Pathetic Gushings

I have utterly and completely violated my principles. I have fallen for the kind of book I normally scorn—fallen with a crash that could be heard for miles.

It’s on every List. I hate bestsellers.

It causes millions of teenage girls to gush and sigh and join fan clubs. I back away slowly from that kind of thing.

And I’m hardly a vampire-story sort of person. My favorite novel is Anne of Green Gables, for heaven’s sake.

The book also crumples the traditional archetype that all vampires are bad.

But I just can’t help myself. Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, and the subsequent novels in her trilogy have me pretty much obsessed.

“Um, that book came out two years ago.” I know. For two years I ignored the series, not even bothering to read it for the benefit of CMAP (Concerned Mothers of Adolescent Patrons). In my disdain, I considered making a shirt, “What’s So Hot About Edward Cullen?” How embarrassing.

Of course, the books aren’t perfect. If I read about one more smirk or snicker… The reorienting opening chapters of New Moon and Eclipse are painful. If someone is dumb enough to read the sequels first, they deserve to be in over their head. If someone is ridiculous enough to forget what was happening at the end of the last novel, they deserve to be muddled. The tone of those recaps is much bumpier, more flippant than the rest of the books. And I hated Eclipse’s epilogue. I wanted to end with Bella and Edward on my mind, not all depressed because of Jacob.

Also, on a completely different note, Meyer’s Mormonism really bothers me. She says, “I am also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints … and that has a huge influence on who I am and my perspective on the world, and therefore what I write.” Very true for any religion, and very bothering, if you look into Mormonism.

Her story is quite interesting.

This was nice to hear: “Up to this point, I had not written anything besides a few chapters (of other stories) that I never got very far on, and nothing at all since the birth of my first son, six years earlier.”

But seriously, “And that's how, in the course of six months, Twilight was dreamed, written, and accepted for publication.” Kind of sickening.

Well, that’s about all the gushing and sighing I have for tonight. I’m off to join the Official I Love Alice Cullen fan club.