Sunday, September 30, 2007

WLC 3: I'm Back


Yawn. Stretch. Peek one eye... then the other... as slowly I awake to the bright, glorious world of reality. Well, blogging reality.

That's right, I'm back! I was completely dazed and distracted for... let's see... four full days (from Wednesday evening until an hour ago)... absolutely CONSUMED by a good book. Three good books, actually.

My mom mailed me (thanks, Mom and Rachel!) the three-book Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. I have to tell you, I was skeptical. I approach popular books very hesitantly. I think it's an ingrained English major "I'm better than bestseller; give me hard-to-read Thoreau" thing. But honestly, I was hooked pretty much from page one... so much so that her book earned the highest compliment I can give a good book: it was so compelling, I forgot I was reading.

I was experiencing the book fully; to the point that hardly anything "broke" my focus except the use of the saying "Sure, sure" (which bothered me because Robert says it, mimicking Paul Newman in The Hudsucker Proxy). When I am "into" a good book (aka obsessed... the way I get whenever I really like a book), I will step out of my reality in a sense and step into the book's reality. It's as if I'm not reading at all; I'm just there, with the characters, experiencing what they are experiencing. Almost always, though, even the best of books pull my editor-trained brain back out, because I notice errors or things that bother me... either misspellings (there were a few), bad punctuation (yes, I caught a couple instances), bad dialogue (just the "Sure, sure" usage), character inconsistencies (none that I can think of; the characters were the real pull of Twilight for me), or plot/overall story inconsistencies (none that bothered me).

The thing is, (first editions of) the best of books with the best of editors will almost always have a few misspelling and punctuation errors. Sorry for sticklers out there, but it's true, especially in today's money-crunched publishing world (whole other blog right there). But tiny spelling/grammar/punctuation errors are inconsequential, in my opinion, compared to flaws in the storyline or in the characters. All of this very long and probably boring schpeal is to say that the Twilight series was impressive because it both had few of those "smaller" errors (a "than" that should of been a "that"; a missing "to" in a sentence; a missing comma) and it also had none of the major errors, meaning I was "in" the world of this book more than almost any other book.

Onto what you're all waiting for: the WLC. I know you've been wondering how I did. Well, hate to disappoint, but I gained last week. It was only 0.6 of a pound, and I am more committed this week. I was sick for much of last week (not aided by my late nights spent reading) and I did the unthinkable last Sunday and made a too-large batch of (oops) chocolate chip cookies. From now on, when I make cookies I'll either give most of them away... or I'll freeze them so I'm discouraged from shovel eating. You live and learn. *Sigh.*

There you go! I am recommitted to losing weight. Recommitted to living life. And (of course) recommitted to blogging.

So see you again tomorrow! (-Jocelyn)

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