Reading Rainbow

It's been snowing a lot here this week. I think as the cold slows down the movement of the atoms, a similar fate has been dealt to my activity. At least school activity. As the end of the semester gets closer (t-minus one day and counting...), I'm having a harder and harder time getting things done. I know, like I could get any worse on that front, right? Anyway...

One of the things that I decided had to be finished before I got to any of the stuff that I really was supposed to do was finish Breaking Dawn. I actually liked it. There was more movement than in any of the other books. More story to follow. Say what you will about the series, but that Stephanie Meyer spins a good yarn. Things I didn't like (spoilers):

• Why do the characters have so little faith in their own family? Alice leaves and in less than a day everyone resigns themselves to the fact that she has abandoned them. Maybe Bella wouldn't get it, but how about the rest of the family that she's been around for decades?
• Kind of anti-climactic to have build up for hundreds of pages, and then no fight at the end, isn't it? That's what is so awesome about J.K. Rowling. She is not j/k about killing off her characters, even the ones that you are most invested in (that just happened). It makes the story more real, and the juxtaposition of the victories with the agonizing deaths really adds depth to that whole world. While the Twilight series is entertaining, there is no comparison with Harry Potter.
  

I was saddened, at first, when I finished the series because I was afraid it was going to take me a little while to find another book to get engrossed in. And then I started reading Freakonomics and A Christmas Carol and I'm good again. I've never read A Christmas Carol, and I'm keeping the holiday-themed reading thing going. I thought that being so familiar with the story already would make it a little boring, but who knew that Dickens was such a good writer? It's even kind of fun to think about the various portrayals that I've seen over the years of Ebeneezer (Bill Murray, and Scrooge McDuck are the ones featured most heavily in my mind) and compare that to the actual source. So I've got a few books to work on over the break, which I'm pretty excited about.

One last thing about Breaking Dawn. I read the first three in the span of a few weeks in the summer, and then I didn't want to buy the fourth because I knew so many people had it. But without any actual friends in Utah, I didn't know who I could borrow it from. So when I was at home over Thanksgiving I stole Caitlin's copy. Before I started it, I had almost convinced myself that I didn't actually like the series as much as I did over the summer, that it was childish, too femy, etc., but it wasn't long before I got hooked in again. I was even staying up after our late night video game escapades to read the book. In the airport I would take it out of my backpack on the plane and hide the cover because I was embarrassed to admit that I was getting into it again, even if the people around me were total strangers. Maybe just embarrassed to admit it to myself. But the books are good. I can't see how anybody who actually gives it an honest chance doesn't get wrapped up in that little vampire world. Vampires are cool. Period. I've read several books with vampire portrayals, and I like all the versions of them. It's such a funny thing to have the villain so widely admired, romanticized on one end, but then to have such evil, vile foils to counterbalance the Edward portrayals on the other end.

Remember the Muppets? I swiped this from another person's blog that I stalk.