What are you reading?

I’d like to start something new today. How about a recurring feature called “What are you reading?” I know many of you are avid readers, and I’d like to start a discussion around that.

There are so many great books out there (and so little time to read them all, right?). How about we share them with others?

I’ll start.

I just finished reading a great book by author K.M. Weiland called Dreamlander. I’ve actually had this book on my Kindle for a couple of years now. It was one of the first books I ever bought in electronic form.

I started reading it a while back and then never finished. Now, that has nothing to do with the quality of the book. I’ll get to that in a minute. But, it’s taken me a while to get used to reading a book on my tablet.

You just can’t beat REAL books. I love the feel of an actual book in my hands. The smell of it, the texture of the pages.

Reading in electronic format is different. You can bookmark a page in an e-book, but it’s not the same as putting my little bookmark in a real book. I can’t hold it up and see how much I’ve read and how much is left. There is a “page counter” thing at the bottom of the screen, but somehow it’s not the same.

And I can’t flip back over to an earlier section to check something I may have missed or forgotten in the e-book format. (Or skip ahead to make sure the hero/heroine makes it through the latest crisis!)

So, yeah, I prefer to read an actual book, but once I got into this story, I didn’t mind as much.

Dreamlander would be categorized as a fantasy novel. Think along the lines of Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia, with strange creatures, glorious castles, and epic battles.

The tag line for this book is something like, “What if our dreams are real?” Basically, the story is about Chris, who goes to sleep in our world, and wakes up in a different world, the land of Lael, where he is a chosen one called The Gifted.

Chris thinks he has completely lost his mind, but he soon finds himself caught up in a battle of good versus evil, where he may be the only one who can save both the dream world and his own world.

The plot is well done, with plenty of twists and turns that kept me turning pages (or clicking the little “next page” button, as if were). The characters are well-developed, interesting, and relatable. I found myself wondering about them during my day and itching to get back home and into their world to find out what was going to happen next.

I don’t know about you, but when a character comes to mind when I’m not reading the book, I think of that as great writing. The character has gotten under my skin, into my soul – and that is a very good thing.

I certainly feel that way about the characters I write, and I hope that my readers will feel that connection with them as well.

I really enjoyed this book and plan to read more by this author. Now … to figure out what to read next!

What about you? What are YOU reading? Are there certain genres you like reading more than others? What do you love best about your favorite books? What things really pull you into a story? Join the discussion by leaving a comment below.