I recently joined goodreads.com, which is a sort of social networking site based around books that you read. I've always read a lot and this seems right up my alley. I've already even seen some of my friends books that I want to read!
I guess if you look at my profile, you can see all the crazy paranormal romance books I read, or as my boyfriend calls them, "vampire porn." Though not all the books are about vampires, but as we know about romance novels most of them have porn like descriptions of the main character's sexual encounters. I haven't put all the books I've read up, that might take a while. I might get around to it eventually.
What I like about them is that there's almost always a happy ending. I'm a happy ending type of girl. There are enough depressing things in the world without having to read about MORE depressing things. Tom (the boyfriend), once mentioned to me that he was watching chick flicks when we were in Afghanistan, deployed. He said that we were surrounded by a depressing situation (the country of Afghanistan) and that he certainly didn't want to be watching "Blackhawk Down" or something similar. The possibility of us getting kidnapped by the bad guys and then drug in pieces throughout the street of some far away town is not too far away from reality. Although the reality we did live over there was almost as bad as being in the action.... being stuck on a FOB (Forward Operating Base), as a Fobbit (cross between FOB and Hobbit, what you become when you live on a FOB for a long time). Luckily, your feet don't grow hairy....
I realize that life doesn't always have happy endings and to pretend that it does is just deluding yourself. However, I have chosen to read many books about Afghanistan, particularly on the subject of the women living there. When I was in Afghanistan helping these women, my heart strings were pulled on a daily basis. In a land where everybody vies for power, most of these women wanted to make sure that their children had food and water. Most were illiterate and didn't even understand the reasons for the war. I remember some of the Soldiers telling me that they met Afghans that thought we were Russians. They were just that isolated.
I miss those women a lot, and I think frequently of them. Apparently, they still ask about me. Maybe I did make a small impact, at least in some of their lives, if not just to show them that some American women are respectable people.
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