[I'm participating in Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge, in case you're all like, what's with the theme?] Book. What book – fiction or non – touched you? Where were you when you read it? Have you bought and given away multiple copies?

Party the first: an entire series. Party the second: one novel. The novel nearly ate me alive. The series was more like an addiction. [Side note: hey, Mom and Dad? Great idea, mixing up your respective ethnicities like that. Could I be any more dramatic?! (And yes, dear reader, it is, in fact, genetic.) Aaaand, we're walking.]

The Outlander Series. *Deep breath* Okay, I can’t even believe I’m owning up to this again. Yes, there is romance involved. Yes, time travel is a big part of–okay, the driving force behind–these novels. But they manage to remain historically relevant, culturally interesting, and then oops, you’ve fallen in love with almost all of the main characters and they start feeling, over the course of SEVEN BOOKS (most of which hover around the 1,000-page mark), like they’re your family, and then it’s like Twilight all over again, only a lot more respectable because it’s not Young Adult fiction? And also, it’s historical and stuff? (Except for the time travel.)

*Cough*

Night Train to Lisbon. I found myself on nearly every page. Parts of myself I’d never been able to put into words. There I was.

And you? What have you read that turned you inside out, upside down or just made you laugh hysterically?