The Volturi Made Me Do It (and other Twilight Tales)

Say it together 'Where the heck have you been for two months?'

Of course I could come up with a handful of excuses, each more creative than the last. However, the truth is far more amusing than any excuse my expansive imagination could craft.

I was reading Twilight.

Yes, me. The same girl who read the Iliad and Odyssey for fun and had finished the entire unabridged text of Little Women by the time she started fourth grade. The girl who cringes at the sight of a paperback romance novel. The girl who would pen a scathing blog entry about anyone who dared to whisper sweet nothings in her ear. Yes, me... we are all weak sometimes.

The Twilight series is recipe for everything that I should love to hate - cheesy, dim-witted dialog, an emotive and overly dependent protagonist, a noted 'tweenager' following, etc., etc.

I didn't even mention that the premise is a vampire love story (with a pack 'o werewolves thrown in for good measure*).

Stephenie Meyer is a verifiable genius for driving me to dub one of my bookshelves the 'bookshelf of shame'**. Despite all the reasons I hide my copy of Twilight in a Cosmo magazine*** when I read in public, there are obviously more reasons why I keep reading. Given that I love implausible historical fiction as much as I love the thought of immortality (while everyone else remains mortal), Twilight is really the perfect storm, that causes me to hole up in my house for two months, imagining vampires staring through my sliding glass door (I have a stake, no worries).

Since I refuse to purchase Eclipse in hardback, I will have to wait to see if the werewolves end up making Edward Cullen soup (fingers crossed) or if Forks actually turns out to be that island from LOST (but with mythical creatures instead of headache-enducing complexity).

Until then... my favorite vampires lie in limbo...


*Does anyone else smell a teensy bit of racism here?

**Shelf also houses three novels by Lurlene McDaniel and Summer Sisters by Judy Blume

***Lesser of two evils.