The human eye has to be one of the cruelest tricks nature ever pulled. We can see a tiny, cone-shaped area of light right in front of our faces, restricted to a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. We can’t see around walls, we can’t see heat or cold, we can’t see electricity or radio signals, we can’t see at a distance. It is a sense so limited that we might as well not have it, yet we have evolved to depend so heavily on it as a species that all other perception has atrophied. We have wound up with the utterly mad and often fatal delusion that if we can’t see something, it doesn’t exist. Virtually all of civilization’s failures can be traced back to that one ominous sentence: ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ We can’t even convince the public that global warming is dangerous. Why? Because carbon dioxide happens to be invisible.

What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enormity? I suddenly realize why people believe in déjà vu, why people believe they've lived past lives, because there is no way the years I've spent on this earth could possibly encapsulate what I'm feeling. The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations—all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In you heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are now just arriving at the place you were always meant to be.

Witty and gorgeously written. It's refreshing to read such a great down-to-earth and simple story. Tropper has a way with words and an eloquence about the male psyche that is enviable. Just marvelous.

I love suspending my disbelief, but this story was bordering on the ridiculous. Our protagonist, Paul, along with representation of the full spectrum of human sexuality, lives in an unnamed idyllic homosexual utopia in which the Football team's quarterback is a (fabulous!) six-foot-four drag queen named Infinite Darlene. However, even though the setting is nowhere nearing reality (and don't get me wrong, I'm all up for this but this paradise is still many decades away, if at all,) its characters, interactions, and sensibilities sure are. And this takes me to what really sold me about the book and about Levithan's writing ability: a powerful, wonderfully set up, and beautifully written chapter in which a young gay character has the courage to confront his religious parents about the unfairness of the way they treat him for simply being who he is. And he is pretty awesome.

So in a nutshell, Mr. Levithan, I look forward to reading more from you.

This was a great little story with my favorite kind of ending—much more fitting than the horrendous and forced one the movie so thoughtlessly inserted—and the only aspect of the book I will talk about. You see, along the years, I have noticed a peculiar King quirk, and one of my few gripes (if not the only one) I have about his writing: the talking down to the reader. The storytelling was going smoothly until I arrived at the following gem. (Obviously, spoilers ahead.)

[...] You mustn't expect some neat conclusion. There is no And they escaped from the mist into the good sunshine of a new day; or When we awoke the National Guard had finally arrived; or even the great old standby: It was all a dream. It is, I suppose, what my father always frowningly called "an Alfred Hitchcock ending," by which he meant a conclusion in ambiguity that allowed the reader or viewer to make up his own mind about how things ended.

I'm reading this while Mindy reads it to me, which is a really cool experiment since it's always refreshing to hear it in the author's voice. However, I'm noticing there are a lot of small editorial changes between the two versions. Enough to bother me. What's up with that, Minz? Did Duante Diallo played basketball or soccer? Who do I believe, girl?

The story goes absolutely nowhere. And fast.

However, it's pretty harmless and never pretends to be anything else, hence the two stars. It's all just one big "meh."

Ironically, the story of why Min and Ed break up, turns out to be one of the most beautiful and heartfelt love letters I've read.

While I may not be the perfect judge, thanks in part to my external reproductive organs and mid-twenties mindset, I thought Handler convincingly encapsulates the mind of a 16-year-old girl in love (and of the purest kind, judging from this box full of mementos she's heartbreakingly giving back.) Now, even though Min's voice feels authentic and original, I kept thinking that she was being unfair regarding the reasons for the breakup; that she kept trying to (unsuccessfully) justify her reasons because Ed, no matter how much she tried to vilify him, sounded like a great guy and was irresistibly likable. So much so that when the actual reason, the breaking point, finally comes along, it feels a bit forced and out of character for this guy we couldn't help but root for.

I've glanced over some reviews that say the music references were too obscure, or how every item just showed how truly different they were from one another; but to me those were some of the reasons why they fit so well and complemented each other so perfectly.

I guess I truly am a romantic at heart.

This is pure crap. It's too disconnected and jumps from situation to situation without any purpose or cohesion (unless incessantly complaining about everyone and everything contributes to society in any meaningful way). It's my second Daniel Clowes "story" and it's as equally pointless as the first. I thought about abandoning ship a few times, and it's just a meager 80 pages long. Fool me twice but not thrice, Daniel Clowes. I'm avoiding anything by him from now on and urge you to do the same. Oh, and any writers who write themselves into their own stories shouldn't be up to anyone's standards, Enid.

Ugh, I want my two hours back.