("That's some girdle, eh Callie?"), or being thrown gratuitously into snake pits without textual support. But our favorite was the Minotaur..."

I'm tagging Brad, George and Matt.
Oh darn... I don't have their emails, so I'll just keep my fingers crossed that they read my blog.

Thanks, Amy -- that was a fun one!!