Musing Mondays is a weekly meme hosted by Should Be Reading. Each Monday, a book- or reading-related question will be posted and we blog our answers, then link back to the original post.

So without further ado, here is the question of the day:

“Have you ever found a book out of the blue, read it, and then had it be surprisingly good — one that stuck with you for years? If so, what book was it?”

This one took a lot of thought.  I’ve read so many books over the years that I had to think back to one that wasn’t recommended or given to me.  I actually had 4 books to choose from, two of them were recent (within the last year) so I felt that they didn’t quite fit the question.  So I finally decided on Watchers by Dean Koontz.  This is one of my favorite books of all-time. If I’m ever asked to list a few of my favorite books, this one will always appear on the list.

Good reads synopsis: On his thirty-sixth birthday, Travis Cornell hikes into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. But his path is soon blocked by a bedraggled Golden Retriever, who will let him go no further into the dark woods.

That morning, Travis had been desperate to find some happiness in his lonely, seemingly cursed life. What he finds is a friend—a dog of alarming intelligence—and a threat that could only have come from the darkest corners of man’s imagination…

The above is a very brief, rather uninformative synopsis of the book.  I probably first stumbled upon it in Barnes and Noble years ago.  I’ve definitely read it enough times that the spine (it is a paperback) is all worn and creased (the sure sign of a good book!).  The book was first published back in 1987, but I was only 2 then so I clearly didn’t read it when it first came out. I probably first read it within the last 10 years.  I like to re-read it from time to time because the story is so good.

I was on a Dean Koontz kick a while back and have about 8 of his books (not a lot, in retrospect, considering how many he’s written) and I had enjoyed others (such as Lightning), so I figured I’d give it a shot.  Saw that it involved an intelligent dog so I bought it.

Never would I have imagined loving a story so much!  Or, more to the point, a fictional dog named Einstein.  After reading this book, I always looked at dogs a little differently.

My boyfriend’s aunt has a golden retriever so I lent her the book to read, because I thought she would love it.  I don’t think she’s read it yet, though, so I haven’t gotten it back.  But I think I will re-read it once I do.  It’s been a couple of years since I last read it, anyway.  It’s due for a re-read.

I was reading a review yesterday about The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green by Lauren at Book Blob and the first quote she posted from the novel was a perfect summation of how I feel about certain books: “Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”  That’s how I feel about Watchers. Again, mainly because of Einstein more than anything else in the book.