The Time Traveler's Wife

I decided to continue reading The Time Traveler's Wife today. I finished the Nicholas Sparks book at work, and was able to read about twenty more pages of the next novel before I actually had to, well, work.

I forgot about my love/hate relationship with this book. It's an amazing and refreshing idea; it has a great plot, fun characters ((for the most part)), and I really do enjoy it. But I hate Niffenegger's writing style. I abhor it, really. She's way too in love with run-on sentences, fragments, and semi-colons ((though, I am trying to fall in love with semi-colons myself...but too many of them I find distracting)). The semi-colons and run-on especially grind my gears. Okay, so it's cute when Clare is twelve and is talking in run-on sentences. It's a characteristic. I get it. But when she's twenty years old, and a college graduate...it's time to stop. And yes, I know people do not think in perfect English, but you know what...that is what's so great about a novel. I don't have to sift through a person's jack rabbit-paced mind trying to comprehend.

Furthermore, "I hate it when she doesn't use tags after dialogue." "When it reads like this, it's just stupid. And wrong. I hate that." I'm all for creative license and liberties and what not, but honestly now....

Unfortunately, what I've listed are not things I can overlook. The mistakes are glaringly obvious ((just who in the hell was her editor?!)), which makes for a slow read. Not to mention, it's written in first person point of view, which I hate. Not only that, but it switches between the two characters - excessively. It's not just switching POVs as a new chapter begins ((which would be tolerable)); it's right in the middle of the chapter, or a scene, or a conversation. It's unnecassary and annoying.

This book makes me absurdly positive that it's going to be twice as hard to get a novel published than I had originally thought. Apparently, you can suck at all things structurally and grammatically correct, but you need a wicked story idea. I fall short in the second category.

But really, I do like the book...I just don't like the author...or how it's written.

Excited for the movie to come out though. Should be better.

Anyway. I feel accomplished. Yay.