Twilight

Fear not, my friends, I have not abandoned the great art of literature. Nor have I drowned, converted to Hasidic Judaism or developed a liking for hard drugs. Over the past few weeks I've been busy getting through my set texts for uni - I did think about writing about them on here but I decided against it. I want this page to be about books I actually choose to read, and I doubt anybody ever read La Tentation de Saint Antoine for laughs. Oh, and we got two kittens! They are insanely cute and have been the object of much of my love and attention.




12. Twilight - Stephenie Meyer
I resisted this book for a while. I kept seeing it in the bestseller's section in Borders and thinking it looked like my cup of tea, but as it's a "teen novel" I thought it might be a bit young for me. Then I remembered I still watch Pingu and look about fourteen, so I bought it. Oh lordy, I'm glad I did. (And as it happened the girl at the till where I paid, who was probably a couple of years older than me, starting gushing about how much she loved it and its sequels, so I didn't feel so bad.)
This is about a 17-year-old girl who moves to a tiny little town in Washington to live with her dad, and falls in love with a boy who turns out to be a vampire. Awesome.
One of the things I really liked about this was how accurate the writer's depiction of being a teenager is. She avoids all stereotypes or teen speak (something other writers seem incapable of doing), and lot of the stuff she wrote about - the awkwardness, the obsessiveness - really reminded me of how I felt in school, even though, alas, my years there were sorely lacking in vampire romance. The writing is clever and thoughtful, and the plot is well paced. It is totally over-romanticized, so I can see why it's so popular with teenage girls, but that actually works well with the tone of the book. It doesn't seem corny.
I shall leave this here as I want to start reading the sequel now. Right now.