Feel the Love (Act 1)

I love that good decaf can be satisfying
I love that the air was a bit cooler tonight
I love the sweet, intoxicating flowers that kiss the night air with their
fragrance, contributing to a more pleasant evening run
I love Peter Pan, which I finally started to read last week
I love having lunch with a friend

Noticing a common thread? Besides the overuse of love, for the most part, the things I love are just that - things.

text message received @ lunch: "Can we read two more chapters of the book for Saturday? I'm finding it fascinating!"

rxn: sigh.

I've begun meeting with a friend weekly to help her prepare for grad school in the States. We both had the idea of selecting a novel to read and discuss and as luck would have it, we happen to have a lot of the same novels that we haven't read yet. However, there was one particular book that she had brought along to our first meeting, uncertain about her desire to read it, though it came highly recommended by the friend who passed it along to her. I recognized it immediately, for I have a copy of the same book, buried on a book shelf. I too was given the book by a friend and before receiving it, had heard its title mentioned time and time again by a few others. However, one glance at the title (Redeeming Love) and cover art and an immediate eye roll ensues. A romance novel? A 464 page romance novel? Grrreat. Yet, on the recommendation of several friends, I hung onto it, though it eventually got buried on a bottom bookshelf, that was, until today.

What an odd coincidence. Was it our inevitable fate to read this book? We decided the buddy system was the only way to make ourselves accountable for attempting to read it. The decision was to commit to a few chapters and if we were ready to bail after that, so be it, so imagine my surprise when I got the message this afternoon.

Crap! We're meeting for our first discussion on Saturday and here it is Thursday afternoon and I haven't even unearthed the book yet. Okay, that was actually no big surprise. Curiosity got the better of me though, and I spent part of my lunch break getting through the first 20 pages. So far, interesting. The novel is supposed to be a sort of retelling of the book of Hosea.

So why the aversion to romance novels? Oh, if you only knew, though now you shall! On the occasional weekend gathering of friends, a particular friend occasionally entertains us by reading excerpts from romance novels bestowed upon her, usually Christian ones actually, and we try to contain ourselves, at least until the end of the recitation, when we, inevitably, assail the storyline. In our defense, they are typically poorly researched and written, romance or not. Even before these happy occasions began, however, I could seldom hear the term "romance novel" without offering a snicker. (Apologies to the romance novel fans out there, you know who you are. It's just not my thing, and as you'll probably soon discover, if you haven't stopped reading by this point, my opinion of love is anything but mainstream.)