Books I've Read

Hello!

I have finished reading 2 books - The Time Travellor's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis. These were books I borrowed recently from the Tampines Library. My verdict is: Time Travellor's Wife was a pointless book. I shouldn't have wasted my time on it, except for the fact that a well-respected friend of mine highly recommended it, together with his wife. Both said they cried at the end, and this friend of mine was a guy's guy. In the end, the book was so repetitive, the plot was so thin, and the characters so unmemorable and so myopically into each other and noone else (yuck), that I do not empathise at all with the characters and wonder how this book ever made it to the bestseller's list. The only redeeming point was that the 2 characters ended up waiting for each other their whole lives, even though one died. So, it's kinda touching, although as i said, I can't see what they see in each other. Both characters are very one-dimensional. THe only trait I can tell is their inloved-ness in each other. Bleah...

The other book, Till We Have Faces, is so much more promising. The plot is a Greek classical story, and has elements of the Arthurian age - sword fights, wars, sacrifices of pretty women to the gods to alleviate bad weather, falling in love with someone who is noble and true and honest, but the really interesting twist to this whole story is that it explores the fate of someone who is an ugly girl. In fact, the whole story is narrated from the point of view of this girl, who is sister to 2 really pretty sisters. It is an interesting situation, and how she is treated by all the men, even her own father. And how her love for her sister eventually drives her to do a crazy thing, and how she buried all these hurts and tormented doubts deep in her heart, but learnt a lot of skills and eventually became a ruler of the country, and how she is loveless all her life. It is bittersweet.