Must...get...clean...
So this weekend, a friend lent me the first two books of the Twilight "saga". Yes, "saga" goes in quotes, because it's not the flippin' Epic of Gilgamesh, it's tween fiction.
I decided to read them so that I could actually qualify my disgust for the books that turned soccer moms into squealing pre-menstrual girls.
I'm about halfway through the first book, which I'm told you must slog through before you start to get swept away in the love story for all time that is Bella and Edward. And I must say that, as difficult as it is to read and hold down vomit simultaneously, it's strangely compelling.
But the writing is bad. So bad. So. Excruciatingly. Awful.
One day soon, I'm going to find my old shoebox filled with angsty poems I wrote in junior high and compare them to Twilight. I swear to you, the language is the same. Explains why kids go cuckoo for it. It's speaking their lovelorn, inexperienced, self-involved language. But to the adult reader, well...it's a little tough to take without a generous helping of Pepto-Bismol.
I've started a running tally of the number of times the words "dazzled", "despair" and "devastated"--and all synonyms--are used. 200 pages in, and I've lost count. Bella, the protagonist, is so helpless, whiny and needy she can't be trusted to go to a beach without drowning. But her "knight in shining skin" is there to sparkle at her and whisper tormented nothings in her ear.
Barf.
I get it. It's a young female fantasy. The dangerous but beautiful, troubled man just looking for the woman to set him straight. But do they need to put it into such clothes-rending, hair-tearing melodramatic terms? Could the author have at least invested in a thesaurus? She beats you into submission with her nauseatingly minute details of this unrequited love, until you cry out, "no more!"
I've been warned about the second book, told that I'll want to poke my eyes out with something pointy to make the agony stop. Tripe.
And don't go saying that "well, Harry Potter is written for young kids, too, and that's also popular." Harry Potter is well-written. Harry Potter uses a variety of words to convey meaning. Harry Potter stands up to Voldemort and saves the day, rather than waiting for Hermione to come to his rescue while he wees himself in the corner. It's great that Twilight is getting kids to read. Maybe next, though, they could, you know, read something good.
So this weekend, a friend lent me the first two books of the Twilight "saga". Yes, "saga" goes in quotes, because it's not the flippin' Epic of Gilgamesh, it's tween fiction.
I decided to read them so that I could actually qualify my disgust for the books that turned soccer moms into squealing pre-menstrual girls.
I'm about halfway through the first book, which I'm told you must slog through before you start to get swept away in the love story for all time that is Bella and Edward. And I must say that, as difficult as it is to read and hold down vomit simultaneously, it's strangely compelling.
But the writing is bad. So bad. So. Excruciatingly. Awful.
One day soon, I'm going to find my old shoebox filled with angsty poems I wrote in junior high and compare them to Twilight. I swear to you, the language is the same. Explains why kids go cuckoo for it. It's speaking their lovelorn, inexperienced, self-involved language. But to the adult reader, well...it's a little tough to take without a generous helping of Pepto-Bismol.
I've started a running tally of the number of times the words "dazzled", "despair" and "devastated"--and all synonyms--are used. 200 pages in, and I've lost count. Bella, the protagonist, is so helpless, whiny and needy she can't be trusted to go to a beach without drowning. But her "knight in shining skin" is there to sparkle at her and whisper tormented nothings in her ear.
Barf.
I get it. It's a young female fantasy. The dangerous but beautiful, troubled man just looking for the woman to set him straight. But do they need to put it into such clothes-rending, hair-tearing melodramatic terms? Could the author have at least invested in a thesaurus? She beats you into submission with her nauseatingly minute details of this unrequited love, until you cry out, "no more!"
I've been warned about the second book, told that I'll want to poke my eyes out with something pointy to make the agony stop. Tripe.
And don't go saying that "well, Harry Potter is written for young kids, too, and that's also popular." Harry Potter is well-written. Harry Potter uses a variety of words to convey meaning. Harry Potter stands up to Voldemort and saves the day, rather than waiting for Hermione to come to his rescue while he wees himself in the corner. It's great that Twilight is getting kids to read. Maybe next, though, they could, you know, read something good.
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