The Time Traveler's Wife at Tequila Bookworm

cross post from Blurty Blurt Blurt...

We had our monthly book club meeting last night, and we went to Tequila Bookworm. What a great place for a book club! We sat at the back, in the comfy cozy couches, and had a really good-looking waiter serving us. Always a bonus!

The food was a little disappointing, but I knew this going in (I'd read a couple reviews)... my bagel was burnt, but the cream cheese on my bagel was full of chunks of roasted garlic, which made up for the "Cajun-style" bagel. The cafe mocha was yummy, but looked like it was just coffee with some hot chocolate powder mixed in. Prices were pretty steep; my "cafe mocha" was over $3, and the bagel was also over $3. Alas, the price (literally) we pay to hang out at a really cool café on Queen Street West.

The discussion of the book was really in-depth; a roller coaster ride of opinions. The Time Traveler's Wife makes you think hard. While you're reading it, and once your finished. The book is about a man named Henry who has a genetic disease, which causes him to uncontrollably blip out of time and space, traveling back or forward in his life. But like I said last night, I wouldn't say this book is about a guy who time travels. It's a love story, about the struggles Henry and his wife Clare go through, caused by Henry's tendency to disappear every now and again, as well as the tough times any married couple would experience.

The big question of the evening was whether or not this book should be classified as Science Fiction. Technically, the book is about something that is not humanly possible (as far as we know). But because the book is written with such a realistic tone, I don't think it counts as Sci-Fi. It certainly doesn't look like a Sci-Fi book! Nestor said he really didn't like the cover, so we hopped online (thanks to the free wireless at Tequila Bookworm- god I love my new laptop), to see some of the other covers out there for this book. Here's what we found:


But the best image we found was this one by Jess the Fink on MySpace. I'm guessing she read the book, got inspired, and then drew this really cool illustration... Awesome, eh?

Another good question the book addresses is the age-old argument... Are our lives pre-destined, and therefore we have no control over the paths we take? Or do we have a certain amount of free will, and are able to change the route of our lives through the decisions we make? In the book, Henry is unable to change the outcome of anyone's life, even though he can travel back to integral moments over and over again (eg: he watches his mother die in a car crash numerous times). I think we concluded that it depends on your own faith/belief/spirituality. (Isn't that just always the answer- "it depends"?)

All in all, we rated this book 5 out of 5. I personally think it's the best book we've read in book club... even better than Three Day Road (which I picked last spring)!

We also took lots of photos while we were there... here's a link to the set on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ravenswift/sets/72157594388000551/