"End of Book One"

I am not a hippie. That being said, I have many hippie tendencies. I'm a vegetarian, I attended a liberal university, I recycle all those Diet Dr. Pepper cans, drive a gas efficient car, and eat organic whenever I can afford it. Now that you know this about me, you should also know my two biggest anti-hippie traits. Long showers and habitual book buying.

After receiving a ridiculous Puget Sound Energy bill for this month I decided it was time to end the long showers. I don't know how it happened or when, but even on my busiest mornings, shower time had stretched close to twenty minutes. So this morning I took a drastic step. I set a timer with a ten minute limit. An amazing thing happened, I only needed eight. It wasn't relaxing, but neither is opening up that energy bill every month. One more thing to add to my life resolutions: shorter shower times.

Now a word about my habitual book buying.

Barnes and Noble, Liberty Bay Books, Eagle Harbor Book Company. They all call to me. I seem to feel the most at ease in a book store. After a long day at work nothing calms me like walking through a bookstore and making a new purchase. For some reason unknown to me, I love the feeling of opening up a book and being the first to read it. Like it was created just for me. This is the first reason why I don't like library books. And no, the second reason isn't because they give you a due date, although it would have been a valid reason. The second reason is because of wait lists. If I want to read a book, I don't want to wait for seventeen other people to have it, read it and return it before I have to go there, pick it up, read it, and return it. The third reason is this: if I fall in love with a book, I want to put THAT book, the book I read, on my bookshelf forever. Sort of like a trophy.

With all that being said, buying 100 books is kind of ridiculous. So of course when the opportunity presents itself I will be thrifty. One of the 'perks' of working in a coffeeshop is the bookshelf where people leave novels they want to pass on to fellow coffee/book lovers. Mostly this bookshelf seems to be full of Sci-fi novels that I have no interest it. But yesterday I noticed two new deposits to said bookshelf that I had seen on the New York Time's Bestseller list. They have now found a spot on my 'to be read shelf.' Although I don't particularly like the idea of wait lists and pre-read books, desperate times call for desperate measures, and who knows, maybe after this experience I will be a libraryaholic. B & N hopes not.

Now an update! Book 6 "The Maze Runner" by James Dashner (Not a Coffeeshop find)

The worst words you can read when you finish a book: 'End of Book One.' Unless you are expecting a series and have the second one ready to read, it is a pretty big let down to know you have to wait ten more months to get the second installation and then another year for the third.

It is easy to compare "The Maze Runner" to "The Hunger Games," another incomplete young adult series I read last year. They both take place in an almost post-apocalyptic world, where teenagers are put in a confined area and watched by outsiders. Where "Hunger Games" is a fight to the death situation for a group of boys and girls, "Maze Runner" is a couple dozen boys and one girl fighting for their lives to solve a giant maze. The end of "Maze Runner" was a cluster of confusion that I can only hope book two cleans up. "Hunger games" has better characters and a more developed and interesting story. Because both are only the beginning of their respective series, I will give you a post dated recommendation for "Maze Runner" and "Hunger Games'," read them in three years when there are more books completed. But read "Hunger Games" first (oh and love Peeta).

If you feel the need to read a series now, I will recommend the well established "Sookie Stackhouse," "Mortal Instruments" and "Outlander" Series.