Obsessions

Oooh, a very dark and twisty title for this blog. I never thought of myself as a dark and twisty girl, but I had a moment of self-awareness last week---I am capable of the most rapid and spiraling obsessions (In my head, I just thought the word "obsessions" with a French accent. It sounds more mysterious and less like a perfume that way.) Let me explain...

Obsession--The Fragrance

Ok, once I say this out loud (or type it into the blogosphere, whatever), I can never take it back. So here it goes....

I love Twilight.

Estimated Taylor reading time: One Day

To Harper Lee, Truman Capote, Jane Austen, Agatha Christie and F. Scott Fitzgerald, plus many, many more--I am so sorry.

This was my "sorry face" in college. It looks about the same now, except older.

I never thought that I would read the Twilight series. I have always had an aversion to following what everyone else was doing in regards to literature (I guess I'm a literary snob. I don't like being a snob, but there it is...) When Harry Potter mania hit, and all my adult friends and relatives were reading the books, I shrugged them off. "I like the movies," I said, "I'll just watch those." But I eventually jumped on the bandwagon (after the last book came out, so I missed all the craziness)--and of couse, the books were soooo good!

I should have learned my lesson then--Don't judge a wildly successful, millions of copies sold book and movie franchise by its adoring, cape-wearing, wand-flicking fan base. The truth is, I wanted it to seem like I made the choice to read a book for myself, not herded into a fad with the rest of the masses. (I know...snob. I can't stand it. *Shame*)

Love this kid.

The exact same thing happened with Twilight. It was a huge hit, everybody was reading it--and I could not care less. Why would I want to read a book about a high-school vampire falling in love with a clumsy plain girl (cheese fest), let alone use up perfectly good hours of my life reading the entire series? I couldn't even say that I would watch the movie, because I heard that it was awful acting. (For those who don't know me personally, Bad Acting--note the capitalization--is my biggest entertainment pet peeve. You cannot make me sit though most Lifetime movies.)

My friend kept offering to share her copy of Twilight with me, encouraging me to read the whole series. Ugh. Finally, on a trip where I would need something to read, I agreed to use some of my down time to check out Twilight. I bet I sounded so condescending.*
*See "sorry face" above, ARC!

Can you say obsessed (this time without the French accent)? Those books were AWESOME. I was an idiot.

Edward Cullen. Boys, hide your girlfriends. Seriously, he may bite them.

I read the first chapter of Twilight on a Saturday afternoon, and really got into reading the rest on Sunday. I was a lost cause by then. Monday I was heading to K-Mart on my way home for lunch to pick up the second book. Tuesday I stopped by Barnes and Noble and got the last two, resisting the impulse to buy an Edward bookmark. (You should've heard that argument in my head...) When the week was over, I was finished with the series, including the unpublished Midnight Sun manuscript online. I hunted down the movie, and only shuddered through a few lines of horrible dialogue. (Spidermonkey? SPIDERMONKEY???) So far, I've watched it twice. Since last week. Twilight soundtrack? In my cd player right now. Detailed e-mails to friends analyzing certain chapters? Oh, yes.

Look. How. CUTE!

Edward and Bella's tale is now one of my favorite fictional love stories. One of the reasons I enjoy it so much is that the Twilight author, Stephanie Meyer, loosely based her books on the plots of some of my favorite classic love stories. Pride and Prejudice (my all time fav) is Twilight. Romeo and Juliet = New Moon. Wuthering Heights is the theme behind Eclipse. Etc, etc, etc. So at least I can find some literary value in these books.

Who needs literary value when you have Edward Cullen?

Now I don't know if I can wait until November to see the second movie. It comes out the day after my birthday. (Did they plan this just for me? I like to think they did.) So I guess I've already got my party planned. I will turn 25--a quarter of a century old--and ring in that milestone with a theater full of 13-year-olds.

Maybe if I only speak in a French accent, no one will recognize me. Je suis si désolé, Jane Austen.