Twilight: If You Haven't Read It, Don't Bother

Last week I decided that it was finally time for me to dive into Twilight so that I would understand what all the fuss is about. For the few of you out there who haven't heard much about Stephanie Meyer's best-selling series, I'll give you a brief synopsis: Bella, a beautiful (though she doesn't realize it) high school student moves to a new school where she meets and falls in love with Edward, a handsome, young vampire. Edward falls for Bella, too, and naturally, the union of the two lovers presents several difficulties.

Before reading the first novel in Stephenie Meyer's vampire series, I expected to be entertained (but not blown away) by the writing. Unfortunately, having finished the book, I feel disgusted on several levels.

First and foremost, the sentiments of this book disgust me. Meyer continually reinforces unrealistic romantic ideals and compromising gender stereotypes throughout the novel. I mean, basically the novel's complications all center around either the insinuation that Bella and Edward are star-crossed soul mates or the fact that weak, submissive, fallible Bella must be continually saved from death by powerful, commanding, omniscient Edward. Although Bella possesses a degree of wit with which she counters the decisions that Edward makes on her behalf, for the most part her wit and her protestations seem not to matter in the least. When Edward says "eat," Bella eats. When Edward says "get in the car," Bella gets in the car. How disappointing.

Second, the writing in the book disgusts me. The images Meyer uses to describe her characters and settings are trite and repetitive. A librarian friend of mine put it like this: "By the end of the book, I thought I might throw up if Bella used the words 'cold,' 'white,' 'marble,' or 'beautiful' in reference to Edward again." Furthermore, I found at least a couple of grammatical errors in the book, including one compound sentence that uses both past and present tense verbs to make its point. Who edited this book, anyway?

Third, I am disgusted that Twilight, with its sappy sentiments and disappointing prose, is the current poster novel for young, female readers across our country. With all the great young adult literature out there, surely we can do better than this.

Fourth, I'm disgusted that, after having read Twilight and in spite of everything I mentioned above, I have to admit that I am mildly curious to see what happens in New Moon, the next book in the series. I think this is because Twilight's plot does have a few interesting turns and it is fast paced, though those attributes don't make up for all the problems I had with the book. So, will I read New Moon? Probably not; I'd never be able to get those reading hours back.