Okay, what's keeping me up late at night lately?

I don't think I mentioned in my last post that I read. Probably too much. Well no, I honestly don't think you can ever read /too much./ I've always loved writing, and I've been reading since I was three. Clearly my selection of books has evolved from nursery rhymes to the authors that helped shape my own writing style like Anne Rice and Stephen King, but there are a few series that I never got around to reading until recently. And promptly I signed my soul over to them.

I got about seven chapters in before my younger sister, who blazed through all of them and convinced me to read them myself, drug my family out to see the movie. May I say that I have NEVER been so tense from start to finish in a movie before?  From the opening scene until the very end, I sat with my muscles tense as if somehow I would find myself in a similar situation. It wasn't till I did some quick thinking and realized 'Hey, I'm past age, I win!' and calmed down. I finished the books a mere eighteen hours later, unable to put them down because I simply had to know what happened.

This is the current obsession, and I'm forcing the boy to listen to them via Audbile.com while he's at work so that I can gush and obsess with him. I don't want to spoil it for you readers, but if you have read them please send me an email and let me discuss plots with you!

The other one that I am stuck in is A Song of Fire and Ice. I don't have 'A Dance With Dragons' yet, which is killing me, because it takes all the lore and legend of Tolkien and sums up the battles in less than five chapters. I shame myself admitting that, but, when it came to Tolkien I would skip most of the battles because I had a theory there are only so many ways you can describe perfect Legolas shooting a bow and being a BAMF. Clearly he thought otherwise. I even tip my hat slightly to Martin on the count of just how intricate the families are and how clearly you feel their struggles. I am now rooting for characters I started out hating. I pity the ones that I had once despised - he does an amazing job of pulling you in, letting you see the fall and growth of the characters even while you're gritting your teeth and resisting. It's something to be applauded.

So given that these are the most recent books to make me swoon and crash over it's brilliance, what might you guys suggest I check out next? Friday I think I'm going to cave and just go pick up a Dance With Dragons - all my friends are behind me in reading and it's terrible waiting on them to catch up!