Happy birthday (to my blog)

My blog turns a year old this week!  I'm proud of myself that I've kept it relatively up to date for the past year.  I posted 55 entries, which is roughly one per week, so I'm satisfied.  We'll see what the next year holds.  I expect that I will end up posting more because it appears that my entries on schooling are engaging and have led to more readers finding my blog, and I'd like to encourage that discussion.

Since my last posting, I have finished coursework for my first term of graduate school, spent a week in Maine, run a lot of errands at home, and almost finished the first book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, entitled Twilight.  I really like it so far.  She is an extremely engaging writer and I can tell from her writing what she considers most important as an author -- characterization.  Perhaps I'm a bit biased because that is the most important thing to me as an author, too, but the best thing about her stories, and the reason I think so many people have fallen in love with them, is that her characters are very real.  She has thought long and hard about who her characters are, how they react, what matters to them, etc and she does not deviate from that picture.  Of course, she confirms that this is the most important thing to her on her Web site, but I guessed that it was before I went searching.

It's good to have a break, and great to be reading for pleasure again.  I told my family that if food is what keeps us physically sustained, then books are what keeps my soul sustained, if that makes any sense.  Along that analogy, Twilight is like candy.  Fast, easy read, and sweet.  I went to get the next two books at Barnes and Noble yesterday, and I'm trying to space out reading them.  Mostly because I know that I have other things that I need to be doing.  Self-control is key.

That said, they're great books, and I highly recommend them.