Twilight

I swore I wouldn't read those silly books about chaste vampires.  I mean, how absorbing could they possibly be, right?  After a recommendation from my dear friend Em, however, I decided to buy "just" the first one.  

I'm not usually so easily swayed, but it's because of Emily that I found Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series and read Harry Potter.  I like everything about Emily, but especially her knack for finding me a good book.

Our shared taste in fiction, however, does not extend to Em's enthusiasm for war novels that have a lot of battle scenes and unrequited love, so I have to make sure her recommendations don't include a sad dead soldier in the final chapter.  I will read war stories from time to time but really, why do the soldiers always have to die at the end? Why couldn't they survive the war and go start a restaurant or something?  (Emily, my gift to you, "Three Day Road" by Joseph Boyden. Written on the front cover, "The most haunting story of war and loss since Birdsong.")

What I really love is a book that you want to stay up all night reading, where you pull the text close to your face, hold on to the edges of the book, and read for dear life. Both "Twilight" and "New Moon" made me do just that. I was reading last night until I could no longer prop my eyelids open. I read this evening in Bee's play kitchen while she fed her baby doll Play Doh. I was present, just not mentally!

I have the other two books in the series stacked on my nightstand and I am rationing them out. No more than one book per day. (My personal talents are few and far between but I can read very, very fast, especially when I am motivated to find out what happens next.)  I am going to be so sad when I finish Breaking Dawn.  On Sunday.  Hopefully not Saturday.