Reading to Exhaustion

I used to read a lot.... not a normal amount of a lot, but the kind where you go through a book a night kind of a lot. As the responsibilities of life and work have grown, the amount of reading I do has diminished. Despite this, I still love to read, and, as I found out last night, my obsessive tendencies have not been lost.

A friend of mine had recommended the book The Hunger Games to me months ago and while I had picked up a copy awhile back, I had not yet cracked it since I was told it was hard to put down and the only free time I've had lately is at night.

Since the semester is finally winding down, I had some free time yesterday afternoon, so I started to read it. I was able to put it down for dinner and getting our Christmas tree (more on that later) but then I made the mistake of picking it up again before going to bed. I figured, since I was pretty tired, that I would read a few chapters and go to sleep.

Fast forward five and a half hours (bringing us to 4:30 am) I finish the book and now can't sleep. To say it was hard to put down is clearly an understatement. I was really impressed with how well it was put together and it definitely made you think. I generally am a good guesser of plot lines, but I was completely surprised at the twists and turns in the book.

I did manage to get a little sleep, but now I am very groggy and feel like doing something like this

Instead of the work I have to do. (yes our dogs pull the pillows off the couches to sleep on...).

I would like to read the rest of the trilogy since the first book was so great, but I don't know if I can lose this much sleep two more times. I think I'm going to have to spread them out and start reading them in the morning. I'm also excited to see the movie. I'm hoping it will be as good as the book but I'm not getting my hopes up too high.

While I'm going to need to recover from this book, I am always looking for new books to read so if anybody has any suggestions, I would love to hear them!