Books, books, and more books!

My life is all books and tv. It's a sad existence but I like it this way. For now... Anyway. All my favorite authors have new books coming out. I'm way excited. And then a lot of my favorite authors do contests and give away copies of their books and other things that have to do with books. It's pretty awesome. I have two author's contest links at the bottom of my blog. But that's not really the point of this post.

The point was to talk about Law & Order: SVU. The episode last night got me thinking. About the war and about child soldiers. I guess I never realized that they're pretty much forced into fighting. The character on the show witnessed his mother being shot to death and that's how the militia group initiated him into the group. And then they threatened to kill all of his family so he would murder for them. Eventually they did end up murdering his entire family so he had no one to turn to. It must be so hard to not have any family. My family is small, but I know if I called them and needed help, they'd be there in a jiffy. That's what family is for.

And then I think about the American soldiers who are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and how hard it must be for them to shoot kids. But it's shoot first or be shot. But the evil we're up against is huge. And you'd have to be practically satan to force children to fight in a war. It's abuse. And I hate all forms of abuse, but especially the abuse of children. It makes me sick. It makes me want to pick up a gun and go after all those predators out there. But then I'd be stooping down to their level.

I think that's why I read so much. The reality of our world is horrible. The economy is crap and there is so much hate and violence out there that if I sat and watched the news every day I'd go insane. So I read books that always have happy endings cuz I know there are kids and women out there who don't get one and it depresses me. If I didn't have some form of escapism I'd curl up in a ball under the covers on my bed and stay there forever. So my existence isn't that sad afterall...