Yes! It's October 12 and I've just finished book #22. Maybe I'm just kidding myself, but I finally feel like I'm on track to reading 30 books this year, after multiple years of failure...thank god.
Helping me along the path is Twilight, which I just finished this morning. I really enjoyed it and see why it's a phenomenal bestseller (although a surprising number of readers on Amazon seem to disagree). Also, after poking around Stephenie Meyer's website, I have to say I am totally impressed with how down-to-earth and normal she seems, and I totally want her to come over for coffee.
I found Twilight to be shockingly simple, although not in a bad way; Meyer's writing is really basic and uncomplicated, and while that's something that bothered the Amazon people, I found that it enabled me to slip into the story and envision the scenarios for myself. I'd never really thought of writing that way, and would compare it to another book I love, Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion...with that book, you can't really get ahold of the images until you parse through the writing to decipher what he means. Anyway, the simplicity of Twilight was something that struck me early on.
So the basic storyline, for anyone who doesn't know, is the love story between ordinary Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen. Bella moves from Phoenix to Forks, Washington in the middle of her junior year and suddenly finds herself as the center of much male attention. (As a side note, I think I liked the story immediately because I could totally personally relate: Our family moved to another state in the middle of my sophmore year; it was annoying, nerve-wracking, and also very strange to be the center of attention in a town where nothing ever really changes.) Despite her newfound popularity, Bella only has eyes for Edward, her gorgeous, abnormally pale lab partner. (As another side note, I have a college friend whose name is very similar to Edward Cullen and it was a weird mental image. Sorry Ed.) Bella and Edward spend the novel trying to be in love and stay out of love, for Bella's sake, until the end - when vampire James enters the picture and decides he wants a challenge and tries to steal Bella for himself.
It's kind of a funny book because not much happens, even though it's about 500 pages long. For the most part, it's a lot of push and pull between Bella and Edward...she tries to figure him out and he tries to resolve his feelings. But it was still captivating, and sweet, and I was entranced with their love story. At times, some of the bigger, unresolved questions bothered me - I don't know if Stephenie Meyer tackles them in the next books, but I found it was better to let them go and not think about them. Like, for example, how can Bella and Edward sustain this relationship? It seems to me that she's going to have to become a vampire - and she wants to - but so far, it's not in Edward's character to do it (and he gave up his opportunity in Twilight to let fate make it happen). But then do you really want her to become a vampire? Their age difference also kind of bothered me; it's fine at the beginning when Edward is supposed to be 16-ish, but then I realized that no, he's really a mature adult man having a relationship with a teenager. But again, I tried to put aside these little nitpicky questions; I don't know, I guess I think that a young adult novel doesn't have to stand up next to War and Peace, and that's okay.
So anyway...I devoured (haha) Twilight in less than 48 hours and am now eagerly awaiting New Moon to come into the library. In the meantime, I will probably get back to Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho. I had started it just before I got Escape and was entranced with the first 10 pages I got to read of it. :)
Helping me along the path is Twilight, which I just finished this morning. I really enjoyed it and see why it's a phenomenal bestseller (although a surprising number of readers on Amazon seem to disagree). Also, after poking around Stephenie Meyer's website, I have to say I am totally impressed with how down-to-earth and normal she seems, and I totally want her to come over for coffee.
I found Twilight to be shockingly simple, although not in a bad way; Meyer's writing is really basic and uncomplicated, and while that's something that bothered the Amazon people, I found that it enabled me to slip into the story and envision the scenarios for myself. I'd never really thought of writing that way, and would compare it to another book I love, Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion...with that book, you can't really get ahold of the images until you parse through the writing to decipher what he means. Anyway, the simplicity of Twilight was something that struck me early on.
So the basic storyline, for anyone who doesn't know, is the love story between ordinary Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen. Bella moves from Phoenix to Forks, Washington in the middle of her junior year and suddenly finds herself as the center of much male attention. (As a side note, I think I liked the story immediately because I could totally personally relate: Our family moved to another state in the middle of my sophmore year; it was annoying, nerve-wracking, and also very strange to be the center of attention in a town where nothing ever really changes.) Despite her newfound popularity, Bella only has eyes for Edward, her gorgeous, abnormally pale lab partner. (As another side note, I have a college friend whose name is very similar to Edward Cullen and it was a weird mental image. Sorry Ed.) Bella and Edward spend the novel trying to be in love and stay out of love, for Bella's sake, until the end - when vampire James enters the picture and decides he wants a challenge and tries to steal Bella for himself.
It's kind of a funny book because not much happens, even though it's about 500 pages long. For the most part, it's a lot of push and pull between Bella and Edward...she tries to figure him out and he tries to resolve his feelings. But it was still captivating, and sweet, and I was entranced with their love story. At times, some of the bigger, unresolved questions bothered me - I don't know if Stephenie Meyer tackles them in the next books, but I found it was better to let them go and not think about them. Like, for example, how can Bella and Edward sustain this relationship? It seems to me that she's going to have to become a vampire - and she wants to - but so far, it's not in Edward's character to do it (and he gave up his opportunity in Twilight to let fate make it happen). But then do you really want her to become a vampire? Their age difference also kind of bothered me; it's fine at the beginning when Edward is supposed to be 16-ish, but then I realized that no, he's really a mature adult man having a relationship with a teenager. But again, I tried to put aside these little nitpicky questions; I don't know, I guess I think that a young adult novel doesn't have to stand up next to War and Peace, and that's okay.
So anyway...I devoured (haha) Twilight in less than 48 hours and am now eagerly awaiting New Moon to come into the library. In the meantime, I will probably get back to Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho. I had started it just before I got Escape and was entranced with the first 10 pages I got to read of it. :)
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