When I get sick, people say things like, "That's your body's way of telling you to slow down." And while there may be some truth to that (see: great shingles episode of '09), I have too many things to do. So body, you can shove it; this old girl is going to the club.
Not really. I've actually listened this time, at least for the past 48 hours. There was no choice really. Despite the great injustice of being overtaken with what I am sure is walking pneumonia on a holiday weekend (respiratory infection said the doc as he handed over another Z Pack), I have actually done nothing the past two days, except the following:
- Eat fig glazed burgers and Triscuits with chow chow (it still is a holiday, no?)
- Lay on the couch surrounded by tissues
- Read this marvelous book: "One Day" by David Nicholls.
Holy God, this book changes everything to me. OK, could I be more dramatic?
Clarification: it makes me just want to sit on the couch and read books and write books.
It's on loan from Amy, who left it on my chair at work. (Read it for the record here, Amy is working on a book that will be just as difficult to put down.) I picked it up on Saturday after finishing a short and tremendous work of non-fiction ("Making Toast" by Roger Rosenblatt) Since my sinuses had launched a massive attack in my head, I was getting resigned to the idea that there would be none of the usual cavorting about town (if trips to Target count as "cavorting.")
Two books sat on my nightstand: Kitty Kelley's "Oprah" biography and "One Day" by British writer Nicholls. In nine out of ten cases I will always choose non-fiction over fiction, but I opened page one of the 435 page paperback just to give it a try. And I haven't put it down until just now, final pages consumed.
I mean, damn. The best book I've read all year.
Here's the premise: told from the perspectives of two main characters, Emma and Dexter, beginning on their fateful meeting the day of college graduation. We meet these characters, who continue to intersect in each others' lives, over the course of 20 years. Snapshots of their relationship are unveiled -- always on the exact same date -- the day that they met.
It's about friendship and timing and missed opportunities, the role of luck and fate, connections and missed connections. Following Dexter and Emma from their 20s through their 40s the reader see them change and not change. It's like an intimate conversation between two friends, forged in the naivety of newly minted college graduates with the world stretched out endlessly. Then ... reality of life's detours, obscuring and magnifying their grand plans.
It made me thankful to be sick glad to not have read the Oprah biography. And brought increasing awareness to the fact that I have to get off my bum and start stringing together these little bits of writing scattered between my journal, iPad, and assorted computers.
In addition to being an engrossing read, this book just lights another match under my little writerly bum to get going in sewing together the panels of this book I'm always referring to. As in, "this will make a great chapter in my book," like last week as in one day I:
managed a photo shoot in DC in the a.m., flew home in the afternoon, all the while I worried if the next call would be "the one," only to pick up my son in Birmingham by the day care's closing.
And that's just the beginning. So now, time to get down to committing these stories down on paper. One Day. Like today.
But first, excited about taking part in a #twitlit discussion on the book later in the month, and ruminating on one fantastic quote from "One Day" (which is being made into a film staring Anne Hathaway, to be released in 2011).
Enjoy ...
“You’re gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of you life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle.”
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