My New Obsession

I should have known I wasn't above this when I saw the kind of effect the Harry Potter books had on me . . . obsessing over not just a novel, not just a TEEN novel, but a teen novel SERIES, and worse yet, a VAMPIRE teen novel series. I guess I figured, everyone was obsessed with Harry Potter, so I was just, you know, jumping on the bandwagon.

And Twilight by Stephenie (that's not a typo) Meyer apparently has it's own bandwagon -- indeed, its own movie rights, and it's only the first novel in the series (the second novel will come out in October, but as I found out through rigorous MySpace research, the fans are hoping it will really be September). The premise goes thus: strange girl from Phoenix moves to Forks, Washington, one of the wettest cities in North America, meets a strange boy with a pale face, finds out he's a benevolent vampire who doesn't drink human blood anymore (the equivalent of a vampire vegetarian) but REALLY wants to drink this particular girl's blood UNTIL he falls in love with her and has to save her from the not-so-benevolent vampires. Pretty standard, I guess, in terms of love stories, except the vampire bit, though I believe (vaguely) that this ground has been covered by Buffy (Steph L, help me out).

So why am I so interested? Hard to say . . . it's not a well-written novel exactly. In fact, the middle hundred of the 500 page book is devoted to an interminable stint of exposition and kissing, and I thought at that point that I'd been wrong to even get involved. But here are, I guess, the reasons I like this series:

1) In book 2, I THINK, Bella actually becomes a vampire, thus changing the books from a tragic romantic trilogy to a female-protagonist superhero trilogy. What does all this mean? (By the way, if you wanna know why I think all this, read the first chapter of book 2 at http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/newmoon_chapter1.pdf. The first chapter of the first book is, I believe, also available).

2) The author of the books is green, effusive, and posts first chapters of her book on her website (see above. Also see the cuteness of a truly effusive author here http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight_movie.html and here http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight_cullencars.html, where Stephenie lapses into a delightful TMI).

3) MOREOVER, the author hadn't written anything in years, until she had this crazy vampire dream and awoke with so much love and passion for the characters that she wrote every day after that unti the novel was done (see http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight.html). Maybe it's just a story, but I'm at once gullible, delighted, and jealous. How could this happen to someone? How could it not happen to me? It's all intriguing.

That's enough for now, I guess. Get ahold of a copy of the book -- i'm sure it's available on amazon, and I got it at my local library. Then, tell me what you think. Or, just tell me what you think right now.