I read the Lord of The Rings trilogy in about a week.  

I was in high school and started The Fellowship of the Ring over the weekend and read it off and on all week, finishing up on a Friday afternoon.  

The story, which started a bit slowly for me, suddenly grabbed my imagination and I picked up The Two Towers and read early into Saturday morning.  It fell from my nerveless fingers around midnight that night and I snatched up The Return of the King  to read just a few chapters to see what happened next.  

I spent Sunday in Middle Earth and finished the book after school on Monday.  My brain felt three sizes too big for my skull.  I took out my contacts to give my dry eyes a break. The only words in my brain were One ring to rule them all, one ring to bind them, one ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.  My imagination had been captured like never before, and I was dizzy from reading.  

When I returned to my body I wondered why on earth I stayed up so late to finish the series.  I had deprived myself of the lingering joy of a great story, rolling it over in my mind and thinking about the plot.  I hadn’t savored the book.  And looming ahead was….oops.

Well, looming ahead was The Hobbit and assigned reading for school and within a few months I received the trilogy as a gift and read them more slowly.  But I’ll never forget the feeling of drowning in a book, falling in love with the characters, and letting myself run free in a different world.

That happened to me with with other books and I learned how terrible it can be to start a series, work through it, and then have to wait until the author publishes again.  Torture!  When the next book comes out the temptation is to devour it all at once, knowing that a yawning emptiness lies ahead when you turn the final page.  The terrors of being a reader!!

I am in that situation now.  My talented neighbor cowrote a book – The Royal We – five years ago and it was delightful.  I bought it in hardcover and then as an ebook when “bonus content” was released.  I’ve loaned it and read it and recommended it and loved it every single time.  I thought perhaps there would be a sequel.  Maybe.  But I didn’t want to presume on our acquaintance.  

My patience was REWARDED this week when, in exchange for a neighborly deed, she offered me an ADVANCED READING COPY of the sequel.  Oh frabjous day!  I never expected, I never thought, I was prepared to wait a few months and nab the book when everyone else did.

The book came with delicious chocolate chip cookies.

I finished the book I was reading.  Checked the due dates on the others.  Cleaned up my Kindle library and ate a cookie.  Who was I kidding?  Saturday night I cracked the spine and managed to close it before midnight.  I’m not a teenager any more and can’t stay up reading all night.  I’m about halfway through and debating picking it up again to see what happens next or moving onto something more useful, like cooking dinner.

I don’t know how she and her writing partner did it.  The plot is so creative and so different than I expected.  Pretty much nothing I predicted would happen has happened.  It is more than a sequel that ties up loose ends from the first book.  The characters are in a sprawling predicament, establishing new relationships and growing in new directions.  I am delighted because the sequel is equally absorbing and interesting and engrossing as the original.

I will try not to finish all the good stuff immediately.  Try not to end up fuzzy headed and distracted when I return to work tomorrow.  Try not to deprive myself of all the deliciousness of a really satisfying book.

Then I’ll give it a day or so and reread the first book for the 5th time and reread the sequel for the second.

And maybe bake some cookies.