A hiatus efficiently broken.

The class that I was taking ended. As you can imagine, with all the reading that had to be completed in such a short period of time, I had to take a little break. I had all these graphic novels and young adult books sitting around that I wanted to read, but I couldn't bring myself to pick any of them up. It was just too much kid lit at once. On my way to the airport for a trip back home after some time away from reading, I decided it was time to discontinue both my time off from literary adventures and the streak I've had with young adult stuff, and I'm doing it with a bang.

A friend recommended Middlesex to me; though, I have to admit that I've been eyeing it for some time. The cover and title of Jeffrey Eugenides' book are both intriguing and mysteriously alarming; I was intrigued. As I boarded the plane for my journey, I was exhausted and was thinking about just sleeping for most of the flight, but as the plane took off, I cracked the spine anyway. The first paragraph cued me into the fact that it was time to nap because the reading was going to be heavy, but also that this was going to be an incredible book. Though sleepiness forced the book closed at the time, I've never been so drawn in by the opening of a novel. I think you'll understand what I mean:

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August 1974. Specialized readers may have come across me in Dr. Peter Luce's study, "Gender Identity in 5-Alpha-Reductase Psuedo- hermaphrodites," published in the Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology in 1975. Or maybe you've seen my photograph in chapter sixteen of the now sadly outdated Genetics and Heredity. That's me on page 578, standing naked beside a height chart with a black box covering my eyes.

How could I not feel suddenly sucked into that world and want to know more. In one short paragraph is a history, with holes begging to be filled. After so much lighter fare, this might take me a little longer to read, but I have a feeling I'll enjoy it immensely.