Phenomenon

"That was the first night I dreamed of Edward Cullen."

Well if that doesn't make me want to read on, Stephanie, I don't know what will.

By the way, have I mentioned the cover art to the copy of the book I'm reading is from the movie poster? I was wary about taking this thing out in public as it is; now it's a guarantee that I'll be reading it nowhere but the comfort of my own bedroom. Visitors will be told that I don't know how it got here. Must have dropped magically out of the ceiling. If they continue to press, I'll pretend I just heard "go get your fuckin' shinebox" and then, well, Billy Batts knows the rest.

So fifty some-odd pages in Meyer finally crafts her first set-piece. And it's about as thrilling as watching my 10 year old self play Ikari Warriors. Look, I'm not expecting Patriot Games levels of action here, but if or main character's life is in danger I want my brain to go "oh shit!" while my fingers turn the page. Instead I get a rigid, clinical description of an accident that has the danger factor of a fender bender.

And that's my biggest problem with the book so far. You don't have to be an English major (I was one, but you probably can't tell from these posts - I wasn't exactly a studious individual) to see that Stephanie Meyer is a slightly below-average writer. Technically, at least. One of the first rules of writing taught is "show, don't tell." There's too much telling here. I certainly hope Meyer doesn't ever take a crack at writing a screenplay - I envision her characters describing every single plot detail, just to make sure the audience gets it.

When I first borrowed the book and saw it was over 500 pages long I really didn't think anything of it. I had already decided to take on the whole series; I would've committed had it been 10,000. Slogging through these chapters, though, I find myself counting page after page of...pages that could easily be ripped out and have no effect on the story. In chapter 3, Bella and Edward argue for over two whole pages about what happened during the accident. The conversation boils down to about this "tell me what happened, you weren't close to me" "no, I can't" "yes, do it" "no, I can't, you don't understand" "yes, do it" "no, I can't, trust me" and so on and so forth. While she's not the first writer to engage in redundancy, it would make for easier reading if she had some kind of style or spark attached to her words. As it is so far, reading Twilight is akin to reading a first draft of a story some high-school freshman wrote for her Creative Writing 101 class.