I’d say this idea is retarded…if they hadn’t done such a good job with it. I mean, other than Paris Hilton (whose inclusion will go on to baffle me for years, no doubt), every single “character” on this list is perfect.

I finished The Book of Lost Things over the weekend. It really is one of the best things I’ve read in years. Easily the best thing I’ve read since finishing Life of Pi. Of course, I can’t count The French Lieutenant’s Woman as one of my favorites because I was “forced” to read if for a class (and by the way, the links there are to the 1 star reviews for each book…I always find 1 star reviews of books that I love fascinating, and one of the 1 stars for The Book of Lost Things mentions that a person at a certain “bookmine” suggested the work, and the reviewer still can’t look at the person the same way…), but I digress.

When I say that I “finished” it, I mean that I finished the story proper, which was (in the version I have) 330ish pages. The actual book continues on into the 500’s with Connolly’s…meditations, I’d guess you’d call them…on the various myths and folktales that were the inspiration for the novel. It is very interesting, though a bit less captivating then the story proper, so I’ll stroll through that while I continue on in some other stuff I’ve been meaning to get to…

I’ll just say one last thing, since I directed you all to the poor reviews, that it is not a new idea, or even a necessarily fresh take on an old idea, but there is something about the novel that I found tremendously touching. Even though the protagonist is a 12 year old boy, it is a decidedly “grown up” book (whatever that means), but I think Connolly handles a lot of delicate situations and adolescent emotions with a really deft hand. I am willing to admit that this is by no means a book I would recommend to everyone (as opposed to say, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and by the way, the ultimate edition here has not a single 1 star review on amazon, and only one 2 star review…), but seeing as how I was once a male adolescent dealing with some of the same type of issues as David (well, not WWII, obviously), maybe I had no choice but to the love it.