Stack of Spines

I am amazed at the following Twilight has.  Whenever anyone saw I was reading it, I got comments and at one point I felt like the last person on earth to indulge myself with Edward Cullen.

But our romance was short-lived.  Go ahead and give me 10 lashes with a wet noodle for not loving it.  I had heard the writing was not exactly Pulitzer material, and after confirming this multiple times, I almost gave up the book.  Actually, I’m slightly peeved I didn’t find any of the infamous typos.  Usually I can spot that kind of thing.

The cover art gets an A+.  It’s somewhat cryptic but also relevant.  I didn’t put the forbidden fruit imagery together until about halfway through, once I’d learned the vampire rules.

And now for the hotly debated part – it seems that there are as many opinions about Twilight (perhaps more?) as there are positions on President Obama, Iran, Sotomayor, and Michael Jackson.

To me, Edward Cullen is smug.  Since he’s 100 years old and this is not his first county fair, well, he knows best.  The endless descriptions of his chiseled bod only made me feel worse about his superiority, because clearly someone with rock hard abs and bulging pecs knows more about SOME things than I do and I hate not being right.

Really though, he’s never been in love before.  Love throws all the rules out the window, so he should tone down the overconfident gig and focus a little more on being smitten.  A few chapters with his perspective would have done wonders, although on the whole I think switching views in a novel is a cheap way to write.  Very rarely is it done well.  I couldn’t get past the High School romance part of it all – I start getting flashbacks of bad hair and awkward social life.  Bella is the only person I know that was lucky enough to have gym during the last period of the day, and she’s fictionalized – the rest of us who can’t cook had it first period.  (I’m really not joking here, hence the bad hair.)

The only part I liked was the hint of a plot that started about 2/3 of the way through with a baseball game.  I love baseball and its redeeming qualities.

The underlying themes of the boy knowing best, the girl following his rules, a desperate need to conform to his world, and needing to be “rescued” didn’t sit well.  I wasn’t capable of escaping and being swept away by a love story because the subject anti feminist matter kept coming up.  I don’t want to be led into the forest and then carried out, nor do I need to be held when I’m feeling faint.  Being with someone that could kill me at any time (and regularly bring it up!!) just isn’t my cup of tea.

I will likely read the rest of the series because of my curiosity for the plot elements I did like.  Perhaps if I’d read this book when I was 16 I’d feel differently.  Stephenie Meyer does deserve kudos for getting teens to read and regardless of my opinion, perhaps that is most important of all.