sara's word blog

It's been a long, long time...

Which, of course, reminds me of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”

“And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time…”

Anyway, it has been a long, long time and I apologize to anyone who potentially reads this blog. I’m not sure if that’s anyone. So I may just be apologizing to myself.

Anyway, lots has been going on. I’ve been acting in a play (Community theater! Woo!) and I’ve been taking lots of pictures and hanging out with my sweet friends.

A new revelation is that I’m really interested in portrait photography. I have really loved it for awhile, but I mean to take more portraits. I’ve got a couple shoots lined up with my personal guinea pigs back in PDX pretty soon, so I’ll post photos from those on here.

Anyway, I will be writing again soon and I don’t intend to abandon my poor Tumblelog anytime soon. Peace out! 

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

I am a fast reader. I always have been. But it’s been a long time since I devoured a book this fast. When I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it and wondering when I could get back to it. We went to our friends’ house out of town over the weekend, and I brought it with me.

Finally I finished it off last night, and it is really a great story.

A couple of days ago, I was trying to explain the premise of this book to my husband, Eric. 

“It’s about this guy who time travels involuntarily,” I told him.

I went on to explain that this makes everything circular for him. In his 30s and 40s, Henry spends a lot of time going back and visiting his wife as a child, which means that she knows him intimately (literally) before they even meet in any sort of normal timeline. So when they do meet, she scares the crap out of him by knowing everything about him.

Then, when they’re later married, she spends a lot of her time waiting for him, as he time travels.

Eric looked at me and said, “So it’s Sci-Fi.”

No way. I don’t read Sci-Fi.

“No, it’s definitely Sci-Fi,” he said. “It’s about time travel.”

So I guess we’re classifying this book as Science Fiction. But it reads like a really heartfelt story about two people whose relationship is, shall we say, unconventional. But something about their unique arrangement makes their love much more meaningful and deep.

One thing I really like about the book is that it doesn’t romanticize the characters. They get mad at each other, they get distracted and frustrated and have very painful periods in their life. But altogether, it makes things mean more to them.

I totally recommend this book. If you like Sci-Fi, it might be a little wimpy for you, but if you like sort of sweet, but not overly romanticized love stories, it’s going to be a refreshing change from what you’ve been reading. 

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman

Oh, Chuck.

I love your columns in Esquire. I love your essays. And I love your book.

I don’t just love your book because it’s hilarious, or because it’s sort of poignant in a campy way, or because you relate the most strange events and objects together in a way that makes them seem cosmically aligned.

I love it because you write about Saved by the Bell. That show which no one considers to be consequential enough to even mention. You don’t shy away, you dive in. You analyze, you pick apart, you tell us about Zack Morris. And I love you for that.

A moment of explanation. I love Saved by the Bell. It’s a crappy show, yes. But I don’t love it because I like to sit and watch it, I love it in that it was what I was watching when I went to Cooper Mountain Elementary School, back when life was simple and I was boy crazy to the point of concerning my teachers. I watched Saved by the Bell when I was young, when I was young enough to not be able to imagine what high school would be like. I imagined that one day, I would be just like one of the kids at Bayside High.

That’s not where the significance ends for me: My husband and I singlehandedly credit the series with our meeting.

We were sitting at a long table of people. There were probably four people between us, and I was just talking to the people around me. I was new, a freshman at WSU, and Eric was in his second year there. We were all sitting at the late-night snack spot called “Flix.”

Flix has lots of neon lights and great 90s vibes. Movie posters on the wall, red glittery plastic upholstery on the chairs. Big booths. It reminded everyone of “The Max.” You know, the diner on Saved by the Bell. So naturally, that kicked off a conversation about the show and soon someone asked what everyone else’s favorite episode was. Eric and I began to answer at the same second, and we both cited the same episode. The rest is history.

Klosterman’s book is a hilarious compilation of essays that talk about these kind of things. Things you fondly remember. The “Left Behind” series with Kirk Cameron. Saved by the Bell. Et cetera.

My favorite essay, personally, is one about journalism and journalists. It talks about how “media bias” doesn’t exist, and what people should really be concerned about is random circumstance. Generally, a reporter will put out four calls to four people, and whoever calls back has the first say and the say that will shape the article. I felt like that essay was written to me. Thanks, Chuck.

Read this book. Read this book especially if you happened to be born in the late 70s (like Klosterman) or early 80s (like me) or if you’re a journalist. You will laugh. You will think. You will remember Saved by the Bell. 

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

What a very strange book, I thought, as I closed this one. I liked it, sure, but it was very strange.

I like talking about books with other people. I mean, I really like it. I think I’m especially fond of it because it’s not very often that I get to just sit and talk books. But my friend Krister and I went to an event about a month ago and on the way home, we were talking books.

“Do you like Dave Eggers?” he asked me. I knew who Dave Eggers was, but at that moment it occurred to me that I’d never actually read anything he’d written. So, on Krister’s recommendation, I picked up a copy of Eggers’ first work, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.”

AHWOSG is a memoir, about Eggers’ own experience losing both his parents to cancer within about 6 weeks of each other, and then becoming the guardian of his young brother, Toph. It’s a great story, and Eggers certainly tells it well.

The way he tells it made my head spin, however. His storytelling is very stream-of-consciousness-driven, and to support this, he writes in extremely (EXTREMELY) long sentences.

One of the things Krister said to me while endorsing the book was: “No one can write a three-page sentence like Dave Eggers.”

I agree. No one can, I suppose. But the act of reading three-page sentence after three-page sentence becomes very exhausting after a short period of time, and it’s not a short book.

Good for the story, good for the honest and imaginative introspective moments, good for the occasional very, very dark joke. But you need to be ready to commit to long sentences in order to power through this one.