sillypants124

The Time Traveler’s Wife Synopsis: A Most untraditional love story, this is a celebrated tale of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who involuntarily travels through time, and Claire Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Claire’s passionate affair endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bond of love. I was very intrigued by the “appeal” of the book based from a friend’s recommendation and a lot of the rave reviews and the fact it’s a fictional “love story” and not a “romance” novel. I was disappointed with this book. I do not know if it was because I had high expectations or not. I do Praise the author Audrey Niffenegger for how she tackles time traveling with the main male character Henry other than that I did not care for this story. The Character deveolpment lacked in my opinion because there were events that happened to both of the character's lives and we do not get any information on how this shaped them as individuals and as a couple which resulted in a "monotone" character that never grew or slighty grew. Henry to me was a predator, very selfish, manipulative, never remorseful, and he had a lot of issues and I really think if he had a therapist he could have resolved some of his issues. Claire to me was spoiled, selfish, naive, and as well never remorseful. We follow the life of Henry and Claire and how they meet. Henry thirty-eight Meets Claire as a six year old girl and we get to see her grow up through various stages of her life with Henry popping in and out until she finally finds Henry during the present day. It can be confusing, but yes there are actually two meetings of these characters. As the book progresses we start getting to know more of the relationship between the two main characters. Their relationship to me is not love but more of lust. Henry was already in a relationship and in love with Ingrid when Claire came along. Yes, Henry’s relationship with Ingrid was a bit messed up, but it could have been fixed with therapy. Henry just went from one extreme to another extreme of a relationship. Henry and Claire never fought but all they did was have sex. There were quite a few graphic sexual scenes within the story and I honestly believe this did not help to convey these two characters were in “love” especially when Claire slept with her friend’s husband while married to Henry. Even though Claire did betray her husband what I did not like so much was how the author just dismisses this act and not delve more into how this affected any of the characters and continues on as nothing happened. Again, this kind of thing happens more than once so it was hard to feel any compassion and feel sorry for the characters even when the book ends. The ending felt like a cop out to have a “happy ending” to this story; but I did not feel happy. I felt the characters got what was coming to them and overall I became angry because I thought the author had a great idea but the execution was not there even in the writting. There is a lot of language in this book and it may have helped show the type of character we are dealing with but I felt it was a little over board, and the grammatical errors and that's saying something from someone that has bad grammer - but the stylistic of the writing was very Jane Austin-esque. I wouldn't recommend this book to just anyone. 1/10 (Read March 2010) Side Note: I know there was a reading group of this on here awhile back but I thought I would give my review on this book. Hopefully I did not go overboard myself and gave too much detail away and did an okay job reviewing this book. ------------- Brandon

I know this is old but thought it would be fun to join in. 1. English is my native language. 2. Sign language (ASL) I learned at the age of 8 because my dad is hard of hearing (but can be labeled deaf now since he has lost about 80% of his hearing) so I am very very fluent I did interpreting for my parents church starting at the age of 11 but had no desire to be certified. 3. Russian for 8 years now. It started in high school and kept taking classes in college nd did some translations of letters and some movies - my parents church was doing this special class of how christians can witness to non-believers through movies and one of the movies they did was "Lord of the Rings" but it was in Russian, I don't know why, and I had to interpret a 10 minute clip of what all the characters are saying. I love to read a russian bookd so I can keep up with it but some of the books that are Russian are either a. Translated into Russian are not the books I want to read or b. the Russian books are not appealing to me and are over my head, and I am always on the hunt for a russian penpal so I don't lose it. Which is very easy to do when I live in an area that is not predominetly Russian but more Spanish.

Thank you guys for the welcome. Kylie: I cannot wait for those discussions, but I should warn you I can be a little bit of a devil's advocate - not for argument sake but for discussion purposes. AbielleRose: Knowing others are into cross stitching is exciting. I was in the beginning and then when I got further into the "Art" of dance I stopped watching. Only because So You Think You Can Dance is to me purely entertainment and not really about the art of dance and it can be a shocker when people step into a dance room expecting it to be like the show and it is not. I do watch it from time to time and my "Art Advocate" comes flying out of me... where it comes from is a mystery at times; but I do like how the show has brought attention to dance and has inspired many people to be a dancer or to get into dance. So for that I am a fan of the show.

At one time I never read any reviews. I would enter the bookstore and ask one of the employees which book they would suggest and take their book/s into an account while I looked around and saw what books caught my attention either by the cover or title. After I read the book then I would find some reviews. Now I do at times and just to see what other have to say and gather information about the book and the author. Always there are the extremes of good and bad reviews so I find the ones that are in the middle and ones that give a simple to the point review. I did review a book on Barnes&Nobles site one time and I did make the mistake of adding info from the book to support my decision about the book as others have done as well... so I am learning not to write a term paper on the book but give a decent review on my thoughts without giving away any important crucial plot information. Usually I check out Barnes&Nobles site on reviews and look for what is new or interesting. Brandon

Hi everyone, I actually stumbled across this site because I was very curious about joining a "book club" online with other people because I wanted to actually wanted to be apart of some book discussion with others that are reading the same book. When I found this site I was very excited with all that one can do here so I am looking forward to being involved. I do love to read to gain some more knowledge and to expound on my vocabulary. I am in search for a new book now and one has caught my eye which is called "Still Alice" by Lisa Genova. I am all over the place with reading books. I do give authors a try but if I am dissapointed or cannot get into their style of writing then I just do not read those authors again. When I am not reading I am cross stitching and that is my huge addiction and I also go to school for dance. I only have one more year left and then I am done until I can get into a dance school in New York. Well if you want to know anything else do not hesitate to ask. . Brandon