Love Songs -- and Life -- on a Loop

This post isn't so much a book review as it is an off-the-rails-rant/reflection/rambling of a section of a book.  The book is The Honey-Don't List, by Christina Lauren, and it's an enemies-to-lovers tale about two twentysomething assistants on a home renovation reality show.

Now that that's out of the way, here's the quote in question:

"Our eyes catch for a few loaded seconds.  I'm thinking about how the first few times I hear a new song -- even one from a band I love -- I don't like it.  I resist the idea that something new could ever be as good as something old, but then slowly the new song works its way into my brain and I forget what it ever felt like to dislike it.  Right now I'm looking at Carey's face, thinking it's like a song I've heard a few times now, and every time I hear it again I like it more." (Lauren 93)

We've all been there.  Maybe not the falling-in-love-with-an-enemy thing, but the not-liking-something-until-it's-firmly-wedged-its-way-into-our-daily-lives thing.  What is it about a hook, musical or otherwise, that brainwashes us into hearting things that once made us want to hurl?  This is something I've wondered since childhood, when I first succumbed to liking the latest Hall & Oates single.  What can I say?  It was the '80s, and my mom was a fan.

Anyway, the familiarity-breeds-content theory is alive and well in The Honey-Don't List.  At least for Jim and Carey (and yes, there's a Jim Carrey joke in the book).  The bond that burgeons between our hapless-in-Hollywood (okay, Jackson, Wyoming) heroes rings true because it's spurred by the soul-crushing egos of the show's married yet miserable stars.  A pressure cooker of a workplace like that is enough to make any two unattached people, however seemingly ill suited, turn to each other for moral support -- and more.  That said, The Honey-Don't List is a fun ride (most of it takes place on a tour bus), perfect in these weeks before Valentine's Day -- or for cleansing your palate after a wrenching read.

Because even with books, the heart wants what the heart wants . . . after being exposed to it a gazillion times.