Stephanie Meyer, The Twilight Books

Okay, I read the Twilight books. All four of them. In about three weeks.

My sister, knowing, certainly, that I would not take the initiative to hunt them down myself, placed the entire stack in my hands when I visited her in Seattle this summer and instructed me to read them, although, she warned, they were like crack.

Yes, I scoffed, especially when I read the first page. It's possible I groaned, "It's even written in first person?"

However, it didn't take me too long to get past the frequently less-than-elegant writing style. It did distract me occasionally, especially in the first book (though I think her writing--or at least editing!--actually did improve in the subsequent volumes), but was quickly subsumed by the highly engaging story.

And the story is highly engaging. For anyone who has ever been a teenage girl--and for me, it's been a good decade since I could claim that distinction, and closer to 15 years since I was really in the throes of adolescent angst--it is also strongly emotionally resonant. Better yet, although I'm sure we can all remember the giddy highs and crushing lows of high school crushes, this is straight-up wish fulfillment: the crush object is not only beautiful, intriguing, and completely irresistible, he is, unlike any actual high school boy, a heady combination of not only masculinity and dangerousness, but intelligence, articulateness, sensitivity, restraint, and good manners.

Further upping his irresistibility quotient, he's ostensibly completely unattainable. But because we're in wish fulfillment mode (and, really, isn't that what fantasy is all about?), he is attained, and of course is even more perfect in that state than he was as simply an object to crave! What's a little stylistic roughness compared with sweet escapist reimagining of what teenhood might have been like in a world so kind to quiet, bookish, physically-disinclined girls?

New Moon, on the other hand, made me weep (see: crier). Who knew that my own feelings of abandonment, pain, and disintegration at male hands were still so fresh? Eeps. I found myself trying to hold myself together right along with Bella.

I won't go into the last two books, except to say again that I do think the series generally gets better as it goes along, thanks to improvement in skill or editing. They really are very fun, easy reads, and, as my sister warned, quite addictive.

My theory on why we love them is that they are so emotionally resonant. My theory on why we hate ourselves for loving them is that our emotions and desires are so predictable: even the strongest, best-educated, most enlightened feminists, it would seem, still want a strong, sensitive partner to want us more than anything, to treat us like it, and to say he'll be around forever.

So, yes, I guess I do love boys who sparkle. (David sent me that link yesterday because he thought it sounded like something I might enjoy. Yay, sparkly vampires!)

Richard Adams, Watership Down

I finished Watership Down sometime in July, I think. Like Cold Mountain, it was another Walla Walla Goodwill find, and I picked it up because it was a classic and because I had the vague sense that my brother-in-law and/or sister owned and probably recommended it.

I had a hard time getting into it, but did keep plugging along, and was rewarded for that. Although it's ostensibly a children's book, an an adventure at that, it sometimes seemed a bit mired down and slow. And long! Heavens! It was nearly 500 pages.

Still, it was at times quite engaging indeed. Surprisingly to me, it also provided some keen and interesting insights on the development of religion. And despite feeling generally less moved throughout the tale than I thought I might be, I was caught off-guard by the Epilogue, which completely sneaked up on me and make me cry. As I've mentioned before, I'm a crier.

Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

I really enjoyed Cold Mountain; it wasn't perfect, but I thought it was one of the best and most thought-provoking books I've read in quite a while--which was especially rewarding since I'd picked it up at the Walla Walla Goodwill for fifty cents!

Ostensibly a love story, albeit a nontraditional one, the tale is told in alternating chapters from the two protagonists' own concurrent, but not currently overlapping, lives. It is, at the same time, as much a love story to the land itself, with vivid descriptions of the south--and particularly the mountains of North Carolina. It was also original and enjoyable in its evocation of a bygone era through the language itself. I didn't, as it happens, look up any of the new words I encountered, but there were several--all descriptive of highly specific objects or actions--that I'd never come across before.

It also paints a vivid pictures of the struggle and reward of rustic farming, the horrors of the Civil War, and the power of the human spirit.

I'm finding it difficult to talk much about the book without spoilers, but I will say that I cried, and although I'm definitely a crier--especially, somehow, with books--it had been quite a while since one had gotten to me like this one did.

Highly recommended.

Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

This tiny book was a Christmas present from my mom. Conversational, engaging, and divided into bite-sized chapters often arranged around a particular story or anecdote, it was easy to read before bed or whenever I had a spare moment.

The book avoids being saccharine or sappy, which is impressive when one considers that it was written by a man dying of terminal cancer and trying to impart life lessons. I thought it might be a tearjerker, but even I, prone as I am to weeping over pages, only got misty once, near the very end.

It's written very simply and isn't great literature, but is a fascinating record of one man's life and achievements, as well as an important reminder to appreciate and embrace life to the fullest while you have it. And though I'm pretty sure one doesn't fully appreciate the gift life is until faced with one's irrevocable mortality, Pausch's entire life, not just the period after his diagnosis, is an inspiring model of attempting as much.