This is the one about all things ‘Twilight.’

Posted November 25th, 2008 by Mike Lawson

[books]

For the past month I’ve been consumed with the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer.  And that is the primary reason that I haven’t written any book posts; I didn’t want to crowd this blog with Twilight reviews.  But since I’ve wrapped up the series, and since I just watched the movie this past weekend, I decided to write it all in one post.

Before I get to any criticism, I think I should reiterate a point that I’ve made about a half-dozen times: if kids read it, it’s valuable. I remember writing that same thing when I reviewed the Harry Potter series, and when I commented on an article about the futility of Catcher In The Rye.

And if Myer has figured out a way to get young adults (dare I use the term tweens?) to read a few thousand pages, we can’t really criticize the content too much.

And now on to the criticism: A month ago, when I had just wrapped up book #2, I went to lunch with a friend that had already finished the series.

The friend pointed out that there was some really lazy editors working on these books.  And she’s was right.  Stephenie Meyer couldn’t use a semi-colon correctly if her life depended on it.

Much of the dialouge was trite and contrived.

Meyer doesn’t think highly of her audience, and often states and then restates (and sometimes restates and restates and restates) a fact…making the reader feel like he is reading a book written by his mother.  “Don’t forget…she’s clumsy!”

With all of that said, I loved them.  We can’t give Meyer any points for grammar, or punctuation.  But she has certainly come up with a captivating love story between a human and a non-human.

I’m no fan of Vampire Lit (could that be considered a category?!?  Oh god what has this world come to!!), but I was completely entertained by this teeny-bopper take on what is usually a drab genre filled with gaudy gold furniture, powdered wigs, and ascots.

It looks like we are going to be seeing a lot of Bella and Edward in the movie theaters, so if for no other reason, the books serve as a better interpretation of Meyer’s story.  The first movie came off as cheap and quickly thrown together…but as my friend put it, “the movies are every emo kid’s wet dream.”