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!)

Dan Brown, Angels and Demons

I'm pretty sure it was David's idea that we see Angels and Demons, although I think the reason I agreed was Ewan McGregor.

Nonetheless, being the kind of person who reads the book before seeing the film (which almost without fail makes the film less enjoyable to me and me less enjoyable to other people), I had to read it first.

I read The Da Vinci Code several years ago, and although I thought the puzzles ridiculously simplistic to propel any sort of thriller, and the writing sorely lacking, I did find it highly engaging and devoured it in approximately 36 hours.

The same was not the case for Angels and Demons (although, in an attempt to make my timeline for a Wednesday evening movie date, I did read it in about three days). I found the first third or two offensively bad. The writing seemed blatantly terrible, and the plot refused to move to a degree that I could ignore it. Thankfully, somewhere between the second half and the final third, the action picked way up, and, like a reluctant sink hole, the book finally pulled me in. (Of course, it didn't swallow me whole; what on earth was with Langdon getting into--and for that matter, back out of--that helicopter? Complete inanity.)

The film was also bad, though it didn't take quite as many hours of my life and had the distinct advantage of being shot in Rome. There was even a bit of Italian, which placated me somewhat. Oh, and Ewan McGregor.

If you're curious what the hype is about, read The Da Vinci Code. (I haven't seen the movie, so I can't speak to it.) If you're a Ewan McGregor or Tom Hanks fan (I'm sort of the antithesis of the latter, most of the time), you can probably stomach Angels and Demons--but I wouldn't recommend reading the book first.

Ken Follet, The Pillars of The Earth

The copy of The Pillars of the Earth that I read--loaned to me by a friend who had read it in her book club--was 983 pages long. Still, I polished it off much more quickly than the far shorter Mrs. Dalloway.

I finished the book in April, and am only just getting around to writing my review, but other than it being long, I mostly remember it as being not at well written, nonetheless highly engaging, and overall rather violent. It was rather like television, actually--perhaps an extended miniseries. It was highly descriptive, and certainly a page-turner, while still being almost unabashedly fluff. Almost, that is, because of its passages on Gothic architecture, which, although it's not my specialty, I at least found non-egregious if not particularly enlightening either.

Additionally, although the characters weren't always believable--the villains, in particular, being fairly consistently one-dimensional--the book did paint a fascinating portrait of life in the 12th century, and how much modern technology allows us to take for granted. Again, not precisely quality, but a quick-paced and interesting story that did get my heart pounding at times.