As I was traveling recently I had the chance to catch up on some reading. I completely forgot how much I love to devour books… and I mean that almost literally! Most days I feel guilty for indulging in something for pure entertainment, since I know that once a book captures me I have to completely surrender all my time until I finish it.
For example, I decided to read “Twilight,” which is now a movie. It’s more for teenagers, but once I started reading it, I could not put it down. I also could not move from my chair, forgot to eat dinner, and after finishing it in 5 hours drove straight back to the bookstore and bought the whole series. Then I finished the second book “New Moon” just in time to go to bed. It’s a good thing I’m a fast reader…
I read the third book of the series, “Eclipse” the next day, after I came home from work. After work the next day I read half of the last book, “Breaking Dawn”. As I was on call the next day I couldn’t justify staying up all night so put it down and worked for 30 hours (well, a 3 hour nap from 10-1 AM) and immediately came home to finish the book.
When the 5th Harry Potter book came out I remember standing in line for the midnight release and immediately went home to read it. I figured I’d just read a little bit of it before bed, but become completely entranced… at some point I looked up and wondered why it was light outside. I looked at my clock and it read 7:00 AM.
Sometimes though, a book will completely underwhelm me. I was looking forward to “Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami but ended up not seeing any point in it by the time I got halfway through. It was only mildly entertaining.. good writing and interesting but not for me. Same with “The Dante Club” by Matthew Pearl. It was a good book but it didn’t exactly seduce me like the others did. Here’s a short list of books that have completely enraptured me, if you find any theme that they all share, please tell me so I can figure out what that intense attraction is!!
- “Harry Potter” by J.K. Rowling- all of them!
- “Twilight” by Stephenie Meyer- the whole series also
- “Shadow Divers” by Robert Kurson
- “Swimming to Antarctica” by Lynne Cox
- “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” by Mark Haddon
- “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold
- “Lightning” and “From the Corner of His Eye” by Dean Koontz. (another of his books, “The Taking” was good but not as good as these two)
- “Jackdaws” by Ken Follet
- “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown (but not Angels & Demons)
- “Rose Madder” by Stephen King
- “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan
- “Inca Gold” by Clive Cussler (I’ve read a ton of his but eventually got bored…)
- “The Golden Compass” series by Philip Pullman
- “Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden
These are the only ones I remember for the moment. I just became the proud owner of a San Diego Library Card and checked out “Never Let me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro and “Time’s Eye” by Arthur C. Clarke (I read “Contact” which was also a great book!) Glancing over my list, a lot of them have been movies, some of which I saw before reading the book, some I didn’t. Plus a few a young adult books, which makes them super easy reads.
My horoscope today was so dead on, it was something about loving stuff like books, comics, video games and how much people would be jealous of my happiness if they only knew! Because it’s one of those things that once I start a great book, I’m anxious about being away from it until I finish. I’ll speed home, stay up super late, skip meals, cut short phone calls… (or ignore them entirely).. basically I am passionate about certain books. And I’m lucky to be a fast reader otherwise I’d never get anything done!
The Inspired Dr.Mom 