An ode to 20072007

When I first saw it, there was nothing extra-ordinary about it in fact it was a simple paper-back wedged between bestsellers screaming for attention.

I ignored it. My husband picked it up and waved it in front of my face. “ Read it” he said.

“ Mesti you suka,” he said.I looked up from a copy of a recent book my journalists friends were marvelling about. I gave my husband the “ can you pls not kacau me smile” but he insisted.

I read the first few lines and then a page and then a chapter. I was hooked. I couldn’t put in down. I had my nose buried in it for a week whenever I could steal moments to myself.

Here is a preview:

“ We think we know the ones we love. Our husbands our wives. We know them - we are them sometimes; separated at a party we find ourselves voicing their opinions, their taste in food or books, telling an anecdote that never happened to us but happened to them. We watch their tic of conversation, of driving and dressing, how they touch a sugar cube to their coffee, and stare as it turns white to brown then drop it satisfied into the cup.

“ We think we know them. We think we love them. But what we love turns out to be a poor translation, a translation we ourselves have made, from a language we barely know. We try to get past it to the original, but we never can. We have seen it all. But what have we really understood?

“ One morning we awaken. Beside us, that familiar sleeping body in the bed: a new kind of stranger.

“ Perhaps you cannot see a marriage. Like those giant heavenly bodies invisible to the human eye it can only be charted by its gravity, its pull on everything around it.,”

Andrew Sean Greer from his book The Story of a Marriage.

I always seem to think the H comes from planet blur. Once in a while he does something that truly amazes me. I loved books that I could escape into. This one is a gem.

* I recently celebrated my 2nd wedding anniversary - - How time flies when your spending time with a hobbit. Hobbits rock my world ;-) Luff cha you silly billy.