New ParentDish Feature: What are you reading?

We are starting a new weekly feature. On Fridays, I am going to tell you about what I am reading, and ask you, Please God, to tell me what YOU are reading. I tend to eat books. But I should warn you: My reading habits are pretty... lowly. I read dry medical texts most of the time, and then in the evenings I am busy harassing encouraging my kids to do their homework, making dinner, putting kids to bed, shaping young minds, (you know, the usual) so when I am reading for leisure, I want the book (and Calgon) to take me away.

But! I am always open to suggestions for really good books to read. It's not that I can't read stuff that isn't crap-- it's just that the crap is so very easy to read, and doesn't toy with my emotions like quality literature sometimes does.

Also, I am opening this feature up to more than just books. Heck, on Fridays, most of the time when I am at the grocery store, I am slipping a magazine of some sort into my cart. Again, though, I tend not to read quality stuff (like, say, Harper's or The New Yorker)-- but I'd like to start! Usually if someone points me to a great article in The New York Times or Salon.com, I'll go read it.

Also, if any of you are interested, we could even start a monthly book club, where we take turns choosing books that you recommend in the comments, and we can then talk about them once a month.

Ultimately, if someone can help me with this, I'd also like to start some lists we can all follow on Amazon.com. I love seeing what other people recommend, because it helps me find authors I wouldn't have otherwise thought of.

[You will notice that I have not mentioned what I am reading to my kids, with my kids, or encouraging them to read. That can be a whole other column if you are interested. Just tell me in the comments! But this one is for Grownups.)

So, click on the fold to find out what I'm reading this week.

My best friend from college has turned me onto some amazing books over the years. And I owe her in a big way. Most recently, she mentioned to me a couple of times that I should go and check out these vampire books she had just read. I happen to love vampire books (please don't stop reading this column based on that statement, LOL), but I didn't rush out and get the books. She mentioned them to me two other times before I finally was having a bad day and decided to do some book retail therapy at the local bookstore. They only had one of the books she had recommended, in hard back, but I got it because I was in a really bad mood, and decided I deserved a hard back. The book is Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.

The books in this series are also juvenile literature. I should say that I enjoy juvenile fiction, but I also like murder mysteries, romance novels, fiction and non-fiction, so don't take this week's selection as a sign that this will be a column of any particular kind of reading material. But in case you are interested or concerned, this book is absolutely clean in terms of language and sexuality. I would absolutely recommend it for young readers, too.

I started reading the book that evening, and I stayed up til 3:00 a.m. reading it. I did close it at about 1:00 a.m. and TRY not to pick it up again. But I simply could not put it down. Before I had actually finished the book the next day, I was at Amazon ordering the second book, New Moon, for next day delivery (I pay an annual fee that lets me do this pretty cheaply). The day New Moon arrived, I had a huge work project, so I forced myself not to start the book until I had finished the work project. Good thing, because I stayed up til 5:00 a.m. reading it, sobbing in the wee hours of the night at its conclusion.

The premise of these books is that a teenage girl moves from Phoenix to a small town called Forks, Washington. She moves in with her father, after her mother remarries a traveling baseball player. Bella Swan is the daughter of the police chief, and instantly a new wonder at the small high school. She finds herself drawn to five students who are different from the rest: pale, beautiful, aloof. These five are the only students in the school who appear to have no interest in her-- until she finds herself seated next to Edward Cullen in her biology class, and the recipient of his seething hatred.

Bella is intrigued by Edward and his odd behavior toward her. He saves her life one day, sort of accidentally, and they forge a type of friendship after that that blooms into a taboo kind of love: Edward, of course, is a vampire. And Bella's blood is as potent to him as vampire heroin. And yet, he cannot bring himself to kill her. So, he is torn between not being able to stay away from her and always being tempted to harm her. Bella is simply irretrievably in love with Edward.

The plot turns toward a small group of vampires who try to kill Bella (apparently, her blood is potent to other vampires as well), and then leaves us bracing ourselves for the next book.

New Moon is, if anything, better than Twilight, which was absolutely compelling. I don't care if Bella and Edward are teenagers: I challenge you not to fall for Edward Cullen. Even typing his name gives me a cheap sort of thrill. In New Moon, Edward decides it is too dangerous for him and his family to be around Bella, so he leaves her, forever, and strips her of all pictures, CD's, any reminders of their time together. He tells her that he will never return, and that it will be as if he has never existed. Meyers' treatment of how Bella handles Edward's leaving is absolutely searing: If you have ever loved and lost, this book will hit you where it hurts.

I have read criticisms of New Moon that talk about co-dependency and Bella being too reliant on a man for her own self-esteem and happiness. But if you can overlook that obvious criticism and read these for what they are: a terrific story of love and loss, then you will have a great, intense, two-day reading love affair. I gave these books to my neighbor and warned her that if she started them at night, she wouldn't sleep. She insisted that she would. The next day she came over sheepishly and said she had been up til 3:00 a.m. also. She described the books as "book crack. Better than french fries!"

So, I hope you will check them out and then come and tell me what you think!

What are YOU reading? (And for guy readers who may not so much be into the vampire romance, don't worry, I will talk about Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels, too!). And can you help me out with the Amazon list thing? Do you have any Amazon lists?