novel ideas

For the last two days I have been doing something I haven't done in years. Yes, really, years. I read a novel. See, I read a lot. How much do you read? Double it, quadruple it, maybe we're approaching how much I read. I read copious amounts of information (some deep, some pure crap) online and then I go and read tons and tons of theoretical, practical, boring, exciting, enlightening, and useless articles and books for school. Years of dense, profound reading material forced out any patience I had left for flowerly fiction. Don't write two pages of description for what we only needed two sentences for, please.

Perhaps it's only Tom Perrotta that can get me to read fiction these days. When I popped into Border's on Friday I couldn't help but notice his latest book, Little Children staring at me with a $4.99 pricetag on the bargain shelf. I've read all of his other works, I couldn't resist this one with a weekend of "freedom" before me. I could have easily read the whole thing in one sitting, but let's face it, I have the attention span of a two-year-old so I had to spread it over the two days. I just finished it, and god, it was good. Nothing profound or groundbreaking. Maybe it was just good to get wrapped up in a story through words rather than film. Actually, this is going to be a film, which doesn't surprise me (though the casting does).

But what the hell intrigued me so much about a bunch of early-thirties suburbanites with young children? Maybe it was how it painted that suburban dream so negatively. Not in coarse words, but in the realities of these people's lives. No one was happy with his or her situation--not the ones who planned it to a tee, fell there by accident, or didn't know what the hell they wanted to do with their lives.

In honor of this great feeling the book left me (though I'll say the disgustingly sappy romantic that lurks under this seemly blase exterior shed a tear for the ending that had to be), I think I'm going to watch Election after Grey's Anatomy.

Did I just out myself as a soap opera watcher (never Desperate Housewives, though!)?