Twilight

Yes, me too. I have been taken in by Twilight. My friend John recently posted the following message on my facebook:

"haha...you're probably the only PhD applicant in the world to spend her Christmas break reading _Twilight_ books :)"

I suppose that the smiley was meant to placate my easily provoked wrath, but I find his statement especially amusing because I was at a Christmas party on the 26th and found not one but two other PhD students reading the book. It's the new 'girly' phenomenon. My Twilight journey started around midnight on December 12th (13th if you count midnight as the start of a new day). I picked up the book at a Barnes and Noble stop for the classroom library. A few of my female students had been caught reading it during their grammar lessons, so I thought it would be a good choice for Focused Silent Reading. I started reading because I was bored and couldn't sleep. I spent most of the weekend reading and consequently moved on quite quickly. I bought the rest of the series at Books-A-Million on Wednesday the 17th, and I finished the fourth on the 29th.

The series has some notable features. I continually refer to the books as 'vampire romance,' rather than fantasy, but I can argue for their placement in the fantasy genre. Unlike the other popular fantasy novels currently being read, the series is written in the first person. The protagonist Bella is the narrator. The first book probably fits most closely into Tzvetan Todorov's definition of "the fantastic." Bella is kept in suspense for a great majority of the novel as to whether or not the supernatural can really exist. This is only possible with a first person narrator, and I am impressed that it has regained its popularity as a literary technique in this genre. Bella's transition from Phoenix, AR to Forks, WA was extremely well written, almost literary in its detail. That alone is what kept me reading for the first hundred pages. After her arrival in Forks, the book takes on a distinctly Romance genre feel. I rarely read Romance, but Bella's "everywoman" qualities were enough to pull me through.

My major problem with the book, and really the series, is that Bella loves Edward because he is classically beautiful and can read minds and Edward loves Bella because he cannot read her mind and she smells good. This does not a lasting relationship make, and throughout, the depth of their love seemed unrealistic to me. However, the suspense at the end of the novel made it worth the read. Meyer's changes to classic vampire mythology were innovative on the whole. I liked the idea that the "good" vampires hunted animals, but as my ever sarcastic boyfriend pointed out, the killing of large predatory animals on the North American continent is really quite criminal. The first book was definitely not my favorite in the series, but it was an entertaining read.