I think it was about a year ago that I first heard about the
book "Twilight". I was driving to
Manti with two girls in my car. One of them said something to the effect of "You drive really fast." I responded with "Well if you had cat-like speed and reflexes like I do you'd feel
comfortable at higher speeds too." One of the girls exclaimed "Oh, you are kind of like Edward." This sparked my interest and a very brief
explanation about this book about teenage love and vampires ensued. I don't often hear about books, as you will see in my upcoming blog series "The four books that changed Johns life". (Whats bad is, that's four out of nine books over my life time, which gives me a 44% "life changing rate" evidence that I should probably read more.) So I only took marginal interest in Twilight and it's characters.
Being single and spending the majority of my time conversing with women. I discovered that this book and subsequent series was a phenomenon. What made it cooler, chick who wrote it was a Mormon. I determined it would be in my best interests to find out enough about this book and it's stories to have intelligent conversations with those who read it. As I discovered things about it the first thing I didn't like is that I was finding myself jealous of the Edward character. In the beginning of my discovery of this book every, seriously EVERY girl I talked to loved Edward. Saying things like he "is the perfect guy." "If only I could find my Edward." "Oh I would do very bad things to Edward if he were real." This
infatuation didn't lie only with the desperately single women I knew. It
encompassed all women, non-desperate singles and my married sisters and cousins were even taken. I sat one day in my sisters Salon as they (many women) talked for an hour all about how wonderful Edward was. I
prodded to find out as much about him as I could. From what I heard this guy, this figment of some
BYU coed's imagination does not exist in the real world. If he does I would think he was a savage. As is
undoubtedly becoming evident, I began hating the book (still knowing little about it) and the more I discovered the more I disliked it. I found out that the Author just decided to take every cool thing about Vampires and throw it out the window.
What a Vampire from the book twilight might say:
Uh yes we suck blood but we don't suck human blood cause we are so good and kind... even though it doesn't taste so good and isn't as nourishing we chase down deer and stuff, I mean a Vampire has to have morals right? Oh and sunlight, that's no problem we just stay out of it because, well because we glow! Glowing is bad, for if we glow then humans would hunt us down and kill us even though every movie they have seen and book they have read doesn't say anything about us glowing... they will still know, and they wont understand our good nature and they will kill us for hunting their deer and loving their teenagers.
Even though I haven't read this book and very ignorantly, and very stubbornly will not read it. I think it sucks. The only joy I glean from it's
existence is the look I
get on girls faces when I say, "Oh yeah Twilight, I haven't read it but girls are always telling me I remind them of Edward." It's one of those jaw open, while wanting to shake their head but not being able to because of shock sort of looks of disbelief which is usually
followed by some hurtful verbal rebuttal as to why I am not even close to that character which they determine to be the perfect man. Clearly they have no knowledge of my superhuman strength, cat-like speed and reflexes, fangs, and the way I order my women around...
My best friend did a very gay thing and read this book despite my warnings about it, and how hard it may be to maintain his sexuality during and after the read. He wrote this
review which I think should be read by all. Another friend of mines sister wrote
this which I think is important for all to read too. Here is another
review about the newest book which shows me there is a glimmer of hope for the opposite sex. Seriously if I said "Baywatch" was a terrific work of art, you ladies would recognize the low brow self indulgent motive behind that.
John Maxim