Are we really in a Recession or is Everyone Reading the Twilight Saga?

I’m Bitten

We spend Thanksgiving in Yosemite with many friends and family.  Six weeks ago I badly sprained my ankle and it hasn’t healed as quickly as I hoped, so hiking, even walking any real distance, was out.  This sent me into a funk before we left.  The best cure for a funk?  An engrossing book.  As the mother of Kelsey, my 11 year old, it was imperative that I take her and her girlfriends to see the movie “Twilight” the weekend it opened.  Guess who is the most surprised that I liked the movie the best?  It’s an old-fashioned schmaltzy love story with a vampire thrown in.  I was hooked.  SPOILER ALERT – PLOT DETAILS FURTHER IN POST

I devoured Twilight on Tuesday in Yosemite (really Wednesday morning because it was 2:30AM) and panicked because I didn’t have New Moon.  Reprieve arrived at breakfast with Maya, a teenager in our group, who was reading Twilight and had New Moon.  It was read by 1:30AM Thursday morning.  I began to wonder, all of this unproductively in the nation, is it due to economics or are we all just reading the Twilight  saga and mentally living in Forks, WA?

Phooey to the Criticism

My girlfriend, Kenwyn, a retired lawyer and fellow book group member, admitted she raced through the Saga, and then the partial Midnight Sun on the Internet.  We chuckled about the people who criticize the book because of the writing (no Pulitzer material here) or the sexism (most romance books have sexism) or the fact that Edward is decades older than Bella in human years.  These books will not stand up to analysis, there’s nothing really to discuss other than the atmosphere they create.  The point of the books is to have a fun engrossing experience.  They’re plot oriented, so read them fast to get to the plot.  As a reader, don’t think about the story, just follow it and be swept away. 

One issue is the appropriate age of the reader.  Kelsey read all but the last one while away at church camp, so I didn’t have much of a decision.  The first three books are totally innocent.  Gail Collins in a recent New York Times column described the series as four books with a variety of reasons not to have sex before marriage.  Edward and Bella make love in the fourth book, after they’re married, but there are not any sex scenes, just before and after scenes.  Stephenie Meyer describes the experience of having sex as wonderful, but she never talks about sex.  I’m fairly strict with what my kids read and watch and I’m okay with Kelsey reading the books.  However, if you want to limit your daughter’s exposure, stop after New Moon.  The third book, Eclipse, is completely innocent but it ends just before the wedding and the fourth book (with the non-sex scenes) starts with the wedding.  It feels like cruel and unusual treatment to have to stop after book three just before they get married.

Can’t Keep the Books in Stock, Buy all Four at Once

I had to wait until Saturday to buy Eclipse  when I visited Willow Bridge Books.  But they didn’t have a single book in the series.  The store can’t keep them in stock or get the publisher to send them fast enough.  One of the employees said that whenever someone buys Twilight she rings them up and says “see you tomorrow.”  She advises people to buy all the books at once because they could be out of stock when the reader returns.  Leslie, my bookstore visiting buddy, ordered New Moon for her daughter from Willow Bridge Books for the same price as Amazon and only $2.50 for shipping to Los Angeles.  She said $2.50 was a tiny price to pay for supporting an independent bookstore (that’s why she’s my bookstore visiting buddy). 

Driving home to Los Angeles takes five hours without traffic so I was determined to buy Eclipse on the way home rather than lose all of that reading time (I bought a comedy series for Keith to listen to as he drove).  We stopped at Fig Garden Bookstore, a lovely gift store and bookstore in Fresno, but they too cannot keep the books in stock.  They are on order, but as soon as they arrive they’re sold and the publisher is slow in restocking them.  Curious, I called B&N in Fresno and they had a few.  So I succumbed and bought from a big box, I was addicted to the series and couldn’t give up 5 hours (more if we were lucky enough to hit traffic) of free reading time.  B&N sometimes runs short of the books, but nothing like the independent stores because they buy in such huge volume.  The cashier said all the books they had were on the shelves with a box in the back saying “no more.”  The woman behind me was buying New Moon, I suggested she buy the last two at the same time because you never know.

Midnight Sun on the Internet

So New Moon was done by 11PM on Sunday.  I read Breaking Dawn, which thankfully Kelsey owned, by 8PM on Monday.  Just as I was feeling the withdrawals of leaving Forks, WA and returning to my life, I remembered the partial draft of Midnight Sun on the Internet.  It’s Twilight, but from Edward’s perspective.  Ms. Meyer wrote it as a character exercise and loved it.  Unfortunately, some immoral person posted a draft on the Internet causing Ms. Meyer to lose interest in the project.  However, she posted a draft on her own website so fans wouldn’t have to sneak around and has decided to write the full version.  I’ll be standing in line at midnight to buy it.

Twilight Road Trip

Apparently, Ms. Meyers chose Forks, WA after researching weather reports and hadn’t been there before Twilight was published.  Now it has a booming tourist trade.  The movie sites in Oregon are attracting attention also.  Leslie and I took our daughters on a literary trip in the past, to Minnesota and S. Dakota to visit the places in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and we’re looking forward to visiting the Cambridge, Massachusetts area.  I think we’re going to have to add a trip up through the Pacific Northwest to follow in the imaginary steps of Edward and Bella.

Now, I admit all this with chagrin as I remember Claire and I chuckling at a grown woman reading Twilight, a tweeners book.  But books that provide a wonderful escape provide a real sense of magic in a hectic life.