Book Withdrawals

I just finished my first pleasure-reading book of the summer, Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. I've been gnawing on this book since the middle of May, and now that I've finished it I'm experiencing book withdrawals. Maybe it's the English nerd in me, but whenever I finish a book in which I have become emotionally invested, and have become so familiar with the characters that I feel as if I know them, I mourn the book just a tiny bit when I come to the end. I think to myself, "There has to be more. It can't be over!" Only meaningful books do this to me, though. I always felt this way after I finished a Harry Potter book.

And what book, you ask, will I move on to next? John Green's Looking for Alaska. As much as I loved Into Thin Air, as much as I didn't want the book to end, it was pretty depressing. I need some fiction to perk me up.

You know you want to read it.

Love Story

Brendan and I will celebrate our six-month wedding anniversary at the end of June, and that's just crazy. I can't believe the time has gone by so fast. Part of me feels like we just tied the knot a couple of months ago, but I can't seem to remember what my life was like before he was my husband, as if he was always part of it. You know what I mean?

So, with all of this six-month nostalgia in the air, I've been thinking about love stories, the way people find each other and decide to stay together. Some couples have sweeping, romantic, movie-quality love stories, while others meet and marry with less fanfare. Brendan and I are one of the fanfare-free couples. Our courtship was fairly simple: my cousin introduced us, Brendan asked me to his fraternity's formal, and pretty soon we fell in love.

I've always been a little bit jealous of couples who have really great love stories. Some friends of ours are eloping in Hawaii this weekend for a beach-front wedding. Wow. Another couple we know started dating when they were in the same summer school class, and they were married before the fall semester began. My brother Clay and his fiance Heather have an extraordinary love story, too. They met at a conference in Austin when he was living in Tucson and she was in Seattle. They exchanged phone numbers and dated long-distance for about a year before he moved up to Washington. They're getting married in August.

Our love story may never make a good romantic-comedy, but I've still found my happy ending.