My Summer Reading Blog

I suppose now would be the perfect opportunity for me to confess to a serious addiction that I have developed over the summer. Although I absolutely cannot stand when we teenage girls obsess with and/or overtly drool over fictional characters, I--along with the rest of the female population of the United States--have fallen in love with the Edward Cullen and the Twilight series by Stefanie Meyer. To be completely honest, there were only two reasons that I started reading the series in the first place. One: I was extremely curious as to why every girl I knew was suddenly in love with a vampire boy named Edward and a werewolf boy named Jacob. I thought it was outlandishly strange. Two: after having completed the first novel, I would have gained enough knowledge about the series to torment and embarrass my friends for having read such a ridiculous book, and I would be able to do so using quotes and other "meaty" evidence to support my ridicule. How could anybody pass up the one opportunity at which he or she could possibly remark, "So...I noticed that you fell in love with a fake teenage vampire boy from a fictional teenage fantasy book"? I couldn't; so I read. And then I read more. And then I couldn't stop reading. By the beginning of August I had become addicted to the series and even planned to attend a midnight party for the release of its fourth book, Breaking Dawn. After 2,500 pages and over 24 full hours of reading, I finally understood the infatuation, the allure of the Twilight series. Meyer gave me characters that I could fall utterly and irrationally in love with; she gave me scenarios that were so incredibly unbelievable that readers, like myself, were both powerlessly drawn into her spell-binding language and helplessly entranced by the world of Bella, Jacob, and the Cullens. Personally, I am not much into the mushy, lovey-dovey books, but the Twilight series has the perfect balance of action, romance, and--the most crucial criterion for a good book in my eyes--sarcasm. Well maybe that's not the most important criterion, which is why I must admit to something else: although I absolutely loved all four works by Stefanie Meyer, no book impacted my thoughts this summer more than The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I know; it's a complete 180 from Twilight in terms of plot, language, and every facet of its being really. There was just something about being inside the mind of Christopher Boone, an autistic yet brilliant, simple yet complex, and naive yet worldly young man, that broadened my mind and forced me to think. After almost every three pages, Christopher had made a new observation about life that I had not yet considered. Prime numbers are like life. You must use timetables to make sure you don't get lost in time; yet time itself is a mystery, "not even a thing," an unsolvable puzzle. I find observations such as these utterly compelling. They are outlandish and ingenious, almost as though Christopher is able to take the most complex, intangible ideas and simplify them to the point of child-like clarity. After having read both the Twilight series and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, I was able to make a realization about myself and about my own mind. I am drawn to books, thoughts, and in fact people who compel me to consider alternate realities--books, thoughts, and people that force me to ask myself, "What if?..."--books, thoughts, and people who stimulate me to find my own answers, and who keep my mind wandering.