TWILIGHT DRINKING GAME!

Take a sip every time:
Edward smiles crookedly
Bella trips on something
A random guy is jealous of another random guy Bella is talking to
Edward has a wicked glint in his eye
Bella says she's not hungry

Take a shot every time:
You wonder whether this town is suffering from a womenonly pandemic or general shortage of women just because at least that would explain the lowgrade tsunami of high school students constantly flooding Bella’s proverbial DMs
Edward refers to Bella, the person he is lusting after so intently that his boners are setting off earthquake detectors, as a child
There’s that relatable moment when your crush is like “hey I’m probably going to kill you :(“ and you’re like “omg that’s so sad for you to have to deal with that”

Realizing I typed “drinking game” above when I meant to say “way to get alcohol poisoning within 20 pages.” Autocorrect!

The good news is that you don’t even have to be zonked beyond human comprehension to have fun with this book.

It justis fun.

Even as it’s problematic.

Even as it’s poorly written.

Even as it’s kind of unoriginal, and not wellcharacterized, and generally lacking in all those areas that tend to make books “good.”

This is simply never not fun.

I wish I could lie and say it's unpleasant. I wish I could pretend to be better than this book and unsusceptible to its charm and genuinely exist at superhuman levels of judgment and clarity and coolness, as per usual.

But I am honest above all and this is a fun read. Sorry! Take it up with the Bad Book Justice System.

Bottom line: I’m not proud!


prereview

is this book good? no, it's not.

is it wellwritten? no.

is it unproblematic? not even slightly.

but goddamn if it isn't fun.

review to come / 3 stars


currentlyreading updates

SO pleased to announce that i will be revisiting one of the great works of literature of our time.

that's right.

i'm rereading the Twilight series.

and i wonder why i suffer. It turns out we don't need Dr. John Gray to tell us that men are from Transylvania and women are from Venus. We just need to read Stephenie Meyer books. For example, from this book we learn that the millions of women who have wolfed down the Twilight series (pun intended) want men who:

1. Talk about their feelings. Either Meyer's husband is the singlemost communicative male on the planet and she doesn't realize how unusual he is, or she, like most of her female readers, is using her fiction to imagine a world where men not only have deep emotions but want to admit to having them and talk about them over and over, articulating even the most subtle of their internal dramas.

2. Make them flutter. But just being a sensitive newage kind of guy doesn't cut it. A man has to be hardbodied, chiseled, dashing, and have eyes that pierce the soul, if not the skin (even as they never look at your chest). This book suggests that a real man makes you constantly stumble over your words, bite your lip to refrain from exclaiming adulations, and lose yourself in the sweet smell of his breath.

3. Are fiercely devoted. That a girl of no spectacular beauty, who lacks any trace of conversation skills whose only virtue is that she smells really yummy can inspire an immortal creature of godlike power and grace to alter his entire existence to serve and protect her, watching over her by night ( on that in #4). This is a woman's ultimate fantasy to have the perfect man, perfectly devoted, for no good reason at all.

4. Want them so bad that they won't take them. This, alas, is the most transparent aspect of this book's appeal. It speaks volumes about the differences between men and women to have so many women toss their bodiceripping romances aside in order to read how a feral man with otherworldly physical desires can contain his passion and lust out of his pure and perfect love for his beloved. It says that women really do wish they could have it both ways, to be an object of lust and devotion at once, to fulfill a man's desire without actually slaking his thirst for her. To have a man watch you sleep and not want to have even a little peek under the covers now that's hot fantasy for today's woman who is otherwise told on a regular basis that to be her best self she has to enage in casual and risky sexual behavior.

To see just what an indulgent fantasy this book is, just imagine the malecentric version of Twilight, in which a troubled teen boy moves to a small town to find the hottest girl in town is a vampiress. Such a book would be about 100 pages long (all the unnecessary internal dialogue would be removed). No one would talk except to comment on the awesome size of, um, one's videogame library. The vampiress would be simple: relatively dumb, incredibly hot, wearing almost nothing, and with no expectations of her man but drawn to him only by the smell of his gym bag. She wouldn't hold herself back from trying to bite her intended, but would get so distracted with his bedroom technique that she would never get around to it.

We would laugh at such a book (in fact, we know it would never be a book since men don't read; it would be a movie, and it would be a smash summer hit called American VamPieer, I'll start the screenplay right away). Somehow, when this story is told in a similarly indulgent femalecentric vein, we don't reject it, but sympathize with it. I believe this is because women get to indulge in their fantasies so rarely outside of Jane Austen novels while men are surrounded with theirs. So far I have yet see spam email inviting one to "read hot things devoted husbands would say to their wives" or "see pictures of hunks promising not to get nasty out of respect for their women" or "buy this purple pill so you can stay up late and share your feelings seven times in one night!." So hats off to Stephenie Meyer for figuring out what it is that women really want and giving it to them.
#FREE DOWNLOAD ⚨ Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1) Ã About three things I was absolutely positive.

First, Edward was a vampire.

Second, there was a part of him—and I didn't know how dominant that part might be—that thirsted for my blood.

And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Deeply seductive and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight is a love story with bite./var/www/hub/../html/index.php Wrestler Britannici Edward was a vampire.

Second Freedom Rides to Sweet Magnolia there was a part of him—and I didn't know how dominant that part might be—that thirsted for my blood.

And third Task Force Blue Rogue Warrior I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Deeply seductive and extraordinarily suspenseful Heinrich Himmler: Biographie Twilight is a love story with bite. I hate this book. I will probably end up reading the rest of them, because if I don't, people that love this thing will think they can convert me if I just keep reading. (ETA (Jan. 2013): Never even remotely bothered to finish the series. I said that as a joke to begin with, and I did not finish the series. Did not finish them, not for irony's sake or for amusement's sake or as some kind of amulet to ward off kindhearted Twimoms that would encourage me with "they get better!" I hope that clears that up for some folks that seem to have had a tough time with "I did not finish them." One last time for posterity: I can pretty much be defined as a Person That Would Be Caught Dead in a Dumpster Before Reading the Rest of These Damn Books. So long as we're all clear on that now, ONWARD!)

In short: the writing mechanics are atrocious. The dialogue is stilted and absolutely wretched. The characterization is bad loose, jumpy, and the progression is occasionally senseless. The main characters themselves are not compelling: selfish, shallow, lacking the deep thought that comes with true passion and love and instead leaping recklessly into stupid and deadly situations when anyone with a brain could see sixty other possibilities that should have been tried first.

I can't express my disgust for the relationship between Edward and Bella. It's not romance, it's not passion, it's not love. It's selfish idiocy at best. Bella as a character is insufferable: her selfsacrificing streak is not compassion, it's sheer stupidity. It's hormones. It's a bad, bad example for the teenage girls who read it. Bella's whole life is tied up in her boyfriend. She has no goals, passions, ambitions, or dreams besides wanting to be with Edward, who could kill her.

Edward's element of danger is occasionally compelling, but it's totally overshadowed by the fact that Bella is completely oblivious to it. She doesn't fear him at all, and that doesn't come off like love: once again, it comes off as total stupidity.

Edward. What can I say about Edward. There is nothing lovable about him except that he is apparently the most beautiful thing in existence. He's selfish: he stays near Bella when he knows he could lose control and kill her at any second. He's a creepy stalker: he watches her while she sleeps, before she even really knows him. He's volatile: his mood swings are insane and ridiculous. He's immature: for someone who's been alive for a hundred years, he doesn't seem to have gained much experience. He's controlling: he doesn't want to let her out of his sight for two seconds. (Granted, she's dumb enough to get herself killed if he does.) He's insulting: he treats Bella like an incapable, silly little girl. (Which he's right to, but I digress. It's still insulting.)

I understand that Bella's smell and that Bella herself are irresistible to him. But if he wanted the best for her, he'd stay away from her, period, the end. The story is stupid, the love story is bad, and if that's what Stephenie Meyer is preaching to teenage girls, I think it's pretty questionable. It's not just "a fun read". There are girls out there who want to be Bella and who want to find an Edward.

Anyway.

I think I might enjoy the story a lot if Bella's head was not the one I had to spend time in while reading it. If I had to read one description of how beautiful Edward is, I was going to choke a kitten. If it had focused on the vampire family I would have been a lot willing to forgive its faults. I thought Carlisle's and Alice's stories were really compelling, and Edward was finally accessible to me when he talked about Carlisle turning him into a vampire and how his family came to be formed, his life before Bella, etc. Some aspects of the vampirism were truly awesome: I found the idea that vampires can never sleep completely terrifying. That they never, ever get a break and never, ever get to rest that is a wonderful and ghastly idea.

Entirely overshadowed by their flowery breath and the fact that they sparkle. Mothereffing ridiculous.

This is hardly the tip of the iceberg, but I'm trying to spare you at least a little. my name is bella. bella swan. here's what stephenie didn't tell you. it's superduperimportant.

on the morning after it rained, it was rainy outside and i frowned at it being so rainy all the time. i chuckled to myself, darn weather! i stared at the rain outside, which is where they usually keep the rain. there was never any rain in phoenix. i love phoenix. i hate rain.


i tripped over a large air pocket on my bedroom floor and bashed my skull into the corner of my bookcase, which had three shelves and was faux wood veneer. after i applied cold compresses and stanched most of the bleeding, i drove to school, but they must have moved the school building across town. i chuckled to myself, darn school moving people!


after i drove around for a few hours looking for where they put the building, edward cullen pulled up alongside me in his shiny, silver volvo, which was silver and a saab, i think. his wellmuscled chest was riding shotgun, wearing a bluegray waffle knit longsleeved tshirt, relaxed fit jeans with contrast stitching in a lightly distressed wash, and an ivorycolored jacket made from the dyed skins of clubbed baby seals. he dressed very well, like someone who wears nice clothes.


his wellmuscled chest waved to me like an old friend, but edward glowered at me from the driver's seat. his eyes were black. i think he came down with glaucoma.


even though he glared at me and gave me the finger, he smiled and told me to follow him to school. he knew where they kept it. i wonder how he found out. but just then, i nearly tripped over my gas pedal and fell through the windshield. i am so clumsy. when we got to school, edward's wellmuscled chest walked me to english class.


"try to be careful in there," the chest giggled while at the same time giving me a sinister sideward glance that made the blood in the veins under my skin in my body feel icecold.


"haha," i giggled, tapping the chest on its rippling pectorals. "very funny," i then said running my finger around his kennedyhalfdollar sized nipples. "i'll try to be careful," i joked, alarmed at the unearthly chill emitted by his taut obliques.


everyone stared at us in the hallway, which was a long interior space allowing access to various doors. the students were wearing clothes and talking and carrying books. through the windows of the classroom which looked onto the outofdoors, i could see the rain was still raining outside. then i tripped over my clitoris and fell into a galvanized steel av cart on casters. three people were seriously injured.


i chuckled and turn bright red. how embarrassing.


at the end of the school day edward cullen came to walk me to my car. his chest was nowhere to be seen. probably at banana republic or out hunting mountain lions again. i chuckled to myself, darn chest!


"where's my car?" i giggled after chuckling for a while.


"don't you remember that you totaled it this morning when you drove into the orphan's hospital?" he said. he was looking at me with his eyes. he gave me his ivory jacket to keep me dry from the rain, which is usually very wet. then he looked at me again, smiling with the right half of his mouth but frowning with the left half of his mouth and oddly expressionless in the middle part of his mouth.


"you know," i said, falling over a parking bumper into a rack of bicycles, "rain isn't the only thing there is that gets me wet."


"let's just be friends," he hissed, arching an eyebrow, flexing his sinewy wrists, and flaring his beautiful muscular nostrils.


i realized then he might be a vampire. or really gay. or a really gay vampire.


i should have known. he had erasure cassettes in the car.

I really enjoy lively details. There's nothing better than knowing an author has really thought about her characters and situations, and come up with some surprising and delightful detail that makes the whole reading experience fuller. Lively details, you understand pointless details are a nightmare to read. I don't need to know that Bella ate a granola bar for breakfast. I REALLY DON'T. (Notice that I remembered the granola bar. I think this is partly because I was fervently hoping it would have significance. Like, she would spectacularly choke on her oatmeal the next day and think, "AH, I should have had a granola bar like yesterday!")

"Show, don't tell" is not the beallandendall of writing. There's a little thing called summary narrative. It's beautiful; it facilitates plot progression without having to follow your narrator through 24fuckinghours of a day and "watch" as she eats a fucking granola bar for breakfast.

I've seen this novel accused of Mary Sueism and um, yeah, any character named Isabella Swan seems destined to be a Mary Sue. But honestly, I wouldn't begrudge a semiautobiographical story if it actually had any of the realism of autobiography. All the high school/teenage stuff honestly made me boggle. Because that's not what high school is like! That's not what being seventeen is like! Twilight reads like well, it reads like a thirtysomething who has no recollection of being 17. Bella has all the emotional maturity of a 32yearold and that's just not remotely believable.

Meyer is not a bad writer. She has the ability to string words together. Unfortunately, she lacks any kind of flair. There was no original description; no truly evocative language. Twilight reads like Meyer has read a lot of mediocre novels and regurgitated the same kind of language onto the page. There is just nothing exciting to the language. The dialogue is awful: not only uninspiring and lacking in wit, but it's all the same! There's no difference in speech patterns to the characters; no awareness of personal tics. The characterization is waferthin (see above, re: Mary Sue). The plotting is terrible: the novel trundles along at a slow pace for 250 pages and then Meyer seems to suddenly realize she needs a climax and the gears shift abruptly and the reader is caught up in a series of ridiculous contrivances that set up Meyer's final setpiece (which, by the way, I saw coming a mile away).

This is such a profoundly antifeminist novel. And it's funny, because I think Meyer has no idea that it's antifeminist. I mean, she has a female heroine! A heroine who reads Austen and writes essays about misogyny in Shakespeare! Surely she's kicking butt for all womankind. Um no. She cooks, she cleans, she looks after the man in her life! She needs male characters to protect her from the big, bad, scary world! She falls headfirst into a disturbingly dysfunctional relationship with a man 90 years her senior without the slightest amount of worry!

Seriously. Bella/Edward. What's that all about? I don't get the attraction. He has her in his thrall. She is, let me quote, "unconditionally and irrevocably" in love with him and after, like, a week. oO She's consumed by him; she's willing to sacrifice her life for him, and that's romantic? I just think it's a bit sick, really. You know what I find romantic? Human warmth. Not sweeping, dramatic statements of everlasting and overarching love. Little, sweet moments of connection that ring true. That's something Twilight's apparently epic love story is sorely lacking in. (Did I say Bella has the emotional maturity of a 32yearold? Well, except when it comes to Edward. There she has the emotional maturity of a dumb dog.)

New week, {sitelink}New BookTube Video all about the best (and worst) literary couplesThe Written Review So, my review might be a bit biased

This was my first (and only major) episode of fangirling.

I owned a tshirt ("vegetarian vampire"so edgy).

I saw the first movie an embarrassingly high number of times in theater.

I judged people based off of Team Edward or Team Jacob (for the record: Edward in the books, Jacob in the movies).

Even now, than 10 years later, I still absolutely adore this first book there's too many good feelings.

I tried so, so hard to look at this book with my sophisticated grownup eyes, to see past all the trite plotholes and develop a good, sound hatred of Twilight.

I just can't I live for this series.

So, just keep in mind where I am coming from when I decided to reread this one.

My overwhelming realization? Bella should probably be hospitalized

There is no way she doesn't have some innerear or traumatic brain injury. There is no physically relevant way a seventeen year old could be thatunbalanced.

It defies all logic. It's like every time I turned the page, there'd she go. Falling. Again. You really should stay away from me.The other overwhelming realization? Rosalie was the voice of reason.

I remember absolutely hating her because she was the only one who stood between Edward and Bella.

How dare she not love that they're in love? Well, now that I'm older, it's ofYOU'RE ONLY SEVENTEEN AND HE'S A HUNDRED YEARS OLDER.

Team Rosaliethevoiceofreason all the way.

Despite everything, the cheesy quotes, the terribly unrealistic portrayal of love and the big sparkling plotholes, I can't help it. I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Me, falling in love with this book all over again. P.s. Still got that 10 yr old vegetarian vampire shirt in the back of my closet.

Pchokengtitiktitikchokengs. yes. That's my original Twilight copy, literally worn away from my multiple rereads

Audiobook Comments
Wellread by Ilyana Kadushin, though I wish the guy voices were a bit distinct when the girlreader said them. They were all just slightly deeper version of girlvoices. Not much variation in tone/inflection.

The 2018 PopSugar Reading Challenge A book made into a movie you've already seen

{sitelink}YouTube | {sitelink}Blog | {sitelink}Instagram | {sitelink}Twitter | {sitelink}Facebook | Snapchat @mirandareads I actually had to give this book three separate reviews by three sides of my personality. My threestar rating is the median of the three:

Review 1, by My Inner Fifteen Year Old Girl (5 stars):
Bella is smart, funny, wellread, pretty and yet misunderstood by most of her peers (just like me). Then she meets a cool, hot guy who turns out to be a good vampire, and he can do really cool things, like run fast and stop cars with his hands, but he's still sweet and wonderful. It's ultimate wishfulfillment fantasy what's not to like? Meyers can make your heart speed up with some of the tense, tortured "we must be together/no, what if i hurt you" pg13 erotica.

Review 2, by My Fan of YA Lit (3 Stars):
Meyers can tell a pretty good story, when she lets herself actually tell it the book starts out well, and would have been a bit interesting if I hadn't known he was a vampire all along. Then it slows down during the long "getting to know you" dialogue exchanges between Edward and Bella there's no plot, just backstory and exposition disguised as conversations, and far too many "I can't be with you, I don't want to hurt you!" "But I love you, I don't care about danger!" backandforths. When the evil vamps show up, however, the story kicks back in and the end is quite exciting. When Meyers isn't dwelling on how perfectly angelic Edward is (again!) she can get the pages turning. Since there are A LOT of pages to turn, I wish she would have infused that urgency into the story often. While abandoning most of the conventional cliches of vampirelore (stakes, sunlight, garlic, coffins) she keeps all the modernvampromance cliches (alabaster skin, good hair, expensive taste in clothes, tragically distant), and adds a few of her own unfortunate twists (vampires avoid the sun because it makes them sparkle, the goodvamp clan play some extreme version of baseball in a scene that was far too Quidichy for my taste). Too many cliches or trying to hard to be original somehow both criticisms are accurate.

Review 3, by My Inner Feminist (1 Star):
Meyers describes Bella as being strong, brave, and independent, but then shows her as a spineless, cowering victim who needs to be saved by her violently jealous and overprotective boyfriend. She constantly goes on and on about how Edward is perfect at everything and how he's so gorgeous and she is so unworthy of him, how he's so strong and he protects her. In fact, she never gives any reason for liking him other than how hot he is, but that's fair because Edward never gives a reason for liking her other than she smells good. He is frustrated that Bella is the only person whose thoughts he can't read, so he eavesdrops on her friends minds to find out what they talk about, he follows her whenever she leaves her house, and he secretly camps outside her room when she sleeps that doesn't sound sweet, it sounds creepy. If girls want a romantic, conflicted vampire/human romance, they should go watch the firs three seasons of Buffy not only is there the dark, mysterious, conflicted vampire, but the girl he's in love with can kick some serious ass all on her own.
Actual rating: 1.5 stars. Believe it or not, there are actually a few books that are worse than Twilight.

Ok, funny story. I was sitting on my couch with my husband last night finishing up Twilight. I slammed the book shut and began rubbing my temples. Then, my husband goes, "So you finally finished, huh?" "Yes. I can't believe I used to like this book," I said. "Hahaha! Yeah, I remember you were on Twilight's balls hard." Yeah, yeah, yeah

There isn't a single book on my shelf that has fluctuated between all ratings besides Twilight. No, your eyes do not deceive you. I actually have read Twilight 4 times. I used to hail from Shelfari.com and the first rating I ever gave Twilight was 5 stars. After I made the switch to GoodReads, I decided to give it 4 stars instead. So, recently I was browsing my GoodReads shelf (I often do that to clean up ratings), I noticed Twilight was sitting pretty at 4 stars and was on my "favorites" shelf. At the time I thought, "Wow, that's not accurate at all. Maybe it deserves 3 stars?" But I quickly decided, no, no, noI'll just do a fun little project and reread the series and give them all better ratings. If your curious about the details of the project, stop on over here: {sitelink}Project: Hindsight. And hey, if you like what you see, won't you subscribe? Yes? /end shameless self promotion.

The coolest thing about rereading Twilight is that it has caused me to create really cool new shelves such as:

"Kill me now"
{sitelink}

"Idiot heroine"
{sitelink}

"This is *not* literature"
{sitelink}

And my personal favorite: "Where's my chocolate?"
{sitelink}


One of the first things I noticed during this reread was how incredibly boring it was. Bella is dull as a doorknob. And the first few chapters of the book are essentially a 'Bitch, Moan, Complain' session. So, we have Bella moving to Forks, WA because she wants her mother to be happy ( on that later). And she's all like, "Ohhhh, I hate this place. It's green. Ewww, it's wet. Fuck my life." And what's one of the first things Bella does when she arrives in Forks? She cooks Charlie dinner.

{sitelink}

No, I don't have an issue with a female character enjoying cooking, but it is practically thrown in my face that Charlie can't fend for himself; Bella has to cook. Well, what the hell was he doing before she arrived?! Oh, ya, did anyone else realize that despite the fact that she says she is not allowed to call Charlie by his first name; she almost always calls him Charlie? WTF.

Bella goes to school and during lunch she first cast her eyes on the Cullen family. {sitelink} Her next period happens to be Biology (because that's where you'd meet a vampire, right?) and as she walks past the fan Edward goes:
{sitelink}
And she's like, "WTF. Do I smell?" Little does she know that Eddie just wants to devourer her little, ivory skinned ass. His reaction is so offputting that she cries when she gets back to her truck. All because Eddie doesn't like her. Who the hell cares, Bella? Conceded much? Get over yourself. But no, she just obsesses with it. "Edward Cullen didn't come back to school. Everyday, I watched anxiously until the rest of the Cullens had entered the cafeteria without him." Meanwhile, poor Mike is trying to put the moves on Bella and invites her to a beach trip. Speaking of the beach trip, here is something the editors should have picked up on. When the beach trip is first brought up it's supposed to be happening in two weeks. But, as Bella goes on and on about nothing in particular, a few pages later she mentions "just because he'd happened to look at me for the first time in a halfdozen weeks." Wait, what? Anyone notice something? Six weeks have passed and the beach trip is where? Not only that, but the girl's choice dance was also two weeks away and here six weeks have passed "I was surprised he would remember the name; I'd mentioned it just once, almost two months ago." Anyway, moving on. Some random shit happens causing Edward to swoop in and save danger prone Bella. The worst thing about Twilight is how incredibly dependent Bella is on Edward. When she's not with him, she is always thinking about him. And that doesn’t make any sense. She barely knows him. They've had like two or three conversations and she has thoughts like: "And what was my other choiceto cut him out of my life? Intolerable. Besides, since I'd come to Forks, it really seemed like my life was about him."
"It would cause me physical pain to be separated from him now."
"You are my life. You're the only thing it would hurt me to lose." And then, because Edward must always prove to Bella that he loves her than she loves him, he pulls this line: "Don't you see? That's what proves me right. I care the most because if I can do itif leaving is the right thing to do, then I'll hurt myself to keep from hurting you, to keep you safe." Are you kidding me? This is not love. But how could it be, with Edward torn between eating her and making out with her? Edward is a controlling creepy creeper. He had been watching her sleep for weeks before they started talking! Meyer are you condoning stalkish behavior?! {sitelink} Not.Fucking.Cool.

I once read that Stephenie Meyer had a dream and that is how Twilight was born. She says she actually started writing from chapter 13 (The Meadow) to the ending. Oh, ya, that's where we find out Edward sparkles in the sun! {sitelink} Then, she went back and wrote the first half. It totally shows. While it's true the entire book is a shit storm in action, the second half is noticeably worse. The first half can easily be summed up as "Bella's Bitch Fest meets Creepward" and believe me when I say, it's really not as bad as the second half. How is that even possible? I have no idea, but Meyer pulls that shit off flawlessly. And ya know? I have a theory on that. Because Meyer had a dream about Bella and Edward and their 'true love' and she went to work on the second half before the first, there is all this raw emotions, strange pet names, and banter that's supposed to be romantic but fails miserably. I just felt terribly uncomfortable reading it. And to top it all off, it was so bad, like, eye bleeding bad! It made me so angry I actually pulled out a pen and started marking this damn book up. Don't believe me? LMAO, seriously folks, I took notes. Feast your eyes on my personal copy of Toilette Twilight That's French for toilet, stolen from Haleema. But I think the French word works pretty well. Hey, if you say it fast enough it sounds dangerously like Twilight. Just saying..
{sitelink}

I've also noticed a trend with Meyer. She doesn't write fight scenes. There was a huge build up for a fight with James and we see nothing of the fight. Bella is informed of what happened after the fact. Good job, Stephenie. You totally ripped off your readers there. So, Carlisle is sitting there fixing up Bella on the ground (and he randomly has Morphine, by the way ) and Bella is in the process of passing out. But first, Carlisle has a little conversation about Bella's mom and she somehow finds the will to mention to Alice what she knows about James. Like, really? Go to sleep Bella. You talk too much.

I won't bore you with the details of the ending. I'm sure you already know. But I do want to say that Bella's mother is the most selfish character (next to Bella, of course). First she ships her off to Forks so she could be with her new husband. And no, do not tell me Bella chose to do that. Renee is the parent and it's *her* job to make sacrifices. Then, when Bella is in the hospital after the fight with James, she acts like she can't be bothered to stay with Bella. Then she sighed and glaced guiltily over her shoulder at the big, round clock on the wall.
"Do you need to go?"
She bit her lip. "Phil's supposed to call in a little whileI didn't know you were going to wake up" Really?? Really, Renee?! Your daughter almost died and you are seriously acting like this? Unfuckingbelievable. Oh, but this shit gets better: "I'll be back soon. I've been sleeping here, you know," she announced, proud of herself. Huh? Do you want a cookie for that? It's your job! "I can stay if you need me."
"No, Mom, I'll be fine. Edward will be with me."
She looked like that might be why she wanted to stay.
"I'll be back tonight." Its sounded as much like a warning as it sounded like a promise, and she glanced at Edward again as she said it. And what does she think Edward and Bella are going to do? She has a broken leg, broken ribs, and cracks in her skull. C'mon now!

Then Edward takes Bella to prom, he kisses her neck. The fucking end.
Would I recommend this? Bahahahahahah! You're shitting me, right? I'm about to go do this to my bookshelf:
{sitelink}

But I'll tell you what I recommend. I recommend we all do this to our copies of Toilette.
{sitelink}
Amen.

Continue on with the madness with my review of {sitelink}Midnight Sun and {sitelink}New Moon.


*****BONUS TIME*****

I love bonuses! They are so much fun! Have you seen the Twilight parody by The Hillywood Show? No?! Go watch now!!
Twilight: {sitelink}
New Moon: {sitelink}
Eclipse: {sitelink}
I personally love the Eclipse one.


More reviews and at {sitelink}Cuddlebuggery Book Blog. Oh my. This book, to me, is like chocolate: a delicious, sinful, addictive indulgence which you convince yourself has beneficial qualities (zinc, calcium, keeps me quiet at that time of the month) in order to justify your addiction.

By "beneficial qualities", I mean that it's reading, and since when is reading bad? :) Let me say quite clearly that I'm a sucker for romance, especially the intense, passionate, tragic kind. I don't read romance novels*, though, because to me they are lacklustre Meyer's book has the extra edge I need, though, a great way of keeping doom hanging over the main characters' heads: she's human, he's a vampire.

Sound corny? Yeah, I know, and the only reason Meyer gets away with it as well as she does is because Twilight doesn't try to be anything it's not, and it has such conviction. Only Meyer could get away with giving her narrator the name Isabella Swan. She says in her little bio at the back that she wanted to write believable characters: an interesting choice, then, to write about vampires, but I believed in them, and without such a willing suspension of disbelief, the story would have been a farce. True, a lot of people haven't been able to suspend their disbelief with this book, but that doesn't affect my reading experience :)

Seventeen year old Bella's parents are divorced. She lives with her mum in Phoenix, Arizona, and spends time with her dad Charlie in Forks, Washington State, where it rains almost constantly. She hates Forks, but when her mum remarries a baseball player, Phil, and starts travelling with him, Bella decides to move to Forks.

On her first day at school she notices the isolated group of five beautiful, graceful siblings. Rosalie, Alice, Emmet, Edward and Jasper. One in particular catches her eye: Edward Cullen, with his rustbrown hair and topaz eyes. She is than a little surprised and shocked when he seems to have developed an acute, profound hatred of her. Her fascination deepens, especially when, after a brief disappearance, he saves her life. She soon figures out what Edward is, and the knowledge doesn't frighten her. The shaky friendship between them develops into something much stronger, and Edward reveals his overpowering reaction to her smell that nearly made him kill her on the spot hence the look on his face that so shocked her, and the restraint he put on himself during an hour of Biology.

Let's not forget he's incredibly handsome: even though Bella describes almost every glance he makes and every twitch of his lips, not once did I get bored and roll my eyes. My fascination grew alongside hers, until I too fell in love with Edward in a totally girly, daydreamy way. Yes, I admit it. I don't know if that makes this a girly kind of book these days those boundaries don't seem to matter so much, and the vampire family is pretty darn cool, what with Edward's extra ability to read minds, Alice's premonitions, Jasper's ability to affect people's emotions, their speed, their invincibility Bella is at one point compared to Lois Lane, because Edward and his kin really are like Superman.

One of the things I love about YA books: the clarity with which they are written. Granted there is some repetition in Twilight, but to me it's necessary repetition. There's nothing superfluous in Twilight, nothing that shouldn't be there, and the flow, the pacing, is great. It's a fat book, but I read it in two days. I read it with breakfast, on my walk to the subway, on the subway, up the escalator, through the ticket gates, to work, in my lunch break you get the picture. I couldn't get enough of it, and it left me with that same craving for that Harry Potter did (I remember scrounging around for loose change as soon as I finished one of them and dashing off into the city to get my next fix. It helped that four were already out when I started). There's plenty of negative stuff you could say about this book the writing, the characters, the obsession but again, I couldn't care less :)

Another thing I loved was all the vampire myths Meyer scrapped. These vampires aren't burnt to ash by sunlight: their marble skin glitters as the sunlight is broken into miniscule shards, like diamonds hence why they are living in Forks, where the sun hardly ever shines. They are not hurt by crucifixes or stakes through the heart. They do not sleep at all, nor do they eat human food. They drive fast cars really really fast. And they can fall in love. Awwww.

Seriously though, this was one of most fun, most enjoyable, most romantic books I've read in a long time, and I'm so happy there are two out with a fourth on the way. They are, somewhat predictably, making Twilight into a movie still in the early development stage but it's rather fun to go to the author's website and see her own preferences for actors to play Edward etc. Can't say I'm familiar with most of them, but her top choice (now sadly too old), is indeed a perfect match. Who knows who they'll really cast, but as with the book, the characters have to be right or the whole story will be just silly and sappy.



*Since reading this the first time back in 2007, I've started reading some romance novels. Yes I've been corrupted. Or rather, I've always loved romance stories but had trouble admitting it. Now, I just don't care :)