New Moon has risen, and set

OK, fine, I give in, I admit it. I am enjoying the Twilight series. They’re not likely to win the Nobel Prize for literature any time soon, but they’re worth taking the time for.

Based on what I am hearing (much of which has to do with a comparative preference for forcibly removing and eating one’s own liver, and the like), I still have very little desire to see the movie, or its sequel-in-progress.

I think part of me didn’t want to like this series because of the teenybopper hysteria which it seems to generate (Goblet of Fire had finally come out and I had therefore started getting into the Potter series before this kind of frothing-at-the-mouth fandom had begun to irritate me). As a confirmed Whedonite, I also object to some of the canonical vampire tropes being discarded as cavalierly as they are, particularly the sunlight thing.

BUT.

I had heard that New Moon is the low point of the series, and I still did enjoy it. So I guess I kind of like these books after all.

And just for those of you surfing in based on my tags alone, here’s a picture of Robert Pattinson for your slavering enjoyment.

Don’t drool all over your keyboard, it tends to make them inoperable.

And since I am in this confessionary spirit when it comes to the enjoyment of things that are overhyped, I’m just going to let it be known now that I did actually like Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, have actually begun appreciating Coldplay and did once have a teenage crush on a Spice Girl. Anyone else have a secret shame or other such confession to make?

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A vampire?! Let me check my notes…

This was a relatively recent bookstore find:

While it may be a handy-dandy resource when researching Eastern European folklore, or perhaps offer some insights into the deeper meanings of Twilight or Buffy… this title seems a little misleading.

Here is my revised Complete Idiot’s Guide to Vampires:

If you see one coming toward you, run like hell. You can look him up if you survive, but since you will have survived it was most likely just a goth.

In the spirit of offering advice to “Complete Idiots”, I would also like to share a recent grocery store find:

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De Re Crepusculari

I’d been happily ignorant of the Twilight books for a long time, indeed enough so that when YA literary fandom began hyping the release of Breaking Dawn with a fervor second only to the Harry Potter firestorms, my only thought on the matter was “who the hell is Stephenie Meyer?”.

The subsequent movie posters did little to change my opinion, looking like little more than a formulaic teenage drama where for variety’s sake one of the characters was a vampire.

Eventually, though, enough people of my acquaintance – people whose tastes I often share – had gone gaga over these books that I decided to find out for myself what all of the fuss is about. (Note: if you have read my review of the book on Goodreads.com, the next few paragraphs will be familiar.)

This book (and its sequels) have seemed at times to be so divisive, so polarizing, that I expected to either love or loathe it once I decided to delve into it. Instead, I ended up giving it three stars. Meyer spins an enjoyable yarn, but it is neither trash nor treasure.

If you’re familiar with much of the pop-culture vampire lore, you might appreciate Meyer’s fresher take on the genre – no coffins, garlic or stakes to be found here. Having said that, it does appear to borrow heavily in some places. It’s a high school girl falling in love with a vampire, after all, and it would probably be impossible to pull that off without a striking resemblance to early seasons of Buffy. At other times, it seems almost to have a Danielle-Steel-meets-Anne-Rice vibe.

I would have assigned two and a half stars had that been an option, but opted to round up. Had this book been marketed as straight fiction rather than YA, I would probably have rounded down. To be fair, however, the tale is told from the POV of an infatuated teenage girl, and having never been one of those I may not have been appreciating the book as fully as other readers.

However, I then heard of a partial book entitled Midnight Sun. This is essentially a retelling of the first book from the POV of the vampire, which unfortunately was leaked online well before completion and as such may never be finished. Since this book removed my major barrier to enjoying the read, I enjoyed it much more. That said, I’ve also never been a vampire… but I can appreciate Edward’s thoughts and feelings in a way that Bella’s simply don’t evoke.

In any case, it turns out I’m going to read the sequels after all. They’ll be from Bella’s perspective, but I’m now sufficiently invested in the characters that I want to know what happens to them.

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