Wonderings

I happened to check in with Ramblings and discovered much to my horror that I haven't blogged yet this month!! That's terrible of me. I have any number of topics these days that come to mind, from the really hot guy who is doing my basement to fact that *sigh* I have to get rid of The Little Shit as she, well, shits in the basement and now that I have a really hot guy coming in to do the basement, I can't really have her doing what her name implies she's doing.

Or I could mention that I am very seriously considering selling my house and living the apartment condo lifestyle which means no raking of leaves from numerous trees in the fall, no shoveling snow in the winter and no mowing the lawn in the summer. But then I kind of freaked at the thought of moving out of the house so soon and realized I'm not emotionally ready to let go of it. And of course I'm getting this brand new basement....


Then there was the trip I made yesterday to our local police hangout - the police station. No, I'm not in trouble. But apparently I have to have a background check done on me in order to do volunteer work. I also stopped and had an interview with our local hospice centre. She seemed to think I'd be a real asset. I did get a secret chuckle though. It cost me $10 to have the police check me out. That's a discount since it's for volunteer work. It also cost me me money for administration type costs to start volunteering. By the time I got home yesterday I had shelled out $50. For some reason that greatly amuses me.

But the real thing I was pondering today was concerning the book I just started reading. Well not the book in particular as I've just started reading it, but more the experiences about reading the book. I can tell that it's going to be a painful book to read and I'm wondering if anyone else has the same kind of experiences while reading. I think I do because I have a tendency to jump into the deep end in some areas and reading is one of them. At times I become ONE with the book.

In this particular story, it's a medieval and the heroine has been terribly abused, first by her father, then her late husband and finally by her husband's brother. Her children were taken far away to be fostered and now her brother-in-law is threatening to do the great harm unless she goes along with his very nasty scheme to try and help murder her most recent husband, a bitter rival of the b-i-l, that she is forced to marry. And she is expecting the worst. I'm not very far into the book and already I HURT for the brutal life she has lived so far and I want nothing but good things to happen to her. Of course this is a romance so naturally they will, but at the moment I'm so immersed and feeling so hurt for her that I'm just going to take small bites of this book until things start turning around for her.

Don't get me wrong. This isn't a bad thing. In fact it's a Very Good Thing that I can get so emotionally invested in a book. But it's not an easy thing. Depending on how the author can bring me out of a painful situation is often the mark of a real keeper. If the author can make it so I'm almost brought to tears, well, this is a book I will want to read over and over.

So does anyone else ever feel this way about a book? That it is almost too painful to read, not because it's bad as in the case that Animie June recently experienced, but because you get so involved in what the author is putting her characters through. If you have felt this before, did the author manage to make you feel uplifted by the end and did it become a real treasure of a book? And can you name any book that this has happened with?

I'm discovering that many of us who are addicted to romance share a lot of the same traits, so I'm betting that this has happened to some of you. Care to share????