some books - On the Jellicoe Road

You have to finish reading them at 3 in the morning for two reasons. 1. There comes a point when you can't stop and you forget that you should be asleep and dreaming and that it's starting to get light outside. 2. When you're done and it's hours past midnight, you go to sleep. You know that's what you're supposed to do whereas when you finish at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, you can't close your eyes and wake up in four hours and start with a fresh new day. You have to sit on the couch with the closed book in your lap and stare at nothing because you can't even speak for half an hour after turning the last page.

So I don't regret only getting five hours of sleep in the space between Saturday and Sunday.

How could I not love that feeling? I feel like I was born to feel it with its all consuming reach as I am enveloped in someone else's story. Are readers born or made? I can't tell and I guess it doesn't matter but I am always wondering why more people don't take up reading for pleasure. What are video games and sports and needlework and shopping to letting words on a page swirl around you in a story until you don't even remember what's real anymore. I love books way too much. And they've ruined me. I guess I let them do that.

On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Machetta was extraordinary. Truly exquisite and so heartbreaking and profound that I don't really feel like I'm the same person that I was starting it. It's about hope and trust and love and abandonment and what happens when you feel like there's nothing left to hold on to.

This summary will seem completely inadequate but regardless: It follows Taylor Markham who was abandoned on the side of the Jellicoe Road when she was ten. She is now seventeen and leading her school in the territory wars between the Townies and the Cadets and she gets to find out that the leaders of the two groups are not soulless thugs but real people, tangible and alive. There's also Taylor finding out about five teenagers who lived in the area twenty years ago and how they relate to the territory war, her life and everything she really knows about herself.

Like I said, completely inadequate.

There's intensely great character development, supremely well woven plotlines and breathtaking romance. I could probably go on about how much I loved this book for a while longer but I'm not going to. All I will say is that if you like incredible books, read this one.
I will add that the beginning is confusing and you may get lost or feel dizzy with all the different characters and story lines spinning around you. To this I say, keep reading. Melina Marchetta is like Marcus Zusak in the way that it all makes sense at the end. It's one of those books where if you get past the first 30-50 pages, you will be undeniably happy you did when the story starts to untangle in a way that's so organic you can't even understand why you doubted it in the first place.

I hope that as I get older, I will keep this late night reading habit of mine. I wouldn't want to lose the feeling of being so far away that I ignore time, hunger and sleep to feel someone's else's life so deeply.

Q: Have you read any books lately that made you stay up too late to finish?