Back from Vacation

Apologies for the lack of posting of late. I’ve been in hibernation on vacation and my reading has been lulled. I will have much to write about in the near future. I’m in the midst of The Host, by Stephanie Meyer. Can I just say that whatever you have to say about the Twilight series, you should read this book? It’s heart-stoppingly good.

 

Finding my way…

Sometimes I lose my way when it comes to reading. For me, reading is like swimming is for Michael Phelps. I hate to go a day without it. It feels natural to have my nose in a book (so much so that I sometimes run into things on the sidewalk because I can’t help but read and talk at the same time). There’s no other thing I enjoy more. It’s not hard, it’s not work. It’s just the simple act of being transported to a different place.

Every once in a while though, something goes wrong. I lose my way. I pick up a book, dig in, and then lose steam. I figure it’s the book. I start another. The same thing happens. It’s like I’m stuck in some parallel universe where reading is hard and I’ve got to fight to finish a book. Normally I try to make myself read slower so that I don’t finish the book too quickly. The past few weeks have been like that for me. I haven’t been totally lost but I have been unable to stick with one book long enough to finish. I’ve been jumping back and forth like the book will start to lose it’s brilliance if I read it for too long.

I was at a loss. And so, ever so typically, I went back to my roots and I found out why I loved reading so much in the first place. I have a deep love of the cheesy sort of high school teen dramas written by women like Meg Cabot and Anne Brashares. It’s slightly an offshoot of my love for chick lit (which has waned in the past year) but I think it’s also an outlet for me. I never really had the typical teenage life so I need to immerse myself in them whatever way I can. I don’t want to feel like I’ve missed and if reading is the closest I am going to get then I’d rather have at least that.

So for the past week I’ve been on a tear trying to read as much of those books of my teen years as I can. And here’s the amazing part. It’s brought me back to the stories I love now for their maturity and complexity. Somehow, these books about frivolous things have made me love the books about important things. I’m always constantly surprised when that happens. I fall in love with reading all over again.

 

Twilight…

I just finished reading Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. I was drawn to the book by the movie trailer of the forthcoming movie based on the book. The male lead in the movie is played by the absolutely gorgeous Robert Pattinson who played Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter films. 

Anyway, I ordered the book at my local library and I picked it up on Friday, not really expecting to find anything interesting. The book is AMAZING. I couldn’t put it down. Even though it was almost 500 pages I finished it in the middle of Saturday night because I couldn’t put the book down. Literally. I barely left the apartment all day because the book was so all-engrossing. 

I’m constantly amazed by how a good book can completely take you out of your world. I’m a voracious reader. I consider it sacrilegious to leave the house without a book and I sometimes even bring hefty tomes to the gym to read while I’m burning calories. 

Twilight won’t (can’t!) fail to impress you. It’s a love story but not kitschy, a fantasy but only in setting, a novel of choices and decisions that seem so important when one is young. And let me just say…the male lead is heartrendingly wonderful. He is beautiful and wonderful — the man who seems your beauty even when you can’t. He’s also a hopeless romantic. 

What I loved most about the book was the way it pulled me in. Within a hundred pages I wanted to know what would happen to this misfit young girl who is inexplicable drawn to the handsome but distant man. Who in the world hasn’t felt like an outsider at some point in their lives? I know I have. And so to watch a girl who is obviously more fabulous and deep than any of the other “popular” kids wind her way through love and death and life-wrenching choices is so much more pivotal than listening to people bitch about love and sex and hatred and evil. There is love in every word of Twilight, this was a novel written by someone who truly adored her characters. 

If you’re skeptical, that’s fine. Pretty much any public library should have a copy of this book on hand. Skip down and peruse at your leisure. Prepare to be dazzled.