Mostly, we talked about books. We are both insatiable readers, and can be a bit snobby about the books we fall in love with. Really, during those conversations we bonded over our mutual hatred for Twilight. In searching for a way to describe to each other just how much we hate Twilight, one of us blurted out something along the lines of “it’s like the Sirens of retail stores” and out of that comment a new hobby was born. We spent a lot of time discussing our favourite books and comparing them to retail stores.

Obviously we’ve already agreed that Twilight = Sirens (or Stitches) and we figured that out using the amount of class we deem the novel to have. Twilight is a terribly written, overly popular, easy book to read and we view Sirens in a similar way. The clothes are easy to wear because they are so inexpensive and trendy, but they are not well made and will fall apart quickly.

Clearly this is a very subjective way to classify a novel, but I’m quite biased and, as I mentioned earlier, snobby when it comes to novels so really, I’m okay with that.  Another favourite novel is Time Traveler’s Wife, which we have decided is comparable to Banana Republic. Classy, well made/written, and quite popular.

What is your favourite book, and which retail store would you compare it to in terms of this classification idea?

P.S. To all of you Twilighters- I apologize.

So, when I headed to bed I brought along with me one of my favourite books – Summer Sisters (Judy Blume). I intended to start to read the book, hang out with Tim when he got home from work (around 11:30pm) and read the book until I could fall asleep somewhere between 2:00am-3:00am. Well, the book reading part happened, but the hanging out with Tim? And the going to bed somewhere between 2:00am-3:00am? Nadda. This was because I couldn’t put the book down. I read, and I read and I read. And 3:00am came around, and then 5:00am, and soon the sun was rising and I was still curled comfortably up in bed reading and then it was 6:30am and I put the book down and realized I had read the whole thing.

And then I finally when to sleep, with the sun peaking in my windows and a cute boy’s heat radiating from his body onto mine, and I literally cuddled with this amazing book I had just read and I went to sleep, happy to have spent the entire evening with three of my favourite things – Tim, a good book and me.

To me, reading a book isn’t just about reading a book. It is feeling the characters emotions, laughing out loud, crying openly, learning something new about myself. I can read the same books over and over (and I often do), because I find that each time I read them, I am in a different place in my life and identify with a different part of the book. Be it a single sentence, or maybe an entire half of the book, but each time a different part speaks to me I feel that not only do I understand the book and the author better, but I can understand that part of me that identifies with the book better.

But recently I read Love Walked In by Marisa De Los Santos and it fit into every one of these categories and then some. It was the kind of book that took over my life for a couple days, and all I ever wanted to be doing was reading it. I remember at one point leaving my room to get something to eat and thinking for a moment, “I can’t leave, I don’t want to miss anything,” before I remembered that it was a book, not a movie or real life. I had to take it with me everywhere and have a pen with me to mark my favourite lines. After finishing it I lent it to my roommate Jen, and she loved it so much that she asked me to read it out loud to her while she drove us for two hours back to our hometown. I did, stopping only when something struck us and we just had to discuss the pure amazingness that is every word of Marisa De Los Santos’ writing. It made me so happy when Jen said she couldn’t return the book right away, because she needed to read it a second time.

Right now I’m reading the sequel to Love Walked In, Belong to Me and I’m happy to report that it meets the incredibly high expectations that I had for it. Here’s a quote from it:

Chicken Soup for the Soul. You’ve heard of these books, am I right? We’ve all heard of them. But I wonder if you’re aware just how many Chicken Soup books exist on the planet. No offense, but I doubt it. I doubt it because in the time that it would take you to come up with a number, the number would have become obselete. Even as you read this, in some quiet, fecund place, another Chicken Soup book is being born.

I’ve never actually opened up one of these books, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the supposition underlying the series: that souls are highly specific, that they come in a multiplicity of shapes and permutations, that one cannot assume that what heals the NASCAR soul would do diddly for the horse lover’s soul.

The stories themselves are captivating, but what gets me is the way the author takes something completely ordinary and twists it into something completely wonderful. And she keeps doing that, over and over and over again. If you are always on the hunt for that perfect book, these just may be it. Read them (read Love Walked In first) and get back to me. And if you have a recommendation for my next book, please let me know.