Posts Tagged ‘twilight’

Twilight 4: A Review That Almost Cost Me My Life

The name of this book is actually Breaking Dawn but you wouldn’t know what I was talking about if I used it. See, I got this book on Monday from the library. I ignored the librarian’s judging, judging eyes because I was too busy thinking “Hurrah! Now I will read it today, write a blog post about it tomorrow, and that will take care of my Tuesday obligations!” Little did I know that this would be a novel so excruciating that I would need to take frequent breaks to soothe my battered psyche into submission and bang my head against a wall. In the end, I only very nearly escaped being strangled by my own good taste by turning on episodes of Black Adder the Third in the background during the last 200 pages.

I had a feeling this one would be different because I was at the library the morning after it came out, when the five teen girl movie volunteers staggered in around noon after staying up all night waiting at the book store. “Well?” I asked them. “How is it?” Since they’d been talking about nothing else for the past two months it wasn’t hard for them to know what I was talking about. I was shocked when they all shouted “HORRIBLE!” at once and one of them added “It’s like Stephanie Meyer didn’t even write it.” After valiantly reading the other three books so that you don’t have to, I started wondering about this condemnation. Could it be that Stephanie Meyer, in the fourth book of her wildly popular and horribly written teen girl series, has FINALLY learned how to write, letting down her vapid fans everywhere?

The answer, I’m sad to tell you, is NO. For the love of all that is at least properly punctuated, NO. So, proceed IF YOU DARE.
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Confession Time

As well as telling the Internet my greatest triumphs like appearing on NASCAR News or being Hannah Montana, it seems only fair that I also write my greatest embarrassments so that no one gets jealous of how awesome I am.

Confession: I recently bought Twilight.
I know, I know, I feel awful about it. Especially since I’ve already managed to read the first three books through extreme patience and library-fu. Buying a Twilight book is shameful. Buying a Twilight book you’ve already read is definitely more shameful. To be fair, it is on my reading list for my Young Adult Literature Class next semester, and I did buy it at a used book store for $3. I don’t think any of that went to Stephanie Meyer, so I still feel pretty okay about the practical facts, but my reputation may never recover. I knew this would be necessary since the tens or hundreds of people on the waiting list for it back at my library at home would make it impossible to guarantee my having it a specific week for class, but, oddly, this morning when I went online to request the fourth book, Breaking Dawn, to write a wildly popular review of it, I found that I was number FOUR on the list. And there are EIGHT copies. I’ll probably have it tomorrow. I’m shocked by Twilight’s apparent lack of popularity here, until I realized that a typo in the description of the book calls the vapid main character “Ellen Swan” instead of “Bella Swan”, thus confusing legions of preteen girls. Suckers.

In Penance for this: I vow to be as sarcastic and withering as possible to the inevitable one or two people in our class discussion who will gush endlessly about how much they love Twilight.

Confession: I am incurring library fines AS WE SPEAK
As a librarian, this is incredibly shameful. It gets worse: the source of these fines is none other than the book-on-CD version of I’d Tell You I Love You But Then I’d Have to Kill You. To be fair, I didn’t steal it so that it could be mine forever, but simply forgot to give it to Mom Ladd before her return to Florida and have since been unable to find it to mail it back myself. Trixie probably hid it. Which means that, years from now, someone will pull it from some secret compartment in the back seat, stare at it with raised eyebrows, and then say “Patricia R. Ladd, why do you own this?” in a disgusted tone.

In penance for this: I vow to NOT punch them in the face.

Confession: I stole a full set of cutlery from the Servery
Which I am using EVEN NOW, hundreds of miles away. Just like my embarrassing library fines, I didn’t do this on purpose either. I just sort of found various spoons and forks and knives in various purses and book bags while attempting to pack. On the plus side, it can be very useful to have a fork in your purse, in case someone offers you free but messy food while out and about. On the minus side, they tend to look at you a little funny, and I may be the sole reason why the Servery is losing money.

In Penance for this: I vow to only eat with said cutlery things worthy of the Servery. Meaning anything I cook while really tired or am having one of those haphazard “well, I’m sure applesauce is a fine substitution for flour” kind of days.

There. Now my conscience is clear.

Twilight for People Who Don’t Want to Read Twilight

Last summer at the library everyone was ALL ABOUT Twilight. Every teen girl in Seminole would come in every week to ask if Twilight was in yet, since our six copies had a 300 strong waiting list. Naturally, I got a little curious, but had to wait until the craze died down slightly (or until I was in one place for longer than three months–you aren’t even going to hit the 100s on the waiting list in three months) before investigating. Luckily the teen girls are mostly sated, and it’s now mostly third graders and the morbidly curious continuing the obsession. So if you too are morbidly curious, you have four options:

1. Wait six months on the waiting list at the library, enjoy the indignity when it finally comes in and the librarian has to pull Twilight from behind the desk and check it out for you, know that she is SO JUDGING YOU right now
2. Ask a teen girl about it, listen to two hours of “OH MY GOD EDWARD SO HOT!”, commit suicide
3. Actually pay money for it, hate yourself forever
4. Listen to my review, since I have successfully completed #1 on this list with my librarian-fu for the first three books. It is as follows:
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