You either get it . . . or you don’t.

It was a bleak, snowy weekend here in Virginia. Twelve inches of the powdery white stuff and a bone chilling twenty-eight degrees to keep any of it from melting any time soon. The kids were outside having a ball with all their neighborhood friends. It should have been a perfect time for me to write, all curled up by the fire with my laptop and a cup of hot tea. But that’s not what I did . . . exactly. Oh, I had the laptop and the hot tea, but instead of writing I was watching a marathon of LOST episodes online so that I could get caught up for the final season that starts tomorrow.

As I finished the last episode of season 5, I had to wonder to myself why I even like the show. Mind you, I don’t watch much TV to begin with. Between my husband and son with ESPN and my daughter with the Animal Planet, I seldom get a chance at the remote in my house. But LOST was the one show I started watching from the beginning and stayed faithfully with for the last 4 seasons. I don’t know what happened to season 5. Somehow I got behind and never had the chance to catch up until now.

But back to why I love LOST. To be honest, I haven’t the foggiest idea. By all rights, the show should have driven me crazy with its smoke monster, talking dead people, conspiracies on the island and off, time traveling Losties, and all those subliminal secret clues that if you blinked you missed them. But I kept watching and I’ll watch the final season religiously too. There’s just something about the show that pulls me in and keeps me coming back. Judging by the show’s high ratings and rabid fans, there are lots of folks out there just like me. But there are also just as many who don’t get it, never got it, and quite frankly can’t understand anybody who does.

The same thing happens with books. I don’t have a lot of time to waste on poorly written books so I usually pick novels that have won awards (RITAs or RT Reviewer’s Choice) or I hear praises for from friends I trust or that receive 5 star ratings from dozens of readers on Amazon. If a book meets one or more of those criteria, I can usually be assured that I will enjoy the book. And most times I do. But sometimes I have to wonder how the heck a particular book won that award or got all those rave reviews or got published in the first place because I can’t for the life of me force myself to finish it. Like the anti-LOST contingent, I don’t get it and quite frankly don’t understand anybody who does.

As we all know, it all comes down to taste, whether it be a romance novel or a mind-boggling TV show. You either get it . . . or you don’t.