Retrospective Read: Twilight

Emmeline here. This is my inaugural post for this blog.

I'm pretty sure we're going to post reviews of books we read prior to the Consensus Cloud Challenge. Well I decided to get Twilight over and done with.

I'd hardly heard anything about this book when I saw the movie at the cinema. Later I devoured all the books, love-hating every minute of it.

I read this book at the start of 2009. I remember sitting on the tram reading it with the covers pressed against my thighs, so no-one could see what I was reading. When I had to close it I did it very quickly and shoved it right in my bag. It was as if I was in constant fear of someone pointing out to me that, as a Serious Arts Student, I shouldn't be reading such drivel.

And it is drivel. Terribly written, unedited, highly problematic. I'm glad I read it, though, because it means I can critique it. Which I have. A lot. I used to be obsessed with how messed up and bad it is.

I think I've moved on, though.

In Winter of 2009 I made it most of the way through Crepusculo, which is Twilight in Spanish. It was a way of turning a guilty pleasure into an intellectual exercise. Interestingly, it was more painful to read Twilight in Spanish than in English, because I had to go over the words more slowly, and it was more obvious just how repetitive and annoying the language is. On the plus side, Meyer's limited vocabulary made it not as difficult to read as it otherwise would have been.

So: Is Twilight a book everybody should read? I think so. It's painful and terrible, but you kind of just need to know what the fuss is about*. Just don't buy the book, because by doing so you are giving money to the Mormon church, which is homophobic.

Question: If I read a book from the consensus cloud in another language, does that count? I could read 100 Years Of Solitude in the original Spanish. I don't think I would, though. Apparently Marquez' writing is highly metaphorical and difficult to read in Spanish.

Question: Why isn't the HP series in the Consensus Cloud??


* Like Harry Potter. Except that Harry Potter is actually good.