Twilight

About a year ago I got into the fad of sending pieces of flair on Facebook. This little custom originates with the movie Office Space, in which Jennifer Aniston's character complains about having to wear cheesy buttons, called flair, while at her waitressing job. The buttons would have hokey little sayings like "We're not in Kansas anymore," or pictures with odd smiley faces. The flair on Facebook is much the same. My personal favorite is a picture of this little kid who is coloring like a mad man. The caption says, "I freakin' love coloring!" I crack up every time I see it.

When I was taking part in this innocent waste of time, I noticed that a good 70% of the flair that was available centered around something called Twilight. I was intrigued. What the crap was Twilight and who the crap was this Edward Cullen that so many teenage girls seemed to be obsessed with. So I did the most logical thing that an internet saavy pop-culture geek would do. I went to Wikipedia.

Upon first glance, I saw that Twilight was a series of novels by someone named Stephanie Meyer. Apparently, the stories focused on some girl named Bella who found herself falling in love with Edward Cullen, a vampire. Now, I fell into the popular trap of reading the Harry Potter series. I enjoyed them all immensely, but I really was not about to get caught up in another series of books that would just take up time I didn't feel like spending. Besides, I liked that story the first time I saw it on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Fast forward to 2009. It's now been four years since Twilight was published. Since then, Meyer has released three sequels. A co-worker, an avid reader, is currently on number three. Her appraisal of the book got me thinking, maybe it's worth reading after all. Then I find out that I have actual friends who have been sucked into this world of vampire lore. Nicole, of all people, insisted that I read this book. She also insisted that I would have it done before the end of the weekend. Lucky for her, it's a three-day weekend, lest she be proven wrong.

She had borrowed the book from a mutual friend, Erynn, and then in turn let me borrow it. I got it Saturday and began reading that evening. Today is Monday, slightly after 5pm. I finished the book about 15 minutes ago. I'll admit, it was a very quick read. The words seemed to flow very well, making it an easy story to comprehend and digest.

I was told that the beginning was a little slow and that it really took off about midway through. Those who warned me of this were correct. I'm not what you'd call a fan of a romance novel, and this did have a great deal of the mushy emotional stuff, but overall it was very enjoyable to read. And it got really good toward the end. A lot of suspense, of which I'm always a fan. I will say I felt that the epilogue was unneeded. After a thrilling climax, it seemed to be kind of a dull let down.

Now, having said all that, and having admitted that I actually liked the book, there are several things that I will not be doing. I will not be filling my Facebook page with Twilight themed flair. I don't care how many of you people decide to start sending it to me, it just won't happen. Secondly, I will not run out to the book store to purchase New Moon (the second in the series). That's not to say I don't want to read it either. I'm curious to see where the series will go. I've heard there's something about werewolves. I'm sure it's all very Dark Shadows. But I have the self-control and patience to wait for someone to loan it to me as they did with the first. Finally, I did not see the film version. It's being released on DVD sometime in the near future. I'm curious to see how well it translates from book to screen, but I will not run out to Target as soon as it hits the shelves. At most, I may place it in my Netflix queue and wait for it to arrive sometime in the next year or two. I've got a lot of movies waiting to be sent my way.