Middlesex

YES! Finally a book I can sing praises about! Finally a reasonably large sized book that I finished in a good amount of time! And most of all, finally a book that isn't a movie, or isn't going to be a movie anytime soon! Hurray! Maybe I'll get back on the reading track.
SO this time, when choosing the book, I did it the right way. I randomly chose with my eyes closed from the "Priority Pile" under my bed, consisting of the books that I feel are most important for me to read. This is aside from the 2 leisure shelves of books that should be read at some point in time. See why I need to pick up the pace? I happened upon the book Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I bought this like 2 years ago because there was a rave review of it in the school newspaper, and it's the same author as one of my favorite books, The Virgin Suicides. (Which is also one of my favorite movies.)
Here's why I loved it: It was a mixture of some of my favorite things.
It had the messed up romance of my favorite book, Lolita. It made you sympathize for their love, despite the fact that you would consider them sickos in real life.
It had the kooky, ironic humor of my favorite show, Arrested Development. How the messed up family has secrets that make one thing lead to another in terrible yet funny ways.
It was like one of my #3 favorite movie, Amelie, in that it told uninteresting and silly things about characters that ultimately filled them out.
It had foreign people with funny accents. It had war-torn lovers. It had every age and type of human, every gender (including the mysterious 3rd gender). It had beautiful imagery.
This is exactly what I needed after reading Twilight, a well written romance/epic/...mystery I guess. Who has ever made freckles sound so amazing? Seriously, why would someone tell their kid that they are angel kisses when they could simply describe the freckles like:
"A Big Bang had occurred, origination at the bridge of her nose, and the force of this explosion had sent galaxies of freckles hurtling and drifting to every end of her curved, warm-blooded universe. There were clusters of freckles on her forearms and wrists, an entire Milky Way spreading across her forehead, even a few sputtering quasars flung into the wormholes of her ears."
I am on my knees right now. Bowing to a statue of Mr. Eugenides in the temple of literature.

(Speaking of statues, Edward is compared to marble a total of 8 times in just the first book. Isn't that going a little too far? Couldn't she think of anything else? Like that his skin was like the universe?)