Of course I saw the Twilight movie...

And there's a pretty good review of it up on Slate.

My own issues with the characters and writing aside, I can see why Twilight is such an appealing story. And the story only really appeals because its about vampires. If Bella has been right on her first guess, if Edward were a superhero bitten by a radioactive spider rather than a vamp who's always fighting the urge to bite, there probably wouldn't be nearly as many teenage girls swooning over the books. No Edward has to be a vamp because vampires are very much a metaphor for sex. Being around Edward is risky for Bella because he might hurt her or kill her or more dangerously turn her into a vampire which would (as Edward seems most concerned about) derail the trajectory of her life and deny her the rites of passages (prom, college) that he thinks she should have. Hm, sounds like a teen pregnancy to me. So I think whats really appealing to the girls that rabidly love Edward is the idea of a guy who is willing to forgo his own desire in order to keep the girl safe. Which is why Twilight is at its best when Edward really does seem to want to kill Bella. Once he assumes the role of protector as he has by the end of the book, eh then he get's kind of boring.

Ok he's cool but his hair is still obnoxious!

I'm sitting here watching the Today show and since the Twilight movie is bringing back the mall mob scene, they have Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart on. Of course Meredith drags them out to talk to their adoring fan who are all screaming about how they love Edward Cullen and asking stupid questions like "How similar are you to the moody teenage vampire love-god you play?" But the best part was when they asked the girls why they liked Edward so much. I love how Pattinson jumped right in one poor girls face pressing her for an answer. He was all yeah but what exactly to you like about him anyway? And the girl couldn't come up with an answer. Finally kinda shrugging and saying she didn't know.

What she should have said: Not his stupid hair!

Trickery!

I finished reading Brisinger, the next (and I thought last) book in the Eragon series. I'm not really an Eragon fan but I do like to finish off a series if I've started it. Too bad for me that it took me about 800 pages to realized that this was not the last book. At least I started skipping pages about halfway through. Still it was about 799 pages of nothing interesting happening and one page of something very obvious and fairly unimportant happening. Feh!

Christopher Paolini may have a great writing career ahead of him but he needs to move on from this world he's created. I imagine that might be hard for a writer, especially such a young one, and it can't help that the Eragon books are making money. (I haven't heard anything about the sales for this last one though. Maybe buried by the Twilight movie release?) But this last book was so bogged down by unimportant details. It struck me as particularly dry and emotionless. Paolini might be on his way as an author (I'll leave that debate to others) but I think he needs to wrap things up if he ever wants to get there.

And now on to my next book, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart...

Hope

Up until the very last minute last night I was full of gloom and doom. At work on Monday I watched teenage girls, most of whom are too young to even vote, carrying signs and cheering in the street for Obama and all I could do was dread the coming election. You can get used to losing quickly. It's easy to expect little of people.

And then hope won out over pessimism. I am proud of this country and I am so thankful for the right to vote. Today the country has changed and perhaps there is hope for us after all.

Wild Thing Walls

Forget a kid's room, I want this mural in my bedroom!