Reading has always been a favorite pastime of mine - there's just something about living vicariously through the characters, indirectly unearthing all kinds of adventures and exploring unknown worlds through their experiences.
Sadly enough, TV and computer have taken the place of books in the last few years. Even e-books have been invented, but I shudder to think of reading a book online. It's similar to reading a newspaper online - it's cold and unfamiliar and indifferent.
I used to read Enid Blyton, Secret Seven, Famous Five, Meg Cabot, Judy Blume, Sweet Valley, Jodi Picoult, and Dan Brown books, among others, but then school life (especially college) got too busy, and the only books I ended up reading were boring old dusty textbooks.
It wasn't until someone asked me the question, 'what's your favorite book?' that I realized I honestly had no answer other than the cliched one - the Bible.
So I mumbled my way through a response and decided to get my act together. Upon a recommendation by a respected friend, I attempted to read Dave Eggers' critically acclaimed memoir - A heartbreaking work of staggering genius - and found myself wishing I was reading some sort of chick lit instead. And right on cue, as if the book knew I wasn't entertained by it, its pages started falling out (I'm not making this up), and I gave up reading it after getting halfway through it.
That says a lot, because I have never read any book halfway, even if they are awful and boring and completely pointless. Except for The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, because it was traumatizing and horrifying, the thought of a psycho person murdering a little girl and chopping her up into pieces. I just couldn't bring myself to pick the book up and continue torturing myself, neither could I bear to watch the movie when it was released.
I wish I could appreciate Dave Egger's work (it's a Pulitzer Prize finalist, for crying out loud), I really do, but I just couldn't. And it made me feel a little shallow and superficial, as if the only books I could fully enjoy were lame ones, just like the movies I favored. Oh well. To each his own, right? There must be people who are like me, otherwise rom com movies and chick lit books would be extinct by now. That's how I rationalize things, anyway.
So after that failure, I went back to reading books I was familiar with. Books by Dan Brown, Jodi Picoult, Sheila O'Flanagan, Nicholas Sparks, and other fluffy type books. And I was very satisfied.
I absolutely adore Nicholas Sparks' work, even though his books are very similar to one another. There's just something nostalgic and comfortable about his small-town romances that I love.
And Dan Brown is a total genius, in my opinion. Sure, he wrote The Da Vinci Code, which garnered controversy all over the world, but he just has the innate ability to seize readers' attention and keep them spellbound. Whenever I read his books, I have to fight the urge to ignore everything in my life and finish reading just so I can find out what happens at the end.
So recently I read Digital Fortress and Deception Point by Dan Brown, and both were fascinating, but the latter was definitely better.
All that talk about NASA and the US government and some crazy conspiracy to disguise an earthly fossil from the ocean as a meteorite from outer space so as to prove that extraterrestrial life indeed exists... It's pretty mind-blowing. It probably takes him years to write a book, seeing as how he researches everything so in-depth and writes like he's a total professional in the field.
It kind of made me a little inspired to write a book myself, but I'd have no idea what to write about. So I think for now I'll just keep reading to find more ideas and inspiration.
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