I know that there are people who wonder about me when I say this. They look at me strangely as if trying to fathom what could have happened back then, though I seldom bother to explain. Because I've lived here for most of my life, I don't feel that I have to unless it's on my terms, and that would take more time than most people are willing to give me. My story can't be summed up in two or three sentences; it can't be packaged into something neat and simple that people would imediately understand. Despite the passage of forty years, the people still living here who knew me that year accept my lack of explanation without question. My story in some ways is their story because it was something that all of us lived through.

It was I, however who was closest to it.

-Nicholas Sparks, "A Walk to Remember"

Something about this passage caught me, I normally would never have read a book like this one (most guys would call it a "chick book" I think) but I read this in the store and bought it, happened to be one of my favorites. It's not SciFi or Fantasy, but it's the writing that counts to me.

What do we think??

Looking back on it, though, especially in the context of the rest of the book, it seems really cheap. It's a bunch of crappy rhetoric designed to make you think the following story is important. In my opinion, Sparks should have let the story speak for itself instead of opening in media res, because it was an engaging and emotional tale in its own right (if predictable).