The Freezer.

On one of my favorite episodes of Friends, Joey is reading Little Women and when it begins to get too sad or too emotional, he runs and puts it in the freezer. I am currently in desperate need of a freezer. I am currently reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, the second book by Khaled Hosseini, who wrote The Kite Runner (another freezer book). With The Kite Runner, I was brave. I was reading it with my bookclub, and so had support for the read. I saw one of these friends at a birthday party while we were reading it and he came up to me and said, "I finished reading the book last night. I was sobbing for the last 100 pages. Be forewarned."* So I was prepared. When reading on the train, I would begin to feel that something bad was going to happen, and would just shut the book and stop reading. I would begin to read the book on my lunchbreak, and had the luxury of an office door to close when I began to weep. Even my most stoic friends have been affected by this one. So I know I'm in good company.

This weekend a friend loaned me A Thousand Splendid Suns. He said, "It's good, but watch out."* So I gathered up my courage and put it in my bag to read on the train. During day one, I saw the approach of something bad coming, but I turned the page and.... I should've known. But now I'm fully rapped up in it. There's no sparing myself. I began reading again as I ate my lunch today. It went a little something like this. Oh, how wonderful. Things are looking up..... Booo. That shouldn't happen..... Oh, but wait..... Are you kidding me..... He's alive....What?!?! And then sadly lacking a freezer or an office door to protect the world from the flood of my tears, I quickly shut the book and placed it on the floor. It is now staring up me, Read me....Read me. But I must hold out, for I know what lies within.

*All quotes are gross approximations of what might have actually been said.