The Sunday Salon ~ Decompression Day!

Wow! What a week of reading! I have been reading more or less NON STOP all week, stopping only to write the reviews and blog or when life called me away, and even then I had my book in my coat pocket. I polished off four books this past week, so today I am kicking back and watching movies 🙂

Books read this week:
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson ~ Of the four books I’ve read this past week, I have to say I enjoyed Miss Pettigrew the most.

Yesterday, the kids and I went to the library for their monthly family movie, “Beverly Hills Chihauhau.” Saturated with the “aww factor,” which was supplied by toy dogs in Italian Leather and Pepto-pink cashmere sweaters. It’s definitely an adorable movie and worth seeing again 😀

And yesterday evening brought our Netflix movies in the mail, one of which was disc 1 of Dexter season 2 \O/ Woo-Hoo! \O/ . Poor Dexter struggles with an identity crisis after finding out his adopted father and mentor, Harry, lied to him about crucial information. Then, divers discover his body-dumping ground. Rita thinks he’s an addict and tells him he either goes to NA or it’s over. And Doakes, Dexter’s nemesis, tails him wherever he goes leaving Dexter the Dark Avenger all Jekyll and no Hyde. I can’t wait for disc 2!

For Maggie’s Netflix movie, The Forbidden Kingdom was a fun fantasy movie about a western teen boy with a fascination for martial arts movies who is magically whisked away to a mystical Middle Kingdom China. While I could have lived without Jason, the movie stars both Jet Li and Jackie Chan as Kung Fu masters. There is even a rare sight in this movie, Jet Li ACTUALLY throws his head back in a hearty laugh!

For my middle daughter, Penelope is the romantic tale of title character Penelope, who had the misfortune of being the victim of an old family curse that gave her the nose and ears of a pig. Penelope has to learn that being happy with who you are is more important than what others think of you. As an added bonus, Penelope’s love interest is played by James McAvoy :-p

And finally, for my oldest daughter, The Crow. She thinks the Crow is cool, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the movie.

Books on the menu for the coming week are:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Appeal by John Grisham
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Derailed by James Siegel

If I actually manage to get through all those in the coming week, which I doubt, I’ll start The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

So, what are your plans for the coming week?

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Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer

Title: Eclipse
Author: Stephanie Meyer
Hardcover: 629 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Publish Date: September 2007
ISBN: 9780316160209

“Can I tell you what the worst part is?” he asked hesitantly when I said nothing… “The worse part is knowing what would have been…” Jacob shook his head. “I’m exactly right for you, Bella. It would have been effortless for us – comfortable, easy as breathing. I was the natural path your life would have taken…” He stared onto space for a moment, and I waited. “If the world was the way it was supposed to be, if there were no monsters and no magic…”

I could see what he saw, and I knew that he was right. If the world was the sane place it was supposed to be, Jacob and I would have been together. And we would have been happy. He was my soul mate in that world – would have been my soul mate still if his claim had not been overshadowed by something stronger, something so strong that it could not exist in a rational world…

Two futures, two soul mates… too much for any one person. And so unfair that I wouldn’t be the only one to pay for it. Jacob’s pain seemed too high a price. Cringing at the thought of that price, I wondered if I would have wavered, if I hadn’t lost Edward once. If I didn’t know what it was like to live without him. I wasn’t sure…

“He’s like a drug for you, Bella.” His voice was still gentle, not at all critical. “I see that you can’t live without him now. It’s too late. But I would have been healthier for you. Not a drug; I would have been the air, the sun.”

The corner of my mouth turned up in a wistful half-smile. “I used to think of you that way, you know. Like the sun. My personal son. You balanced out the clouds nicely for me.”

He sighed. “The clouds I can handle. But I can’t fight with an eclipse.”

–Eclipse, pages 598-600

I am soooo addicted to this series. It’s everything I’ve loved in reading. It’s Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice (Twilight). It’s Romeo and Juliet (New Moon). It’s Heathcliff and Cathy from Wuthering Heights (Eclipse). In fact, I found that Edward points to these three couples on page 28 when I checked back to make sure I spelled Heathcliff correctly 😀 . Makes me wonder if Breaking Dawn will be Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester. (Those of you who’ve already read it, DON’T TELL ME!!!!)

I really enjoy Meyer’s writing style. Yes, this series is romantic in that it’s about lovers whose love is epic and the opposition to their realization of this love almost insurmountable. It’s everything I fell in love with when I read Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice as a teen. This series brings the same feelings of hope, agony, love, desire and despair, all occurring at the same moment, that I had at 15 with my first real boyfriend (by real I mean the first one you kiss for hours and wonder what’s beyond the kissing but the kissing is satisfying enough not to cross that boundary… the first boyfriend you park with… that first boyfriend that when we broke up it felt like my heart had been ripped out with a dull spoon).

Okay, I admit it… The Twilight series isn’t an intellectually stimulating set of books, they are more like brain candy. But it’s so nice that at 35 I can feel those fresh and new emotions. I give Eclipse 4 out of 5 stars.