The Rapture of Being Forever Incomplete*: The Book List

I am a hard-hearted bitch. Why? Because I found David Nicholls’ One Day totally unmoving and rather trite. Sorry, romantics of the world.

One Day is the story of Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, university students who link up the day after their graduation (July 15, 1988), and the story follows them through all subsequent July 15s up until 2007. A fanciful plot, all the vignettes from July 15 are definitely meant to take place on a movie set.

I picked it up because I had read that it was already speeding towards movie form, and that it was written as if that had been the intention all along: as a not-so aspiring writer at the moment (I’d rather have another job in hand instead), I wanted to see how a book so obviously meant for the big screen plays out. The answer is: take one part Forrest Gump (but set in the 80s, 90s and aughts), add in a dash of When Harry Met Sally, and then sprinkle with a bit of City of Angels and you’ve got the recipe for a book that will no doubt touch some people and a movie that will probably make millions at the box office. And that’s cool—if you can play the market that way, good on you.

I didn’t absolutely despise it, but the writing left me bored (I was seriously skimming toward the end), the story was pretty predictable and I saw the ending coming about two-thirds into the first chapter. I won’t spoil because I think this book will be a touchstone for many, but: I was only wrong about the means of the last third’s big drama. I was mildly amused by the ostentatiousness of the 90s, more than a little bit horrified at the parenting and relationship ineptitude of the 00s, and wasn’t moved much by the tail end of the 80s. Emma and Dexter left me cold, because neither was particularly ingratiating, and there was nothing about their friendship or courtship or buddy status (whatever you want to call it) that made me relate to them. I just kept on thinking, constantly: why doesn’t she move on, he’s a loser! And why does he like this harpy so much? Uh-oh, here comes the reversal of fortune, when he’s doing great and she’s not, then he isn’t and she is! Damn, a baby and engagement are getting in the way, who saw that coming!? I just felt like I was following a path with a view that was uninspiring, unsurprising and void of any heart and soul. It was like “hiking” through Curtis Park in Saline—seen it a million times before, it was novel the first time, but now it’s boring and mildly disturbing being so close to the cemetery, and anyway, it’s goddamn Saline, something I’ll never understand or want to understand, so let’s go home or to another, better park, shall we?

And that’s probably the thing: I don’t understand hanging around for decades, hoping upon hope that someone will notice you, and hoping that the both of you will come to the realization that you belong together, damn it, and that ain’t nothing gonna slow you down. It’s a puzzler for me because I can’t imagine carrying feelings for that long. They fizzle out, they die when you meet someone new, time and distance and attitudes make it all fade away slowly but surely. Nostalgia is one thing, but the inability to move on is another. And that’s how Emma and Dexter struck me: so fixated on that past and so utterly indefinable in terms other than each other, they remained, for me, the dark silhouettes you see on the cover. Without any discernible identities, I couldn’t connect; without the connection, I couldn’t care. And that’s all I feel about this novel, if that even qualifies as a feeling: I just don’t care.

Maybe you will, though.

Onto the book list.

Finished:

1) The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault
2) The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
3) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peal Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
4) Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde
5) Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
6) Unaccustomed Earth: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
7) Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
8) Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
9) Shakespeare’s Wife by Germaine Greer
10) The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future by Robert Darnton
11) Under the Dome by Stephen King
12) Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge by Eleanor Herman
13) Sex with the Queen: 900 Years of Vile Kings, Virile Lovers, and Passionate Politics by Eleanor Herman
14) The World in Half by Cristina Henriquez
15) The Road by Cormac McCarthy
16) The Hidden by Tobias Hill
17) The Best American Short Stories 2009: Edited by Alice Sebold & Heidi Pitlor (Series Editor)
18) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Translated by Reg Keeland)
19) The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
20) The Grift by Debra Ginsberg
21) The Help by Kathryn Stockett
22) Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson
23) About My Sisters by Debra Ginsberg
24) Blind Submission by Debra Ginsberg
25) The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Translated by Lucia Graves)
26) Do Not Deny Me: Stories by Jean Thompson
27) Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
28) Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
29) Burning Bright: Stories by Ron Rash
30) Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
31) One Day by David Nicholls

Re-read:

Empty

Currently Reading:

1) Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon Shea

Waiting To Be Read (Already Purchased, Got as Gifts, Borrowed from My Husband or Otherwise Accessible without the Use of Funds, But Not an Assurance That I Will Read These Before I Buy More Books):

1) World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
2) Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress by Debra Ginsberg
3) Total Immersion by Allegra Goodman

*Apologies to Alanis Morissette for cribbing from her song, Incomplete.