Haiku Guy

Haiku has been something that I've always ignored. I don't enjoy reading it; I always feel like I'm missing something that everyone else can instantly grasp. The meaning of the haiku? Perhaps. I can read the words and the sentences and see that it's a haiku, but I cannot for the life of me enjoy it. It's too short, too clipped and the imagery and details just aren't poignant enough for me. At least, that was how I've felt about haiku ever since my fifth-grade self was introduced to it.
When I was given Haiku Guy to read, it was hard for me to stay open about it-I was inclined simply to dismiss it as more haiku nonsense and get through it as quickly as possible. However, as I began reading it,  I became more and more surprised. I liked it. I even liked the haiku in it (even the ones which Cup-Of-Tea deemed unsatisfactory). The way it was written reminded me a little bit of a book called The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff. Something about the way the book is written made it easy for me to read. The writing, while still being professional and retained the ability to create the vivid imagery that all good writing should, also had a simplicity to it that set it apart from other novels.
But more than just being a good book, something about it reminded me so much of haiku that it was almost (almost!) easy to write haiku while reading it. Something about the way the characters were described, the way they interacted with each other and the places they went and their reactions to these places was just... For lack of a better word, nice.
I found myself beginning to enjoy haiku. Not reading haiku (I don't think any amount of good writing could do that), but I enjoyed the challenge of writing haiku; of making my point in less than seventeen syllables, and making it sound pretty.
So for me, even more so than the book being a really great novel, it taught me to appreciate the art of haiku, and to even enjoy how challenging it is to write it. Any book that can do that has to be pretty good.