Book Recommendation

Gunnar Ardelius and his book I Need You More than I Love You and I Love You to Bits are both pretty wonderful. Granted, the copy that I have is a translation since Ardelius is from Sweden... what exactly do they speak in Sweden? According to wikipedia, Swedish is the dominant language - well there you have it.

Anyway, like I was saying, the book might be more wonderful in Swedish, but I like what I've read in English. It's a really quick read and the format is a bunch of short prose narratives about two teenagers, Betty & Morris, and their first experiences with love. With each other of course. Though it doesn't end happily ever after, the whole process of their relationship is just so relatable (I guess that would be the word for it). This part really caught my attention:

"I don't think every person is unique. If every
person is unique, then unique is a completely unnecessary word."
"Don't you think that every person has something specific that makes them special?"

"Maybe, but if that's the case, then people are 99 percent boring."

"And you, are you one of the few people who isn't boring?"

"I don't think I'm any more remarkable than anyone else. The difference is that I've discovered that I don't need to go around pretending I have a personality."

I just find it an interesting response to the phrase "Everyone is unique." I still think we have personalities though. It's the unique combination of the characteristics of our personalities that makes us unique. I also liked this part:

"If anything interesting happens, I just think how

I'll tell you about it as exactly as possible later. Today on the way to school I saw an earthworm that had dried onto the asphalt and was stuck there. If I'd told anyone at school that, they would've just laughed. But when I thought about the earthworm, I was totally sure you would understand. It was just hard to wait all day."

"What did you think?"

"That it looked sad."