Twilight

I have a confession. Perhaps a somewhat embarrassing confession: I have fallen deeply, completely, and head-over-heels into the Twilight craze.

About three months ago, I was driving home from work, battling traffic, and trudging along at about 10 mph on the parkway. During this time I usually try to call a family member, friend, etc to avoid the road-rage that I have a tendency to build. On this particular day my 19-year old sister was gushing about this great book that she was reading. She told me it was about vampires and werewolves and I immediately lost interest, phased out what she was saying, and started wondering to myself about what I was going to cook for dinner that night. I really have never been interested in science-fiction books so a world that included vampires and werewolves didn’t sound the least bit interesting to me. To be quite honest, when my sister started telling me about this book I remember actually rolling my eyes and thinking to myself, “isn’t Megan too old to be reading these kinds of books. I guess she is pretty flighty…”.

Two weekends ago, I had a very busy schedule. I flew from Pittsburgh, PA to Boise, ID (my trip, however, included a flight from Pittsburgh to Phoenix to Portland to Boise). I was in Boise for about 12 hours and then I flew to Tennessee. I ran a marathon the next morning and then drove from TN to Pittsburgh. A lot of traveling during the course of 36 hours. As I was walking through the airport on Thursday morning to catch my plane to Boise, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that there was a 50% off/used copy of Twilight at one of the airport bookstores. I had recently seen an interview of the main actor on Jay Leno and the flashback of my sister’s fascination with this book popped into my head. I bought the book thinking, if nothing else, it would help me pass the time on the plane.

As I started to read the first few chapters I suddenly started to feel like I was getting sucked into the world of these characters! When I was a kid, I had a problem with this. I loved to read. In fact, I was so weird. I liked to read so much that my parents would actually ground me from reading. I would get so engrossed in my books that I would do my chores, I wouldn’t eat dinner, and all I would do is read! There is a funny picture of me at about 10 years old. I am in my bedroom closet with the door shut, a blanket over my head and a reading light in my hand. I was told I wasn’t allowed to read until I had cleaned my room and so I tried to sneak away to finish a few chapters. As proof of the picture, I had apparently gotten caught.

So…back to Twilight…after reading the first few chapters, I felt like I was that same little kid again! Embarrassed that she had gotten caught reading when she should have been doing something else. I am a grown, married woman and this book is supposed to be written for a teenage generation. Yet, I couldn’t put the book down! The first book is over 600 pages and I finished it on the first flight. I have this strange ability to read very very fast. I immediately purchased the second copy during my layover and processed to read it on my second flight. It was the same effect; I couldn’t put the book down. I ended up reading all four books in the series over a course of 5 days.

The author, Stephenie Meyer, does a very good job of building up the characters. It is almost like you feel as if you know the characters. It is very strange. Or perhaps, I am just the strange one. Anyways….I convinced my husband to take me to the movie and, I swear, we were the only people in there over the age of 16. There was a lot of nervous, teenage giggling throughout the film in the rows behind me and afterwards the cinema was filled with comments like, “I can’t believe they forgot this part…” or “I knew exactly what Bella was going to say in that scene!”. Nearly everyone there had read the book first and then was going to see the movie.

Well, I feel better now that I have gotten this off my chest. I will try to no longer be embarrassed by the fact that I got caught up in the latest teenage-craze. If you get the chance to start these books, let me know what you think. I thoroughly enjoyed them and am very excited to see the next piece of work that this author produces.