Currently

Books I'm Reading:

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius


This week: 342
Last week: 457
Semester: 1877


Sentences:

1. "And if dead people aged, wouldn't it be a comfort? To think of Ethan growing up in heaven - fourteen years old now instead of twelve - eased the grief a little. Oh, it was their immunity to time that made the dead so heartbreaking."

2. "It seemed she had webbed his mind with her stories, wound him in slender steely threads from her life - her Shirley Temple childhood, unsavory girlhood, Norman flinging the screen out the window, Alexander mewing like a newborn kitten, Muriel wheeling on Doberman pinschers and scattering her salmon-pink business cards and galloping down the beach, all spiky limbs and flying hair, hauling a little red wagon full of lunches."

3. "Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding."

(All from "The Accidental Tourist")

As much as I dislike mushy romance novels (which doesn't exactly identify this book but comes somewhat close), these quotes called out to me.

Title Goes Here

I've been reading The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler, in which Macon Leary, a travel guide writer, meets Muriel Pritchett, a dog trainer. Love ensues and ultimately succeeds, because this is a romance novel and people will cry for blood if love doesn't triumph.

In the novel, Macon and Muriel are almost opposites, just like Macon and his ex-wife Sarah. Macon is neat, fastidious (bonus points for vocab word), stolid, and does everything according to system, while Muriel is something of a "wild child." Sarah is actually more opposing in personality to Macon, with her messiness, tendency to distrust systems, and active personality.

What I don't get is this: why are opposites attracted to each other? Is it the tendency to be fascinated with the personality type you don't have? Is it some genetic thing, or instilled into us by society?

Actually, some opposites don't attract. There are probably some couples with the same interests and personalities. Still, this "opposites attract" thing is very interesting.