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selenayI have finally finished Twilight. I think that I can honestly say that this is going to the top of my "most hated books ever" list. So that dedicated Twilight lovers don't need to see my comments, I'm putting the review under the cut.
I don’t think that I’ve ever actively loathed a book quite so much in my life. So much has been written about these books that I felt that it was time to finally find out what all the furore was about. After all, Harry Potter has come in for just as much criticism and I love the HP books so I wanted to see for myself rather than taking other peoples’ comments as my own. On that front, I am glad that I read this and stuck with it through all 498 painful pages. I now know that all the criticisms that I’ve read are sadly true.
Bella is whiny, self-absorbed and shallow. I struggled to find any redeeming features to her. Even her extreme clumsiness quickly went from adorable to unbelievable - she makes me look graceful and I’ve got medical reasons for being a huge klutz! More importantly, Edward is a manipulative stalker and I honestly could not understand Bella’s obsession with him beyond the unearthly beauty that the author rams home with every other sentence. In fact, the author’s repetitive descriptions of Edward’s amazing beauty were an element that made me increasingly frustrated.
The portrayal of Bella and Edward’s relationship as the great love of the century grated on me the further I read. The first three-quarters of the book had no discernible plot beyond the constant theme of Edward rescuing Bella from her improbable clumsiness and how amazing it is that he’s a vampire. The revelation that he had been creeping into her room to watch her sleep is treated as the height of romance but I found it disturbing: it’s the behaviour of a stalker and that combined with his manipulative treatment of her would have most adults reaching for the phone to call the police. When a plot eventually emerged its only purpose seemed to be to cement Bella and Edward’s love (which I would call obsession on Bella’s part rather than love) and give Edward more opportunities to manipulate and ‘protect’ her.
Nothing about the book enchanted me but I can easily see why it appeals so much to the teen crowd. That is unfortunate because the messages it sends out about the nature of love and the kind of behaviour that is acceptable are worrying to say the least. I read the book with growing horror and I cannot see myself ever picking up any of the other books in the series. My brain now feels faintly violated.
Now I need to find something to be my non-Kindle book that will take the vague feeling of ick out of my brain. Any suggestions from this lot? My current unread book pile.
It would be nice to get Mount TBR down to under 130 books before I go away. I know that a lot of books are going to come back from England with me.
I've been checking my local cinema and Avengers tickets are now available to order. Squee! However, I need to call the theatre. The only tickets available are 3D (no, thank you, don't need the headache that will give me) or "Empire Extra Experience". As this extra thing is a possibility for both 2D and 3D (cinema doesn't specify) I need to call the theatre and ask. If the extra thing is also 3D, there is a distinct possibility that I might not be able to go. Watch me gnash my teeth and roar with rage if this is the case.
There's a possibility that I'm going to need to make a big decision in the coming weeks. My department is introducing some more flexible work options including the option to work a condensed week - an extra fifty minutes each day and get every second Friday or Monday off. Part of me thinks this would be excellent - yay days off! - another part of me isn't sure whether I can manage the earlier start time it entails. Hopefully we'll be getting an HR presentation on all the options next week with actual details about how it will work out (we've all got questions about vacations, public holidays etc.) and that will help me to decide. One of the other options would be a dedicated work from home day each week and it's another tempting one, particularly when Mum and I share the car during her extended visits.
I don’t think that I’ve ever actively loathed a book quite so much in my life. So much has been written about these books that I felt that it was time to finally find out what all the furore was about. After all, Harry Potter has come in for just as much criticism and I love the HP books so I wanted to see for myself rather than taking other peoples’ comments as my own. On that front, I am glad that I read this and stuck with it through all 498 painful pages. I now know that all the criticisms that I’ve read are sadly true.
Bella is whiny, self-absorbed and shallow. I struggled to find any redeeming features to her. Even her extreme clumsiness quickly went from adorable to unbelievable - she makes me look graceful and I’ve got medical reasons for being a huge klutz! More importantly, Edward is a manipulative stalker and I honestly could not understand Bella’s obsession with him beyond the unearthly beauty that the author rams home with every other sentence. In fact, the author’s repetitive descriptions of Edward’s amazing beauty were an element that made me increasingly frustrated.
The portrayal of Bella and Edward’s relationship as the great love of the century grated on me the further I read. The first three-quarters of the book had no discernible plot beyond the constant theme of Edward rescuing Bella from her improbable clumsiness and how amazing it is that he’s a vampire. The revelation that he had been creeping into her room to watch her sleep is treated as the height of romance but I found it disturbing: it’s the behaviour of a stalker and that combined with his manipulative treatment of her would have most adults reaching for the phone to call the police. When a plot eventually emerged its only purpose seemed to be to cement Bella and Edward’s love (which I would call obsession on Bella’s part rather than love) and give Edward more opportunities to manipulate and ‘protect’ her.
Nothing about the book enchanted me but I can easily see why it appeals so much to the teen crowd. That is unfortunate because the messages it sends out about the nature of love and the kind of behaviour that is acceptable are worrying to say the least. I read the book with growing horror and I cannot see myself ever picking up any of the other books in the series. My brain now feels faintly violated.
Now I need to find something to be my non-Kindle book that will take the vague feeling of ick out of my brain. Any suggestions from this lot? My current unread book pile.
It would be nice to get Mount TBR down to under 130 books before I go away. I know that a lot of books are going to come back from England with me.
I've been checking my local cinema and Avengers tickets are now available to order. Squee! However, I need to call the theatre. The only tickets available are 3D (no, thank you, don't need the headache that will give me) or "Empire Extra Experience". As this extra thing is a possibility for both 2D and 3D (cinema doesn't specify) I need to call the theatre and ask. If the extra thing is also 3D, there is a distinct possibility that I might not be able to go. Watch me gnash my teeth and roar with rage if this is the case.
There's a possibility that I'm going to need to make a big decision in the coming weeks. My department is introducing some more flexible work options including the option to work a condensed week - an extra fifty minutes each day and get every second Friday or Monday off. Part of me thinks this would be excellent - yay days off! - another part of me isn't sure whether I can manage the earlier start time it entails. Hopefully we'll be getting an HR presentation on all the options next week with actual details about how it will work out (we've all got questions about vacations, public holidays etc.) and that will help me to decide. One of the other options would be a dedicated work from home day each week and it's another tempting one, particularly when Mum and I share the car during her extended visits.
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Date: 2012-04-21 02:25 am (UTC)BTW I really like Mansfield Park but most people don't.
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Date: 2012-04-21 10:30 am (UTC)Um, I don't think you can ever go wrong with Discworld, or I liked Wolf Hall a lot, and it's certainly smart enough to get rid of the lingering smell of Twilight.
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Date: 2012-04-23 07:46 pm (UTC)I've made two attempts to read Mansfield Park and have yet to get past page 150. It's my only Austen failure.
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Date: 2012-04-23 07:47 pm (UTC)And I'm adding the Discworld books and Wolf Hall to the "Big pile of books to read within the next two months" book pile. Thank you :-)
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Date: 2012-04-24 05:39 pm (UTC)Alta was from a trashy trilogy that I enjoyed more than I felt I should have (dragons + pseudo-Egypt, much fun, but probably need to be read as a unit unless you've already read the preceding).
I've heard good things about Wolf Hall and the
Jonathan Strange was long, and the first part was kind of dull, but it became gripping in the latter stages -- which I thought was stylistically excellent, since it was a story about magic being rediscovered as an archaic discipline from dusty old books and growing into something colorful and unpredictable as it was reborn into the living world.
I'm trying to remember if Dragonbone Chair was the one I tried to read and wound up returning to the library unfinished because I just couldn't get into it. I think so.
The Sword in the Stone was one of those paperbacks my grandfather got for me at a half-priced bookstore that I read the covers off of. Finally got around to reading The Once and Future King by junior high or high school and didn't like it enough to read more than once, though I don't know if that speaks to quality or just to my having matured. Don't think I got around to The Book of Merlin.
His Dark Materials I borrowed from a friend as an omnibus edition -- read straight through it and was left unmoved by the ending, which tried to make me grief-stricken about characters I'd failed to develop any interest in for the entire trilogy.
Patrick O'Brien's Aubreyiad series is one I've read a couple of times -- it's one of those I'd recommend going through start to finish in a marathon, since it's too easy to lose track of the army of supporting characters otherwise. But yes, excellent reading. (Need to rebuy them for Kindle and give my paperback copies to Dad.)
The Shadow of the Lion I think I read -- I've generally enjoyed the books from that series that I've run across (and at some point am going to get in the mood to go through the entire series in order, the ones I've read years ago and the ones that have been published since I stopped keeping track of them).
Dune -- my mother went through a phase where she got the entire series (the original six books at least, not the ones that have been added to it in later years by Brian Herbert or whomever) and I got to them in like junior high. Read them at least a couple of times -- worth reading, all six of them. Classics of sci-fi kind of thing (and worth knowing what's going on in that Sci-Fi Channel Children of Dune miniseries with James McAvoy).
Grunts I flat-out loved. A bit crude in the humor at times, but a lot of fun dismantling the Tolkienesque tropes of high fantasy.
Mansfield Park -- I've only ever gotten around to reading Emma, Pride & Prejudice and Mansfield Park by Austen, so I can't properly judge MP against her entire body of work, but I found it enjoyable enough. It's a Jane Austen book, the heroine is stuck in uncomfortable situations by family members to whom she owes everything and is herself impossibly good and virtuous and self-sacrificing while being surrounded by sometimes frankly horrible people. After reading it I got at least two different screen versions from Netflix to watch with Mom. (We did the same thing after I finally read P&P, watching every version Netflix had. We've got Jane Eyre on the DVR now and I'm postponing watching that until I get around to reading the book first.)
I think I read the Caves of Steel years ago -- Asimov I read a number of stories by, since my grandfather had a phenomenal classic sci-fi collection, but I never really loved his work. (Never read the Foundation Trilogy -- got bogged down in the first book and dropped it.)
The Mists of Avalon filled me with outrage because I got so angry at the main character being repeatedly betrayed by her own loyalty to various family members who kept using her as a pawn. (Though I liked its solution to the whole Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot situation.) I may have read The Lady of Avalon, if that's a prequel sort of thing I vaguely recall, but I don't remember anything about it. Probably didn't upset me, or at least not much.
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Date: 2012-04-21 03:29 am (UTC)Recommendations from that extensive list? Well, the Enid Blyton ...Adventure books are quick and entertaining reads (Castle was always my favourite); Pratchett's Making Money is one of his better ones (I can't really say the same of Unseen Academicals, but YMMV - I suspect it largely depends on whether you like football! And I can't comment on Snuff yet as it's still on my "to be read" pile.); and Doctor Who - The Awakening is a rather lovely expansion of the original two-parter into a decent length novel. IMO. That'll get it down to below 130.
Don't know how meticulously planned your forthcoming England trip is, but if you have free time, do give me and Sarah a shout - if we're free we could meet you in London should you be there, or you could visit us in Hemel. We do a nice line in tea, biscuits, hospitality, and generally geeky company. :-)
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Date: 2012-04-21 04:10 am (UTC)Ruth Fielding is not my favorite American series from that time period, but it does have good points and if you like it a number of the books are on Gutenberg.
I'll wholeheartedly recommend Patrick O'Brien.
And the Chalet School is always good as a palette cleanser.
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Date: 2012-04-21 07:34 am (UTC)Joe Abercrombie's First Law is a rollicking fantasy - fun, but with enough deviation from the standard tropes to be great. On the other hand, Donaldson's Thomas Covenant was not a pleasant read, for me. Admittedly, that was many years ago.
Agatha! Mind you, that won't last long...
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Date: 2012-04-21 10:15 am (UTC)Now pity me, 'cause I keep having it recced to me as I like Wuthering Heights, A Farewell to Arms and The End of the Affair. *takes a shot of gin* Y'know, there's a difference between stories that explore love as a tool of mutually assured destruction, and stories that extoll the virtues of stalking as long as the stalker is physically attractive? *whimpers and finishes the bottle*
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Date: 2012-04-23 07:50 pm (UTC)Hmm, the Blyton's are quick non-strenuous reads. Popping a couple of those onto my "must read now" pile, to at least get Mount TBR down to a sensible number before my trip :-) I love The Awakening serial and I keep forgetting that the novelisation is staring at me from the shelves...
My trip is currently very tightly planned, but I will give you a yell if I have more energy than expected on a rest day :-)
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Date: 2012-04-23 07:51 pm (UTC)Ooh, O'Brien! He'd fit well with having recently read a Temeraire!
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Date: 2012-04-23 07:54 pm (UTC)He is delightfully consistent that way.
I've had the Abercrombie on my shelf for ages and never quite get round to it. Adding it to my possibility stack :-D Thomas Covenant was a gift from my father and I haven't get got past the first chapter yet.
I had no idea when I picked up Agatha that it was originally a comic - I loved the cover art and thought the premise sounded interesting :-) And I've just read the first two pages so it may be a winner...
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Date: 2012-04-23 07:54 pm (UTC)At least I now know that I don't ever need to touch that series again even with a very long barge pole.
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Date: 2012-04-23 08:00 pm (UTC)If you do read Ruth Fielding, you don't have to start with the first one, but I know that it's available on Gutenberg, if you want to. Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill is a traditional story of an orphan and a missing fortune. There were ultimately about 25-30 titles and Ruth goes on to boarding school and then gets involved in the early film industry and continues working even after she's married. It is a good place to start with American series because it's one of the first and it influenced many of the later series.