Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer ***

Yep, I finally gave in and read the whole stinkin' series. I hadn't heard much about the last book, so I went in not sure of what would happen. I've got to say that Stephenie Meyer is great at writing for women--as my husband put it, her books for women are like Clint Eastwood movies for men.

I enjoyed the story up until the very end, when I was sorely disappointed. I'm not going to give anything away, but I think it just reminded me that these books weren't originally intended for an adult audience. I was looking for a lot of reality, but I'm not sure what I was thinking--these are vampire books we're talking about! Reality has nothing to do with it!

Overall, the series was a good read. I'm curious as to whether Meyer will be able to come up with a new series of books, or whether she'll take a chance on more adult literature. Either way, it will be interesting to see.

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin ****

I found a flier at the library that listed all the "classic" literature they have on their shelves. I perused the list and decided to read the first one I could find on the shelves that I hadn't read before. Go Tell It on the Mountain was totally new to me, and reading this story of how the sins of our fathers quite literally can shape our own unwitting lives was fascinating.

John, the main character, cannot figure out why his father hates him so. He is obedient, helpful, and the apple of his mother's eye. But his father favors his brother Roy, despite Roy's wild ways. In the 1930's, at a store front church service on a Saturday night in Harlem, we get to see the prayers of all the elders in John's life--his aunt, his mother, and the man he calls his father. The truth of who he is and how the circumstances of his life--including being a young black man--will shape his future we, as readers, must guess at. But at the end of the night, when John is saved, we are left with the hope that he can rise above his father's hypocrisy.

The separate stories of the adults in the book and how they came together to make a whole picture was great. I got lost on the imagery of John's "possession" by the Holy Spirit and didn't get much out of that, but I did like the sense of hope we are left with in the end. Despite being black in America in the 1930's, I really got the feeling that John was going to be able to somehow rise above what was expected of him.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee ******

Six stars. I don't have six stars on my rating system, so I know I'm breaking my own boundaries by giving a book six stars. But if ever a book was written that would break boundaries, it is this one.

I never read this book before, mostly because of my high school English teacher my junior year. He was a good teacher, though very anal. He didn't want any of us to "cheat" on the book list that year, so he assigned only books that had no Cliff Notes written for them. I was exposed to some great literature that year, most notably Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. It was a very eye opening year of reading for me. But I did miss something.

In a way, I'm thankful for that teacher. I don't know how I would have reacted to this book if I had read it as a teenager. It certainly would have been in a different way than I've reacted to it now. My first knee-jerk response as I started reading was that I had to have a daughter. There had to be a way, and I was going to have one. I wanted a girl like Scout.

But after looking at my life, and looking at our family, I came to the conclusion that we don't always get what we want. As an adult I've had to deal with this many times. I'm not going to be able to have an infant daughter that I give birth to myself. Just as Scout didn't get to have a mother.

And then I got to the summer of Boo in the book. Boo, who has withdrawn from all society because of the things he's been told, the small trouble he got into as a child. He is locked away. I thought of my son, who I'm doing everything in my power to encourage to be part of our society, despite how our society has treated people like my son in the past. It was then that it hit me: I don't have a daughter like Scout, but I have son like Boo. But my Boo, my darling Boo, will be seen. He will be heard. He will be a character in life because of his presence, not because of his absence.

Mistakes are made when raising children, it can't be helped. But if you are there for your child, that may be something that even I won't mess up.

"He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning."

The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson ***

The movie that has been made from this book is just now out in the US, though it was released last year in Europe. The premise sounded good to me and I wanted to read the book before I saw the movie, so it seemed like a good choice for the Kindle. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I hope to soon.

The first thing that strikes you when you start this book is the violence. It's not immediate, but once it gets going it's very graphic and disturbing. For whatever reasons, I just don't like books like that in general anymore. About 10 years ago I think this would have been much more my thing, but not now.

Another beef I had with the book was one of the main characters, Mikael Blomkvist. I just never really liked him. Again, I can't put my finger on it and say exactly why, but he annoyed me.

The character of Lisbeth, the titular female, is an interesting one. She has had a very difficult past that has made her a person of very little outward display of emotion and she is mostly misunderstood by those around her. Her ambivalence towards issues that most other people find very important has marked her as a rebel.

The mystery in the book is good, with many twists and turns that are hard to anticipate. I think the story itself is a very good one.

I don't think I'll be reading the other two books that Larrson wrote before his untimely death, but you never know.

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake ***

This is one of those books that you finally get to the end of and you're left wondering many many things about it. Like, why?

It takes place in 1940-1941 before the US had joined up for WWII. The action happens on the home front and over in Europe, following two stories that converge in the end. The premise is that the postmaster of a small town on the tip of Cape Cod decides to buck her own principles and not deliver a letter to a woman who's husband is in London helping out during the Blitz. Now, my big Why? in this book is why did this woman's husband go over there? He's a doctor, he's lost his first patient, and he can't take it anymore. So he goes over to help in London. But he loves his wife very much and knows that he leaves her utterly alone when he's gone. I was mad at this guy from the get go. I guess it just didn't make enough sense to me that he'd leave her and that made any sympathy I had for him go right out the window.

Alright, meanwhile there's an American lady radio reporter over in London too, reporting on the Blitz. Her impassioned reporting is partly why the doctor went over there. She soon leaves London, though, to go to continental Europe and report on the plight of the Jews there. She makes voice recordings (the technology wasn't really quite there yet in reality) of the people she meets fleeing for Spain and Portugal, realizing that many of them would soon be dead. This was a pretty neat part of the book, and devastating in its description of children, older men, pregnant women, all of them desperate to get out of the hell that Europe had become for them.

Overall, this book is good. But the hard part for me was the slowness of the action, especially at the end. I kept wanting to yell at the characters to just get on with it. The opening of the book is odd too, since I don't really see where it was necessary at all for the story.

I'll say this--if you like books about the people caught up in WWII, this one will at least be up your alley.

Among the Barons by Margaret Peterson Haddix ***

This is the fourth in the Shadow Children series. I'm pretty committed now to finishing them all, and this one is pretty good. It takes up where it left off with the character of Luke, who has assumed the identity of Lee Grant in order to come out of hiding. The problem now is that the real Lee, who died mysteriously, had a little brother who has decided to come visit his brother "Lee". Smits, the younger brother, knows that his real brother is dead, but can't seem to come to grips with that reality. Luke tries to help Smits, but after awhile everything becomes murky--why is Smits here? Why does he have a bodyguard that follows him everywhere? What are Smits' parents up to?

A good sequel, and it leaves the ending open for a new chapter in the series.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield ****

This one was recommended by a co-worker, she said she couldn't put it down and now I can see why! Though the time period is never clear, the action takes place in England and it is like a modern Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, with all the Gothic horror to go with it.

A biographer, Margaret Lea, is summoned by the most famous writer in Great Britain, Vida Winter, to write her life story. Miss Winter has given at least 200 versions of what her life was like to 200 different reporters, all of which are untrue. Haunted by one young man from the past who asked her for the truth, Miss Winter decides to finally reveal her origins to Margaret. But is this the truth this time?

Like my friend told me, this is a very engrossing story that will leave you pondering how it all fits together until you get to the end. I'm not the most romantic person in the world, so I had a hard time suspending my disbelief at certain points in the book, but overall it was a great read and filled with interesting character studies. The twists and turns were at times hard to follow, but when looked at in the context of a master storyteller giving her last performance, I could believe that Miss Winter could tell her story in this way.

Another aspect of this book is it's description of the love of reading. This was one of my favorite parts, because I feel as compelled as the character Margaret to read all that comes within my grasp too. All the books of the world are there to be read, and when you look at them you realize that all their authors were trying in their own way to keep themselves alive, to make a monument to their knowledge to pass on. Even the most dull textbook from 100 years ago is of some value, because it contains the life work of someone. It is an attempt to continue one's soul beyond our earthly scope.

So if you like a good Gothic mystery in Jolly Old England, or if you just love to read, I think you will like this book.