Reading; Twilight

[shadydave]

So, during the copious free time that accounts for much of my working day, I stumbled across the following articles on the reading habits of young wimmins, which set me a-ponderin' (and apparently turned me into a grizzled old prospector).

Article the first has some fairly appalling generalizations and stereotypes about pre/adolescent girls (despite being written by a woman), but it does contain a very interesting critical analysis about why Twilight appeals to so many women, both old and young (and all shrill -- I know; I was there). Everyone knows vampires are (not so) secretly about sex, and the Twilight has an actually appealing theme of abstinence (no, seriously), but this article, amidst the gender fail, laid out exactly what its take on it seems to be, and why this is so relevant to teenage girls these days (with their iPods and their Myspaces and their text messaging -- in my day, we had to call our friends on the phone! And there was none of this speed-dialing phonebook entry stuff -- we had to look up the numbers, or memorize them, and dial them by hand! Uphill both ways! In a snowstorm!).

One thing the author is entirely uncritical of, or possibly didn't even register, is Twilight's infamous setting-feminism-back-100-years attitude, which I rather suspect ties in to her gender fail in the article. However, I did find one statement rather interesting:

The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life—one that she slips into during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs—to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others—are met precisely by the act of reading.

Basically, this did not describe my adolescent reading experience AT ALL, but I suspect it does describe a lot of other people's. One of the commenters on article the second stated that "it doesn’t describe teen female mentality - it describes being an introvert." I dunno if introvert is quite the right word, but I agree that it's the category of readers given to personal introspection and tending to express their strong emotions, which of course crosses gender and age lines, and I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that love/romance is as popular with these readers as it is with, you know, pretty much everyone.
Stephanie Meyer, intentionally or no, seems to have produced books that appeal directly to all of these traits, hence their popularity with all sorts of random people in addition to the target of teenage girls, many of whom fall smack dab in this category.

Article the second responds to article the first, as do its commenters, and bring up the very good point that girls are also social readers, and have been for hundreds of years. I suspect this will only be surprising to someone who has never been on the internet or has no idea what the word "fandom" means -- after all, Team Edward/Team Jacob aren't exactly the result of millions of readers sitting in their rooms and quietly squeeing to themselves. Teenage girls are fairly notorious for thoroughly dissecting their every thought and emotion with their friends, and this applies to those about fictional characters presented to your local chapter of the Team Edward fanclub or your flist. But, again, this isn't just limited to teenage girls -- see "the internet" for more examples, or those parts of Academia that deal with the unseemly beast Literature, or any time you've gone "THIS IS THE BEST BOOK EVAR" and force everyone you know to read it.

(Mostly unrelated: there are also some good comments about the pernicious rumor that guys don't read -- turns out that many of them just aren't reading fictional novels.)

However, the most important thing about these articles is, of course, how they relate to MY reading habits. :D To aid in the discussion, I've thoughtfully included a list of my formative reading experiences: these are all the books I read obsessively over and over when I was younger, in the approximate year I started reading them (I couldn't really remember some of them, so I took my best guess). The + means I read them for several years after, and the ++ means I still read them (and that you should, too). I started rather young, because in my experience reading levels are something that happens to other people.

Dave's Favorite Books Throughout the Ages: A Comprehensive and Somewhat Embarrassing List

(NB: I was still getting used to the whole reading thing when I was in first grade.)

SECOND GRADE:
+Babysitters' Club -- Ann M. Martin
+Daulaire's Mythology
+The Collective Works of Roald Dahl

THIRD GRADE:
+Little House on the Prairie (series) -- Laura Ingalls Wilder
++The Enchanted Forest Chronicles -- Patricia C. Wrede
Ida Early Comes over the Mountains/Christmas with Ida Early -- Robert Burch
+Caddie Woodlawn -- Carol Ryrie Brink

FOURTH GRADE:
Soup (series) -- Robert Newton Peck
Spooksville -- Christopher Pike

FIFTH GRADE:
+Catherine, Called Birdy -- Karen Cushman
Gemini Game -- Michael Scott
++The Blue Sword -- Robin McKinley
++The Belgariad/The Mallorean -- David Eddings

SIXTH GRADE:
+The Immortals/The Lioness Quartet -- Tamora Pierce
+Redwall (series) -- Brian Jacques
++Sabriel -- Garth Nix
+Hero's Song -- Edith Pattou

SEVENTH GRADE:
+The Elenium -- David Eddings
++Harry Potter -- some British chick

EIGHTH GRADE:
+The Golden Compass -- Philip Pullman

NINTH GRADE:
++Discworld (series) -- Terry Pratchett

ELEVENTH GRADE:
++The Lord of the Rings -- some British dude

CONCLUSIONS:
- This explains a lot (up to and including why I occasionally sound like a grizzled old prospector)
- Why yes, I am a huge dork
- I had fairly gender-balanced reading habits (based on authors and main characters)
- If I was "enter[ing] profoundly into the emotional lives of others", they had better been in the middle of some awesome adventure

Basically, I probably would have finished the Twilight series by 6th grade, and scorned the lack of action and Bella's complete inability to kick ass.

Also, while I've always been a reader, I didn't really become a social reader until I was basically a teenager. However, it's hard to tell if this was because I hit puberty, or because my grade-school friends and I didn't really read the same stuff until Harry Potter came out, and I bonded with my own dorky kind in high school and made them all read Terry Pratchett books. Now, of course, I've graduated with a degree in English, blab at length on LJ and gchat about random things I'm reading, and routinely fling books at people while shouting "READ THIS NOW! BEST BOOK EVAR!" so I think it's safe to say I still tend to read socially.

So, how did the whole reading thing turn out for you guys? Comments? Thoughts? Bueller?

Comments

[failing-light.livejournal.com]

I was looking at your list, being all 'no way did she read that earlier than me!!1!' when I realized that the *reason* you read things earlier than I did was that I had already read them. . .and then I hit myself repeatedly in the head, because I'm an idiot.

In conclusion, 1) you are awesome, 2) I am awesome, and 3) generalizations about the reading habits of girls always strike me as suspect. Also, you were a social reader before you were in high school! We were a society of two!

. . . Damn, now I have think-y thoughts about how I *wasn't* actually a social reader in high school. But I do not have time to think them properly, for I must to bed!

[perivates.livejournal.com]

Aside from Babysitters Club, just about everything I read in elementary school was sci-fi/fantasy, more heavy on the sci-fi than anything. (Examples: Animorphs, Everworld, Secret World of Alex Mack, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Mindwarp, Replica, Goosebumps, 2001, those side-novels that came along with the Roswell series, Harry Potter...) And I'll still watch just about any show with aliens involved. (Why yes, Doctor Who and Torchwood, I am looking at you!) I'm not sure what this says about me, aside from the fact that I find the "secret world" theme to be generally interesting. But it's not a secret emotional life, just the idea of REALLY IMPORTANT SECRETS in general. Maybe it's the outlet for my inner conspiracy nut?

[naturalblue208.livejournal.com]

"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!"

who knows.

[dracis.livejournal.com]

"the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her." THE PURPLENESS KILLS ME.

"see "the internet" for more examples" And examples of yuri fanboys illustrate how different fandom can be ;)

"++The Belgariad/The Mallorean -- David Eddings" Read the first three-fifths of the Belgariad and stalled over International Tour (The Second). I don't remember why.

"+The Immortals/The Lioness Quartet -- Tamora Pierce" I never got around to this, but I did read the Circle of Magic set... and would call that a ++ myself.

"+The Golden Compass -- Philip Pullman" You read the rest, right?

"Basically, I probably would have finished the Twilight series by 6th grade, and scorned the lack of action and Bella's complete inability to kick ass." :D

I must say that several times suring this post I was reminded why we're friends. As for male reading... I think part of it's the stigma that we shouldn't read socially that we don't. Then the Internet happened and we can be part of internet fandoms without specifically revealing who we are and that we are complete dorks. I was an exception. I read in class constantly; I was a fast test taker and it was the one thing we were allowed to do for pleasure if we finished a test early. As I liked reading in class a lot, this encouraged me to become even faster, and by college I was used to the envious stares boring holes in my backside as I turned in the first final about fifty minutes into the three hour period.

*forcefully returns thought train to tracks* The concept that 'boys don't read' is bullshit. Even the concept that 'boys don't read fiction' is bullshit, but you can find exceptions to that (I find every exception I have ever met boring). I'm probably not the one to ask about such a thing, as I find my sustenance in stories, but I honestly doubt that there are any interesting men who didn't read any sort of fiction as boys.

I'm not sure I'd buy that boys are not social readers at all, but the idea that girls are more social readers is probably true.

[arku.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Both articles are gender-faily. But really the first one. I love how apparently guys don't have or need secret emotional lives. Like they are creatures without emotion. Just walking machines which eat and sometimes smell.

The second article I find having a more viable argument, but I do agree that it is not limited only to women. I think humans tend to be social readers and social people tend to be social readers. I think it is possible (though no studies to back me up or anything) that women tend to be more often be social people, and I think the typical female / female relationship is one more open to sharing books (because women will share their emotions more and books tend to be about emotions)

However, I really like the comment on guys and nonfiction. That is is still reading and personal betterment and all that jazz.

I think TWilight has such appeal because it speaks to a small personal fantasy shared by millions of angsty teenagers of all genders: Some hot, powerful, mysterious person will realize how cool I am and then we will proceed to have an epic and dramatic love affair which no one understands but we know in our hearts to be the epitome of love. *swoon*

Also, I LOVED Katherine, Called Birdy.

[imweirdlikethat.livejournal.com]

lol, I read Babysitter's Club and Little House on the Prairie too. "The Long Winter" went on foreverrrrrrr. Guess the title should've warned me.

But besides that the only "social" reader things I ever got involved with were Harry Potter, and I actually was just bored by Sorcerer's Stone the first time around, and Goosebumps. That was when I was a lot younger, lol.

I think I was out of the social reading thing by high school for the same reason I was out of every other social thing... I recognized that it wasn't based on actual likes/interests, just that everyone else loves it so you better love it too. And usually what everybody else loves is really, really stupid.