The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

I really liked this book. The back cover boasts that it is an atypical romance novel and it really is. The way that the plot unfolds and the way Niffenegger goes back and forth between Clare and Henry really adds to the story. Honestly, sometimes I would get confused between who was talking because I read through this novel really quickly but I mean for the most part it was pretty apparent who was who and what not.

Niffenegger also did a good job of explaining time traveling or at least resolving issues that usually arise when time traveling is part of the plot. It didn't turn into a science fiction novel or anything complicated which makes it accessible to a lot of readers.

When I initially picked up the novel, I actually thought it was going to be a spinoff of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, but I was completely off.

I think that academically this book has a pretty decent amount of value in terms of themes and symbolism. There's obviously the themes of love and waiting and fate but there's also really strong Christian symbolism in terms of Henry being a sort of prophet figure and transcending the boundaries of time while Clare also can be representative of Christians as a whole. I'm not sure if this was necessarily Niffenegger's intent, but the relationship is pretty strong so I would imagine that there's some kind of significance to such parallelism.

At any rate, I thought it was a good read both though honestly, some of the sex scenes were really graphic... I feel like this too contributed to the book rather than took away. Sometimes with books and movies, too many sex/action scenes just take away from the main plot. However, with this book, I think that it really showed just how deep the relationship between Henry and Clare was.

I also thought that the moment when Clare and Gomez kind of connect and have this "what if" moment was brilliant because it makes you think, if not for Henry, how different would Clare be? At the same time, playing on the idea of soulmates and fate, the fact that Henry and Clare end up together I feel is inevitable because from the start Clare and Henry knew each other and met.

This is one of those books that I think would be a lot of fun to do as a book club because the themes are pretty accessible and there's a lot to discuss beyond the academic. It's also an easy read and the language is really straightforward. Overall, I can see this book going a long way in terms of popularity and what not.

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

This is the sequel to The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and I was very excited to read this novel because I thought that Lisbeth Salander was a really compelling character. In this novel, she's slowly but surely becoming a more active member of society and I'm not quite sure I necessarily like that. Because you get a lot more of what her life was like, the mystery behind who she is and why she acts the way she does is somewhat dispelled. In terms of comparing the two, this novel had a lot more action and plot movement and it doesn't have a lot of the seemingly unnecessary details that the first novel had but I feel like the first novel had more depth and the characters were more three-dimensional and engaging. There were several new characters that were introduced but I feel like there wasn't any other new dimensions to Salander and Blomkvist, which made them a little less interesting. I also feel like there were some character discrepancies with Salander at least because she's more talkative in this novel and by nature she doesn't talk much. I could be wrong though because she was such a mystery in the first novel.

I still feel like there was still a certain amount of unnecessary detail but I may just have been missing some of the underlying motifs that Larsson put into the novel. I may have mentioned this before, but Swedish people seem to drink a lot of coffee and eat a lot of sandwiches. And there's a lot of people who smoke.

I also got the feeling after I put the novel down that perhaps there may have been some discrepancies with the overall unraveling of the murders because of what the Millenium people had access to but I could be wrong.

Oh yes, and I'm envious of Salander's brilliance. Although she's on the socially inept side, she's so smart that I feel like it makes up for it.

Overall, like the first book, although this novel contains little academic quality, it is simply good to read for fun. Because this book was a murder mystery, I thought that the way the action played out was really well done and I can easily see this book becoming a movie.

[edit]

I also wanted to mention that there (interestingly) is also another theme about the abuse of women. Here it has more to do with organized crime, but I think it's interesting that both of these novels have underlying messages about treating women well and about women's rights. I think Larsson is a guy so the fact that he is saying something about the way women are treated I think has implications of what Swedish society is like right now. I could be wrong though since I know absolutely nothing about Swedish society.

A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Marquez

This book won a nobel prize for literature so it's supposed to be really really good. Academically, I totally and completely agree because of the reoccurring themes of solitude and the idea of how everything has a cycle. There's also the element of the supernatural and the seemingly coincidental that Marquez works really well into the novel.

However, in terms of how engaging the text actually was, the text was pretty decent but it was honestly hard to keep track of all the Aurelianos and Arcadios. I mean it's clear that the repetition of the names had significance and perhaps I read the novel too sporadically to remember the differences between them, but I would have to say that that is what detracted from the novel for me.

The novel was also really really long (it just keeps going!) but given the title and what Marquez was trying to accomplish, I think that he kept the text engaging enough to keep the reader going. Sometimes these types of books eventually get really boring or bogged down by details but there was a constant storyline and the plot kept moving so that was good.

I think that the only reservations I have about this novel is that yes, it is a good read, but I guess it isn't completely my kind of novel, where the ideologies aren't as apparent and the plot isn't riveting (though I don't think that it needs to be for a novel to be good). I'd definitely want to read this novel again because I feel like a missed out on some important stuff but as for a recommendation to someone who doesn't really read, I wouldn't recommend this book.

Dinner with a Perfect Stranger by David Gregory

I also read the sequel to this novel, A Day with a Perfect Stranger and I think that although both are good reads, theologically, there are points that I don't agree with.

I liked how this book seems to unbiasedly portray the essence of Christianity rather than the typical books on evangelism with their hell and brimstone approaches. I can still see how non-Christians can be put off by this book because some of the answers I think aren't completely answered. It was a really good simple read. I finished the book in an hour or so I think.