lazy days and good books

I haven't read a good book in a really long time.

Ever since I started work 5 months ago, it takes me a longer time to complete a book. Whereas it used to take me perhaps only 3 hours to complete a book, it now takes me 3 days or even 1 week. I only really complete a book when I have a lot of times on my owns, which you can translate into on weekends.

It's getting better now, though. Sometimes it takes me only a day or two to finish reading a book. But I realise that recently it's getting harder for me to get hooked onto a book. I guess it's because work takes up the other stuff on my mind. The storyline of the books sometimes fail to reel me in, and I even forget the plot of the book, which is rare for a bookworm like me.

Anyway, I digress.

I haven't read a good book in ages, but by some fortunate hand, I picked up a book at a library a week ago and decided to borrow it. As it turns out, it was the right choice.

Now, I don't know what type of a reader you are, but I'm a thriller/suspense reader. The only books I read and the only books that captivate me are thriller/suspense books. My woman knows this and she gets totally irritated at times because I refuse to read any other book she wants me to read -- unless it's a thriller or a suspense novel.

I begun reading this book -- Exposed by Alex Kava yesterday. And I could not put it down. I just could not.

This is the first time in 5 months that a book has captivated and enthralled me this much.

I kept right on reading it, I brought it out wherever I went, and finally I finished it just awhile ago.

It tells of a killer who tried to off people whom he wants to take his revenge on, by releasing a deadly virus - Ebola Zaire on those people. The protagonist is a female special agent who thinks she has gotten exposed to the virus and will crash and bleed out.

Yes, nothing extraordinary about the storyline. Plenty of authors have written about deadly virus thrillers.

But there was something about this novel that enthralled me. The vivid descriptions were so graphic it etched in my mind. The words played a tune and a movie in my head. The words played with other words and formed sentences so meaningful, in a novel of crime and suspense.

And when I reached the end of the book, I felt like I was thrown into the book, like I had become part of the book, like the book had mesmerised me and sucked me in and thrown me into its world. I felt like i was watching a good movie that haunts me and disgusts me but of which my eyes cannot seem to peel away from the movie screen.

After reading the book, I went online to search for more information on the Ebola Zaire virus and about the Tylenol murders, the Unabomber, classic murder cases like these that were also written about in the novel.

Then I realised that I have never actually done this with any other book except for this novel. For some reason, this novel did its work on me -- the graphic words, the storyline, everything about it. It even piqued my interest in viruses that I would usually have no interest about (since it has something to do with medicine and science).

Exposed is a good book that renders me speechless. It is the type of book where you cannot put down, and after reading it, your eyes take on this glazed look, almost as if you have also become part of the book.

Please read Exposed, if you have the time to, and if you are a crime and suspense/thriller kinda reader. Exposed is written by Alex Kava.

So anyway, lazy days and good books do gel together pretty well. On a lazy day, I read a good book and I could not put it down. (Except, of course, to pick my woman up from work. But then again, I brought that book with me when I went to pick her up.)

I am wondering now, which other book will pique such interest and enthrall in me such captivation.