Incredibly Close

Because I'm a late adopter of everything, from technology to books to movies to TV, it's no surprise that I just finished reading one of 2005's most acclaimed books, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.

I didn't expect to love it because everyone in my neighborhood tends to think he's a douche (he lives in Park Slope and irons his jeans?). But I did, in fact, love it. It smacks of a little pretentiousness, but mostly, I found myself stopping after reading something and reading it again because it had such personal significance to me.

Since I tend to read only drug addiction memoirs and true crime books, it's been awhile since that has happened for me.

Thus, we have:

Being with you makes my brain quiet. It hasn't made life wonderful, it's made life possible.

I think and think and think. I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

How were we spending so much time together but not getting to know each other?

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all of the lives I'm not living.

I would give everything to never think about her again, but I can only hold onto the things that I want to lose.

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

At the end of my search I wanted to be able to say: I don't know how I could have tried harder.