The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

I enjoyed this book even though it creeped me out quite a bit. It's creepy in the way the true Grimm's Fairy Tales are creepy.

David is a 12 year old English boy during WWII who loses his mother to a debilitating illness--cancer, I think. She'd infused him with a love of books, telling him that they were alive and he takes great solace in them especially when his father eventually remarries.

Not only does his father remarry, the new little family relocates to Rose (the stepmother)'s home outside of London. Rose tries her best to be friends with the resentful David, who rebuffs her at every turn. Then, to add insult to injury, Rose has a baby and David feels even more isolated and alienated.

It's in that spirit that strange things begin to happen. He begins to have episodes where he passes out. Books "speak" to him. He begins to see a crooked man. After a particularly unpleasantly argument with Rose and his father, he runs out to the garden and a portal opens up into another world. He thinks he hears his mother calling to him and he feels compelled to go to her.

David enters an alternate world that is more nightmare than dream. There are all manners of evil creatures and weird beasts inhabiting the place as well as a few good guys sprinkled here and there. Worst of all is the crooked man, who has some really foul and evil plan for David.

So what happens to David? Read the book and find out! It's a great story!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

As Harry Potter has gotten older, I've liked his character less and less. Maybe it's just me, but I think Rowling made a mistake by having her books become so dark. Harry became a whinier, more bitter sort of kid -- with good reason, I suppose -- and an almost thoroughly unlikeable sort of hero. He's moody, doubts his friends, and nurses this big rage against his mentor, Albus Dumbledore.

Dumbledore, who originally seemed to be a kindly caring teacher-man, was portrayed as a manipulative, calculating and power hungry old man who withheld important information from people and used them without feeling much guilt about it. I didn't like him in this book either.

A character I did enjoy wondering about, Severus Snape, made only brief appearances in the book and I was very disappointed about that. I'd wondered throughout the previous book whether he was a truly bad guy or a truly good guy in disguise. I found out but not until the end and he was so shockingly killed even before the secret came out I was totally turned off.

That brings me to the killings and the darkness of the book. So many of the deaths seemed designed just to shock. Voldemort is evil, soulless and remorseless. Let's kill some Weaseleys, house elves, and other popular characters just to make that point. That's what happened to Snape and so Harry had to find out after the fact that his old enemy was actually a sort of hero.

It all worked out in the end. Harry realized that Dumbledore wasn't so bad, just human, and that Snape also wasn't so bad, just human. The man had been in love with Harry's mother, how awful could he be?

I think I would have liked the books better if Rowling had kept to a lighter tone but that's just me.

On the other hand, the 19 years later afterward was just too smarmy for me.

I guess you just can't win.