Am I the only one who has noticed a wave of popularity over the new "Twilight" books? Not only with the teen female crowd, but all genders and all ages are raving about these books, and I suppose the new movie. I read them, but didn't see what the big deal is about - I actually have a lot of "issues" against them. So what do you think about them?

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading the books but I have to agree with you,funnibuni, when I say that I don't see why everyone is raving about them.

Yes, I am a part of that teenage girl demographic but I'm not overly convinced about some people's descriptions of the book.

One of my friends recommended it to me giving it a very high regard and I have to say I was slighly let down when I read it. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy it - because I did- just not as much as some other people my age did.

Just out of curiosity, what are your 'Issues' with the books?

Well... I fall into that teenage girl category, too... BUT, without giving spoilers, here I go...

-Bella seems to be a very shallow young girl. There are more adjectives than "beautiful". She seems to have a very low self-esteem.

-Edward is... a controlling creep?

-The author is Mormon, and though I have nothing against people with other beliefs than mine, she seems to push her ideals in the books.

-And not to be mean, but it is just a good story poorly written.

There are more, but its hard to go into details without yelling "SPOILER ALERT"! What are your "issues" with the books?

I didn't think that it was very well written either, I have to say.

I have a few more issues with the book but I think I might just PM you as I don't want to risk giving away anything. I hope thats ok.

Yes, sure, go ahead! I looked at your profile, and you seem like a cool person! It would be nice to talk about the books!

I have to admit, I heard all the raving and assumed it was simply a teenage girl craze. I held off reading them until after Breaking Dawn came out. I then had two male friends with the same taste in books as me recommend them, so I decided to give them a go.
My sister's friend brought the first one over to read during a sleepover, and I sat in the room reading it until 1am. I was instantly addicted.
So, I can very honestly say that I loved the books, didn't quite enjoy it as much when it was rambling on about Jacob for 3/4 of the second book, but I enjoyed all the others.

I'm not as obsessive as some other girls I know, but they are still a series of books I'd read over and over.

Funibuni, I'd also be interested to hear your 'spoiler' issues via PM. It's been a while since I finished the series and my memory fades easily. I agree that Bella is shallow, and Edward is a litte over-protective, but they didn't really bother me while I was reading.
The other issues you had - the Mormon thing and the badly written, I can't agree with. I know pretty much nothing about any religion, so I didn't get the Mormon stuff coming through, and I thought the books were well written. I usually steer clear of first person views because they are often done badly, but I thought it was done very well; I really liked the insight into Bella's mind.

Thanks, ladies, for your thoughtfulness in avoiding spoilers here. It is appreciated.

Hey The_lioness33,

I was addicted too. I haven't finished the fourth one yet (I know how it ends, don't worry), but I will soon. I'll drop you a PM when I can, but now I have to go get ready for church!

The_lioness33, I can't agree with you more when you said that you didn't enjoy reading about Jacob for 3/4 of the second book. Personally, I don't really like Jacob at all. This has earned me a very bad reputation among my friends who think im heartless when i don't approve of jacob's 'meddling'.(if don't catch my drift PM me- sorry but i don't want to give away anything).

I think the books could have been written a little better but i feel that the way that they are written makes them a very easy book to read (and finish!)

With the Mormon thing- i don't know much about them either...

I adored "Twilight" and I have yet to read the other ones but I soon will, (they have been ordered & are on their way!) But now I dread reading "Breaking Dawn" due to the fact that I've read about the disappointment in it. I wasn't much of a fan of Jacob anyway, but I can't say I dislike him. To me, he was like a "background" character.
Perhaps if I skipped this one I wouldn't be losing much.

I heard about people being disappointed with Breaking Dawn...I wasn't at all.

I have read Twilight and New Moon but I can't say I'm a huge fan. But I don't utterly dislike it either. I fall somewhere in between, I suppose.

The sloppy writing, the attention to unnecessary details (and I have no problems with long books!), and the poorly chosen plot points just to pad out the story are very distracting. I have to agree that despite this, there is an addictive quality to the books. I finished both in a matter of days. I really like the concept though, and perhaps it might've been a better story if it wasn't written by Stephanie Meyer.

I like Jacob but I'm not sure where it's heading with him after all that's happened. I still prefer him to Edward, I think. That's another issue I have with the series. At heart it's a love story but I have trouble believing it... it seems so superficial and more like major lust. It's romantic, yes, but not lasting romance as the author wants us to feel.

I plan to read the rest to see how it all pans out but not with the high anticipation as I had for the Harry Potter series or Inheritance Cycle. It's very over-hyped. I wonder if I had read this as a 14-year-old girl, how different my views would've been.

That's a very good point, blurrystar. Much of the disappointment in the latest book has been expressed by those who read the first one when it first came out, and have since grown up a bit. My daughter LOVED "Twilight" which she read very soon after it came out. Now, at the age of 17, it's "meh".

I think this series, now it's all out, is destined to be an early teen classic - 14 year olds will read them all at once and love them, not noticing the flaws. Can't really see the current trend of older women reading them lasting, though.

I recently went to see the movie with a male friend ... I didn't know until afterwards that it was even a book! The movie trailers made it look like it was more of an action movie than a drama/romance (my friend was very disappointed in the movie) but I loved it, it was right up my alley!

I've asked my friends for $5 Chapters gift certificates for Christmas, and I was planning on using what I got to go and buy Twilight ... one of my friends at school highly recommends it, and I've always loved vampire stories, but after reading this thread I've got some reservations.

The quality of the writing and the depth of characters is way more important for me to enjoy a book than it is for me to enjoy a movie. If it's not good, I'm probably going to regret my purchase. I think maybe I'll ask Michelle if I can borrow her copy, or see if I can find it in the library, before committing to its purchase.

Thanks for the heads-up! I'll post again with my thoughts when I've finished reading it.

I enjoyed the books, though I will agree that if wasn't for the amazing story, I would've been bored to death by her writing skills. I also felt that it took a LONG time for each book to reach its climax, but afterwards I was reassured.

Breaking Dawn was no disappointment; in fact, it was quite a positive turn. However I despise the werewolf thing, so having to read Jacob's "book" was difficult. I dislike Jacob as well.

As much as I love the books, I cannot follow the obsession that other girls my age have. I watched an interview with Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart and there were girls screaming "MARRY ME!!" and Robert was like, "Why do you want to marry me?" And the response was, "Cos you're Edward Cullen!"

I felt sorry for the guy.

Just to stir the pot a bit. (-8


In what should have been a controversy-free interview with USA Weekend to promote his latest book, horror master Stephen King has slammed Twilight creator Stephenie Meyer's writing prowess...by flat-out saying she has none.

What started with an innocent question on the recent juggernaut success of fellow mainstream writers Meyer and J.K. Rowling quickly devolved into a full-scale denouncement of the former's skills.

"The real difference is that J Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephanie Meyer can't write worth a darn," he said. "She's not very good."

Leave it to an author not to mince his words.

Possibly sensing the worldwide fallout from inflaming millions of Twilight loyalists, King went on to say that while Meyere's writing may bite the big one, her storytelling is compelling...at least to a certain, less experienced segment of the population.

"People are attracted by the stories, by the pace and in the case of Stephenie Meyer, it's very clear that she's writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It's very exciting and it's thrilling and it's not particularly threatening because they're not overtly sexual.

"A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that's a shorthand for all the feelings that they're not ready to deal with yet."

While King seemed to reserve his choicest words for Meyer, she wasn't the only best-selling author eviscerated by him. On the contrary, King declared Perry Mason author Erle Stanley Gardner "terrible," Dean Koontz "sometimes…just awful," and James Patterson "a terrible writer" who is nonetheless "very very successful."

You know, the opposite of what King now is with Meyer fans.


It's been eons since I read any Erle Stanley Gardner so I can't comment on that assessment. Koontz can sometimes be awful-while a couple of his books are among my favorites there are some I wonder why I spent the money. I've never understood the popularity of James Patterson I find his books so formulaic and repetitive in the same "you can see it coming from a mile" plot techniques.

Vampire stories don't hold any special interest for me but the few excerpts I've perused from the Twilight series were indeed, horribly written which further dimmed any curiousity or interest I may have had.

Anyway, I'm sure there are folks who aren't fans of Stephen King's with a thing or two to say about his criticism.

King himself is someone who CAN write well, but doesn't, always. He's a better writer than his critics give him credit for being, but is sometimes terribly self-indulgent. So, I suspect he'll be getting a few stones into the glass house of his. Well, OK, it might not be a *glass* house, but it does have awful big windows...

I got in trouble in another thread for saying that on the whole worldwide bestsellers are not usually very good books, but are bland and mediocre, but I think I'll stand by it here. I'd say King's estimate of the Twilight books is pretty close to right on.

I agree with your assessment of King, too. There was a period in there where his books were close to being downright awful. And to this day I don't think he's done a female character which has any depth or truth. That's something I will give Koontz, he writes much better female characters.

I think his assessment of why the teenage girls like Twilight is spot on, but I do disagree about the writing style. I'm no writer, but I opened the book, saw it was in first person, and immediately had my doubts (I don't know many good books in first person). Within 10 pages that doubt was completely gone. Someone with no talent for writing couldn't do that.

I am kind of torn on this discussion. I have never taken any kind of writing courses. I am 37 and I happen to love the Twilight series. But then again I love most things about vampires. lol I can kind of see what Stephen King is saying but every writer has their own style. No one is going to like everything ever written. We all have our favorites. But I although King is my favorite author of all time, a couple of his books I had a hard time getting through. I do have to disagree a bit about the comments made on his female characters. Two of them that come to mind that I absolutely loved were Mother Abigail from The Stand and Suzannah from The Dark Tower series. I thought they were very strong characters and well written. But that is JMHO.

I've only read the first one as yet (I'm waiting for the very male owner of the books to finish them so I can borrow). I was dragged to the movie before reading the book (by the same friend, and it wasn't his first viewing :P ) and that totally lowered my expectations. As (nearly) always, the book is better than the movie. I wasn't blown away, but it was goodish.

However, it really didn't bring anything new to the 'girl-meets-vampire' genre. Just my opinion, but every major plot development (and most of the minor ones as well) are completely predictable. That doesn't diminish the storytelling as much as it should, but I hope the next books pick up a bit The fact that I didn't fall head over heels in love with the movie has seen me branded 'unromantic'. sigh.

Ok, I revise what I said in my last post. I had nothing to read so started reading Twilight again on the weekend - this time looking critically at the style of writing. The first couple of chapters were very stilted and the writing was a bit disjointed, but this disappeared as she got into her character and became more comfortable with the book.

I've now read 'New Moon' and 'Eclipse'. I've kinda gone from 'hhmmmm...weee-elll...not sure' to 'meh' to 'If Edward and Bella get any more irritating I will hurl this book down a drain'.

Again, just my opinion, but that relationship is just so unhealthy. Replace Edward with crack cocaine, and Bella would act pretty much in the same way. Although if I were reading this at 14, would I think differently? Probably.

I probably have to accept that these books just aren't my thing. The actual storytelling is still ok, but there is too much to annoy me in it. Now waiting on the fourth book, the plot of which I can probably describe right now... *stops before gets too bitter and twisted *

Elbereth, you've summed up my thoughts exactly. I did hurl the books down a drain. Actually, I donated them all to the local library.

I thought the story was very compelling in the first book, perhaps because it was so full of promise. Then, the irritation with idiot characters set in. Then, the irritation with idiot plot set in. By the time, I was ready to pick up the fourth book, I hated both Bella and Edward. Jacob was annoying from the get-go. As the fourth book progressed and Bella became a raging Mary Sue who could figuratively speaking stop the world from spinning just by thinking about it, I'd had enough. Had she stepped out of a restroom with a bit of paper stuck to her shoe, you just know it would have been a lottery ticket worth the biggest payout the entire world had ever seen. That, quite frankly, wouldn't have been as unbelievable as events that actually *did* happen in the book. She's just that special. Meh.