Blazing through Navy life one duty station at a time.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

What I'm Reading

In a word: everything.  I love to read.  As a little girl I loved our trips to our local public library to pick out new books.   In elementary school I looked forward to the book fair.  On the weekends, I would spend my free time devouring whatever I could find.  My tastes have changed over the years, but my love for reading has never wavered.  Except maybe in high school, when we read a few things that really tested my love for books.  And certainly in law school, where I was so overwhelmed with class reading, that the thought of reading anything for pleasure made me want to scream.  But a year or so after graduating from the last school I ever intend to attend, I rekindled my love and began to read in earnest.

I received an ereader for Mother's Day and have been taking full advantage of it.  I know ereaders are a controversial lot - several people have chided me for contributing to the end of libraries.  I love a great library as much as the next bibliophile, but when you live in a small town where reading resources are limited, an ereader is a great solution to my problem of what to read next.  Unlimited access to hundreds of thousands of titles sure beats being disappointed when the book I want has been missing from the library for 5 years, and the Walmart will never carry it.  And considering the stack of books I was accumulating, an ereader seemed like a great space saver!

My favorite book so far this year is, without a doubt, The Passage, by Justin Cronin.  To call this novel a vampire book would be extremely unfair.  It has only very loose ties to the notion of vampires.  Instead it is a thriller, a mystery, a quest, a love story, and so much more.  It certainly is a brick of a book, but even though it's somewhere just north of 800 pages, I was never aware of the length.  This is the kind of book that makes me want to be a novelist, the kind of book that inspires.  The richness of the story and the depth of the characters is evident from the start, and never wavers.  Even if vampires are not your thing, give this book a chance - you will be surprised at how quickly is grabs hold of you and doesn't let go.  Even as I write this I am still thinking about the ending.  When you worry about the fates of fictional characters long after you've finished the book, I'd say it was a damn fine read.