Twilight: Part Deux

Last September, I wrote about my thoughts on the book Twilight,claiming it was a piece of badly-written fanfic. One would think that if I really meant what I said, I would not go and buy the second book of that series. Oh, but I did. One day in December, I was feeling miserable. So while waiting for Adam to pick me up after work, I went into Chapters and asked the salesperson where they store the second book for the series. "New Moon?" the very nice, seemingly non-judgmental dude asked me. "Umm...sure..the second one." I paid my $12 after waiting in a long line and met up with Adam. To be fair, I read somewhere that the second one was the best of the series. I was lied to.

Honestly, I have no right to criticize this book, since it was my choice to buy it (I might harbour a subconscious love for trashy novels?), so I'll stop at conveying to you about the fact that I skipped literally half of the pages in the book and wanted to kill myself every time the main character of the story referred to herself as Juliet and to her perfect Vampire boyfriend as Romeo.

And since the third book has not been published in paperback yet, I've caught myself looking at the strategically placed sale signs for the hardcover books whenever I'm in Wal-Mart. I have will power dammit!!! And then I had dinner at Rita's last Thursday, who generously lent me her copy of the third book, telling me that this is actually the best one of the series. I finished the book in a day, and she didn't lie to me. Bad writing aside, Eclipse, as I learned the name from Rita that night, is actually better than the previous book (which doesn't really say much).

So Rita has kindly offered to lend me the fourth book, which I'll probably end up reading even though I know I should not. To redeem myself of this guilty pleasure, I offer you guys some funny critiques of the series.

• CRACKED.com points out exactly what is wrong with the series, with a sense of humour. This is honestly a good read.

• Robert Pattinson, the dude who actually plays Edward in the movie series, tells E-online how he doesn't understand why people like the book. He is also "convinced that Stephanie [Meyer] is convinced that she is Bella and it was a book that wasn't supposed to be published and reading her..uh..sorta sexual fantasy [...] This woman is mad [...] and she's in love with her fictional creation."

• Again, Pattinson in another interview called Edward a "two dimensional blob" and he can't understand why Edward behaves the way he does. Apparently he also said something like, "when you read the book, it's like 'Edward Cullen was so beautiful I creamed myself.' I mean every line is like that." But I couldn't finish watching the entire interview. I have a new respect for the dude.

The thing is, if you think about it, I'm probably not the only one with this guilty pleasure, with all these crazy critiques of the series going around.