"she is a creature" is always a phrase that bodes ill.
i have not read twilight, but i tend to blame its success on the fact that the snippets that i *have* read are the sort of melodrama i used to write when i was a preteen/early teen. you know, the sort of things i go back and read now that had potential, but the style makes me cringe.
i know that people our age read it, but they tend to be more cognizant of the fact that the writing style is overly dramatic. sometimes it makes me wonder if there is some sort of hormonal thing going on in puberty and heading along toward menopause that makes that sort of writing attractive.
at the same time, i was one of the few people that wanted to hurl regularly while in the pit orchestra for The Most Happy Fella, which is a romance of soapoperatic proportions. Also with "modern" chords aka cat banging on the piano. Don't let the composer's fame fool you, it's pretty much crap. There's three good songs, though, and a cute side character.
as far as my reading, i did the hobbit in second grade, the white company in third, various novella-type-things, lotr in fifth, i dont even know what in middle school, arry pottah in hs, and patrick o'brian in late hs/college. i came to the conclusion fairly early on that the sort of books i liked best were the ones written more or less for young boys in the 19th century- basically character-driven adventure novels, generally illustrated by NC Wyeth. (Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, &c. I found my copy of The White Company in the boys' section of a gift shop.)
so basically i did not read the same things as most of my female peers did, and i didn't really have the same interests. my taste for romantic melodrama runs basically to the relationship between Alleyne and Maude in the white company, which is cute and Technicolor. many of the books i enjoy the most are obscure enough that most people haven't even heard of them, let alone read them, but i like socially reading Terry P, cos he is full of win.
Now i'm not saying that biologically i am an unusual girl for reading things that arent mushy, but there are cultural trends at work too. For one, Harry Potter really did a lot in the generations of the new millenium for making reading fashionable, and E-ragon continued it, and i bet you Twilight follows in that trend. Not that they are bad books, necessarily, but it is fashionable to read them and fan(girl/boy) them, and if you haven't read them you get ZOMG WHAT?? from all directions. Also check the merchandising. Also, HP is pretty much awesome, but there's pretty much consensus that E-ragon was what we all wrote in middle school, and Twilight as well. I wonder if part of their charm is the feeling of "dude, I could have done this!"
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i have not read twilight, but i tend to blame its success on the fact that the snippets that i *have* read are the sort of melodrama i used to write when i was a preteen/early teen. you know, the sort of things i go back and read now that had potential, but the style makes me cringe.
i know that people our age read it, but they tend to be more cognizant of the fact that the writing style is overly dramatic. sometimes it makes me wonder if there is some sort of hormonal thing going on in puberty and heading along toward menopause that makes that sort of writing attractive.
at the same time, i was one of the few people that wanted to hurl regularly while in the pit orchestra for The Most Happy Fella, which is a romance of soapoperatic proportions. Also with "modern" chords aka cat banging on the piano. Don't let the composer's fame fool you, it's pretty much crap. There's three good songs, though, and a cute side character.
as far as my reading, i did the hobbit in second grade, the white company in third, various novella-type-things, lotr in fifth, i dont even know what in middle school, arry pottah in hs, and patrick o'brian in late hs/college. i came to the conclusion fairly early on that the sort of books i liked best were the ones written more or less for young boys in the 19th century- basically character-driven adventure novels, generally illustrated by NC Wyeth. (Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, &c. I found my copy of The White Company in the boys' section of a gift shop.)
so basically i did not read the same things as most of my female peers did, and i didn't really have the same interests. my taste for romantic melodrama runs basically to the relationship between Alleyne and Maude in the white company, which is cute and Technicolor. many of the books i enjoy the most are obscure enough that most people haven't even heard of them, let alone read them, but i like socially reading Terry P, cos he is full of win.
Now i'm not saying that biologically i am an unusual girl for reading things that arent mushy, but there are cultural trends at work too. For one, Harry Potter really did a lot in the generations of the new millenium for making reading fashionable, and E-ragon continued it, and i bet you Twilight follows in that trend. Not that they are bad books, necessarily, but it is fashionable to read them and fan(girl/boy) them, and if you haven't read them you get ZOMG WHAT?? from all directions. Also check the merchandising. Also, HP is pretty much awesome, but there's pretty much consensus that E-ragon was what we all wrote in middle school, and Twilight as well. I wonder if part of their charm is the feeling of "dude, I could have done this!"
who knows.