quick update--and potential Breaking Dawn spoilers

So here I am in Chicago at Terminus, where the fans by far outnumber the academics (and, yes, most of the academics are fans, but we're not all dressed up in House robes...), the weather is lovely, and I've already caught up with a couple of friends.

[edited to fix insane punctuation...]
========possible spoilers below============
I spent the travel day reading Breaking Dawn. I wasn't thrilled about bringing a big book with me--I even left my copy of HP & the Deathly Hallows, the subject of my talk, behind--but I had to do it. I've been avoiding all discussion of it since last weekend, and I can't keep my head in the sand much longer. And, I have to say, I'm a little disappointed. I was really hoping that the literary allusions of the earlier novels (read the comments), especially to Wuthering Heights and Romeo & Juliet, meant that Meyer had a little more distance on the central couple than, in the end, I think she did. There's just an awful lot of deus ex machina (or, ok, hybrid ex machina) in the working out of the plot. I need to think about it some more, but that's my initial response.