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"Twilight" by Stephanie Meyer

Why I read it: The boy read the entire series twice, and then he saw the movie, which he said was bad. I didn't let him know I was reading this, because he'd forbidden it to me. Naturally, that made it all the more intriguing. Also, a lot of people on the internet have opinions about it.

Bookmark: Envelope for a yarn gift card from the boy.

Tastes like chicken: I hate to say this, but it reminded me a lot of my dad's novel. Mostly that's because I felt like they came from the same place -- the ongoing soap opera in our heads that tell ourselves over periods of months or years, to entertain ourselves when we're bored standing in line, or before we fall asleep at night. (Everyone else does that, right?). The same way my dad had many, many references to the tear in Fiona's sweater, Twilight had many, many references to Bella's clumsiness. I get the idea.

What I liked: It was certainly a quick read. The boy read it the first time in the car on the way to Maine last summer. I started it on New Year's Day and finished it last night.

The mythology was sort of interesting, I guess, in a personal-fantasy-in-book-form sort of way. It's just that my personal fantasies, well, I think they should stay personal. People don't need to know that stuff. (This is completely different than the opposite of "keep your plans secret for now", by the way. Fantasies are not plans. It's important to know the difference.)

I may not bother with the sequels, though the boy owns them all. Again, I get the idea.

Not so much: It seemed sort of artless. Compared to, say, Uninvited, where there were charming turns of phrase and interesting metaphors, this seemed so plain. Everything was spelled out. It was tempting to skip over sections because nothing was moving forward. Also, I don't think Bella is a good rolemodel for my game face.

It was recommended to the boy by a girl, and I think it has given him a certain cachet amongst the young women he knows; he's the only boy most of them can talk to about it. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

Lesson learned: Edit more. Take out the obvious bits. I felt like I was being hit over the head by Bella's kind of unastute interpretations of others. When I was writing my page this morning, I found myself not writing down some of those bits, and doing it consciously. That felt good.

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