OMFG I Need Brain Cell Repair!

[anissaannalise]

I'm taking a Twilight series break today. I have to, my brain cells are being sacrificed at an alarming rate. Honestly, I'm enjoying it for what it is, but I don't often read true and utter fluff so I don't really have a built up tolerance.

This is not a slam, but rather an objective observation: Some of this dialog is astoundingly banal!

Frankly, I'm a bit disappointed. Tell me this isn't passing for high-level YA fare. WTSH?! I wouldn't have been impressed with this when I was the appropriate age. I love all the little references to the fact that Bella's a bright girl but am finding it a little difficult to believe given her general trend in vocabulary & astounding lack of anything substantive to say or creative way to say it. Tell me this was done on purpose. Tell me I'm expecting way too much of the writing & also of the age-appropriate group reading this series!

I grant I don't have children, so I've no idea what's considered worthwhile reading for them but I don't think this was worthwhile when I was 12 and certainly not when I was 16. It's kinda' feeling like a primer for a life of chick-lit reading. And if that's correct, do me a favor... two taps in the back of my head. Quick & clean. Seriously.

So today, I'm going to revisit an old and trusted friend. Bret Easton Ellis. He can be relied upon to give me a story about youth that is interesting, problematic, ethically fucked and ends with no happy ending in particular. It's all nebulous and makes me reflect internally on just how flawed I am for enjoying it and not feeling badly for the people wasted along the way. He doesn't just offer me people I wouldn't really want to know IRL, he reminds me that I have things in common with them, so even when I don't like them, I still care. Sadly, I'm not having the same feelings with Twilight.

Today it's all about The Rules of Attraction. I'll reclaim my injured brain cells yet!

Comments

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

I don't have children either, and my teenage emo years are waaay behind me. I don't think I would have read the Twilight books when I was a teenager. I had more sophisticated taste back then :).

That said, when I was a weiner kid my parents always let us read whatever we wanted, on the basis that if we enjoyed reading, we'd be more likely to think critically about what we read later. I read it all, and read constantly--classics, Baby-Sitter's Club books, comic books...

B.E.E--I used to have an icon a friend made for me that said something like "The sun is shining. Nothing is happening. It's like a fucking Bret Easton Ellis novel in here." I used to be insanely in love with his books, and then I read "Glamorama", and I thought it was a P.O.S., and I never went back to the others.

[kaurseeker.livejournal.com]

It's kinda' feeling like a primer for a life of chick-lit reading.

I think you've hit some sort of nail on the head there! And that's a rather scary thought.

I read an interview with Meyer on the web somewhere and apparently she wrote Twilight as a bit of personal escapist fiction. Quite how and why it escaped out into the wider world I'm not sure. My 12 year old reads a lot of YA and he and I rec each other books sometimes and there's a load of good YA fiction out there that would make a far more entertaining movie, not to mention far more deserving novelists who deserve the acclaim!

So, I'm feeling quite puzzled why this book and this writer. Unless someone, somewhere feels there's some sort of gap in the YA market left post Buffy/ Angel and jumped on it? Sorry, I'm musing rather randomly here aren't I ;) but your chick lit comment has resonated and has got me wondering on some of YA fic specifically aimed at the teen girl market. I wondering quite how I'll feel about my little girl reading it when she gets to that age ;).