Twilight

So I broke down and read the four Stephanie Meyer Twilight books recently. A well-read friend of mine tried to get me to read it a couple of years ago, but I never found the time. After watching the MTV movie awards (which were all about the movie) I caved. Here are some of my thoughts on the books:

Twilight (Book 1): This is the "best" book of the four, I guess. I wish I could say you can just read this one and skip the other three, but it leaves everything so open-ended! Part of the charm of this book seems to be the way that Meyer breaks the rules of writing - not just of writing, but of... I guess you could call it political correctness. Meyer is a Mormon (like my roommates from college) so some of the things that happen in the book that seem unusual are not that unusual to her, but still... a book about a seventeen year old girl who is willing to lose her family and friends and give up everything (even her life - especially her life) to be with her boyfriend she's know for a few months just seems like such a bad idea. What is this teaching young girls today, etc. But, as it turns out - this is a big part of what makes the book hard to put down. Who wants to read a book where the heroine does everything she's supposed to do?

Meyer's writing style is bad. Like her politically incorrect storyline, however, the bad writing and the way she breaks the rules of what you would normally expect to find in such a book, actually makes the book interesting. There is no real plot to the book - it's mostly just people talking, but the talking is the best part. In the last half where some action finally takes place - evil tracker vampires with red eyes and ballet studios - it can't match the excitement of a conversation in a car driving a little too fast on the way home from a shopping trip gone wrong earlier in the book.

New Moon (Book 2): So, will clumsy Bella become a vampire and be with her cool (pun intended) boyfriend forever and ever? This book doesn't really tell you- but it does have werewolves and motorcycles!

Eclipse (Book 3):I don't really remember what happened in this book, it was basically just wrapping up loose ends from the other two and preparing for the final book. Mostly more talking.

Breaking Dawn (Book 4): This one was different from the others. It was the only book of the four where I actually became restless reading and just wanted to get to the end. The best part of the three other books was seeing the whole crazy situation through the human eyes of Bella, but in this book her observations are mostly just annoying. I was also peeved about a sub-plot of sorts that involved sister Alice running away and abandoning everyone, when it was obvious that she didn't really run away and she must have had a good reason, though no one seemed to realize that despite the fact that they have known her for a hundred years and I have only been reading the books for about two weeks.

If you get as far as the third book, you might as well go ahead and read the last one, but you can skip a ton of the island stuff at the beginning and pretty much all of the stuff that happens once the "witnesses" arrive until the end.