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Written by Beth Woodward, CC2K Books Editor
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 With less than a week to go before the premiere of the latest film in the Twilight series, New Moon, CC2K’s Book Editor and resident Twilight expert Beth Woodward looks back on the book series and reflects on why she hated Breaking Dawn.
Picture it: Washington, DC. July 2008. I was having an unusually slow day at work, so I got on the internet and browsed my way over to the Entertainment Weekly website. They had just published an interview with Stephenie Meyer. I had read Meyer’s book The Host, about a group of body-snatching aliens, a few months earlier and really liked it. After I read the interview, I found another article talking about the Twilight series and the upcoming movie. I had always been a fan of paranormal romance, so the concept—a normal teenage girl falls in love with a vampire—was intriguing to me. So that day, I went out and bought the first book in the series. And I devoured it. (No pun intended.) Within a week, I had gone through both New Moon and Eclipse, and I couldn’t wait until Breaking Dawn came out.
Yes, it’s true. I drank the Kool-Aid.
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Written by Tony Lazlo, CC2K Staff Writer
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An extended dirge for the disappointing final chapter in the Harry Potter book series.
SPOILERS AHEAD!  The empress is naked.
After 10 wonderful years of books whose release dates arrived with the anticipation of fresh boxes of Wonka bars, we're left with the disheartening reality that J.K. Rowling couldn't write a Harry Potter novel set beyond the walls, curriculum and classes of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a stunning disappointment with a great ending -- and let me stress: The novel itself has a great ending. The seven-book series doesn't.
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Written by Beth Woodward, CC2K Books Editor
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 The first time I read The Catcher in the Rye, I didn’t know that Holden Caulfield had a nervous breakdown.
I was sixteen, and to me, Holden was…a revelation. He may have been a fictional character created decades before my time, but something about his manic rants, his aimless wanderings, the lost boy with the false bravado, resonated with me. When I read Catcher, I felt like someone really got me, like there was someone in the world who understood what I was going through. It had been three years since my family was fractured by my father’s death. I was constantly at odds with my mother. I didn’t have many friends, and I was always a little bit suspicious that the ones I had hid ulterior motives for the way they treated me. I hated the hypocrisy of the world, felt constantly torn between idealism and cynicism. I spent most of my time watching TV or reading books and pretending myself inside, always imagining myself as someone else. I was struggling with my beliefs. I was struggling with everything.
I may have been female, and I may have been decades removed from Holden’s world, but…I was Holden. I didn’t know he was having a breakdown, because I was feeling all the same things. I didn’t know he was having a breakdown, because he was just like me.
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Written by Beth Woodward, CC2K Books Editor
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 Recently, CC2K's Book Editor, Beth Woodward, participated in National Novel Writing Month, an annual challenge in which participants attempt to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. Here is an account of her experiences: the good, bad, and ugly of writing 1,667 words a day.
November 1: Day 1 of my first genuine attempt at finishing National Novel Writing Month. 50,000 words in 30 days—it’s crazy, it’s masochistic…but it also sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. I’ve been thinking through the rough plot of my story for the past week or so. It’s a young adult novel with a bit of a sci-fi twist. It’s exactly the kind of “guilty pleasure” reading I would probably pick up for myself in the bookstore, so I might as well use my obsession with young adult literature to my advantage. And besides: if I’m going to be spending 30 days on this story, it might as well be something I like, right?
I hit 4,625 words before I went to bed. Not bad for day 1.
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Written by Beth Woodward and Tony Lazlo
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CC2K Books Editor Beth Woodward and Co-Editor Tony Lazlo explore the doctrines and contradictions of Niffenegger's best-selling novel. Beth Woodward will get us started:
 I’m a sucker for two things: science fiction and love stories. As such, Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, which combines the two, naturally attracted my attention. The story of Clare and Henry weaves in and out of time, as Henry has a rare genetic disorder that causes him to randomly travel through time. Clare, on the other hand, experiences things chronologically.
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