English majors please look away...

So I was an English major. So technically I should own a library of classic literature, or just literature, ok books, ok pieces of paper bound together with scribbles. Right? I don’t. And with the woosh of life, and the busy with other things schedule I have been on for especially the past 3 years, I pretty much have read nothing.

NADA. Well, if you want to count Slaughterhouse 5 (over a year and a half ago) and Choke or some other Chuck Palahniuk novel 2 years ago, nada.
This post begins that I have been off the wagon of reading, a task with I had spent at least 25 years of my life doing. And it was beginning to show.
I noticed this about myself.

So I decided to head to a cheapy place to get some kind of book. I was on the hunt for a crappy trashy sickie-stupid wrong book, like something Jackie Collins would write. She was my guilty pleasure in my past life. Damn Chances…anyway, I mean, Jane Austen is not the only writer I like (well, ok, she pretty much is)…so I was looking and looking and I finally found a new Jackie novel called something like Married Cheaters or something and I was like hummmm, maybe, what else so they have? I turned the corner and saw an interesting book.

Twilight.

I read the back cover to see what it was about…
Vampires. Check.
Sold. No need to speak more. (I have liked vampires and the like since I was 5 or so watching Svengoolie on Sundays with my dad; then reading Dracula by the time I was about 11.)

Well, not speaking didn’t happen because 2 different people came up to me while I was just standing there, just looking, one telling me I HAD to get this book and oh how good it is and my oh my and the author was just on good morning America or some schiznet that morning…and then the other one saying everyone in her entire family from husband to sister to daughter has read it and just loved the series and me oh my you have to buy this right now you are going to love it.

I had never been accosted in Target before. I have never been accosted by anyone over a book before. So yeah, I bought it. I mean, I had to right?? They told me to. I blame them. Stupid people.

Well, now I am fucking addicted. Drugged and addicted. Just like with Jackie Collins once I read Chances… CRAP! I’ll be buying every single one of this idiot lady’s books now. CRAP.
It is not a literary masterpiece (I can hear Scott and my English professors rolling their eyes), and it even is SLOW in the beginning, but I liked the concept (ordinary girl + hot vampires = LOVE) so much that I gave it more than a chance and finished the 600 page book in like 2 days. Yeah, I can r-e-a-d. Fast.

So around the same time Scott or someone tells me they are making a movie out of the book. So I checked out the teaser trailer after I completed the book. I hope to god the movie is decent. I can’t tell honestly. But I have to hand it to the casting director. The cast looks exactly like I pictured from the book. Whew. Except the main vampire guy is a liiiitttle (ok a lot) too boyish and skinny for me, he is supposed to look like a Greek god, and doesn’t, but I don’t have that big of a problem with the person they chose, I can still watch it, I can deal.

So I have become thoroughly obsessed. There are 4 books in the series (the last just came out on Saturday strangely) and today I am on book 3. While looking at the trailer, I also read some of the threads and came to find out that this series and the author have a cult following of adolescent\teenage girls and their moms. They even had a Vampire “prom” at the bookstore to celebrate the release of the final book. Lord. Yikes. It’s like the Harry Potter movement, and I am NOT into Harry Potter.

Anyway, the verdict: this series is for 16 year old girls, and 16 year old girls alone. But if I were 16 again, I would NOT LEAVE MY ROOM, I’d lock myself away in my closet and read it all. Which is ok for me, since I am now old and I’ve decided I liked feeling like a 16 year old girl for the weekend. But now it is however long it takes me to complete the series, which should be about 4 more days… I’ll have read well over 2500 pages in a week.

So I confided in a coworker and fellow English major about my slippage into the dark side of trashy teen angst novels, and I ended up lending the book to her. Now, we have a book club going. She gave me a grown up book though, Eat Pray Love…we shall see. I have to conquer my obsession though first.

As I told Scott today in an earlier email, this 4th book better tie up loose ends, it better not have any “the ending is up to you” crap. I’ll be so pissed. Pissed like a 16 year old girl! Watch out!