Now I haven’t read the book nor seen the movie…even as free as it is on TV…all they do is bring up the memories of the people (all over 30) that I know that live for this stuff.

I can never look at them with a straight face…

I urgently wanted to show my wife, but her response when I told her about your post, and my version of your twilight fan, did not leave her amused. So I’ll just link to it on Twitter to cure the itch.

She has read the book countless times. She has read the others in the series, but keeps coming back to Twilight again and again.

It doesn’t stop there. She watches the movie too. Over and over again. Interesting note about this: we saw the movie before we read the book and laughed it off as complete nonsense.

Following her first reading, she kept insisting that I read the book as well. After about a week and a half of the constant prodding, I picked it up with an open mind.

Somewhere in one of the first chapters there is a line that reads something like this “…Edward said in a low attractive voice…” as if the author was really trying to hammer home the point that we should really be “attracted” to this Edward guy. This was probably the third mention of the word “attractive” in describing Edward.

I put the book down and really could not continue any further.

P.S. I share your sentiments about Prius’ and their obnoxious owners.

The writing style is tired, too, if you ask me. Her prose lacks the polish I’ve come to expect from talented YA authors. I wrote a post recently for my blog’s Anti-Twilight Week where I analogize her writing style to fanfic authors. The downside to that is that many fanfic authors move on and learn their craft and enhance their writing while Meyer was unfortunately found and developed a fad empire through it and never had a reason to get any better.

My wife’s article covered your main problem with Twilight: the ridiculous fans. I have that problem, too, in my line of work. Except that I get it from students more than co-workers. I’ve yet to have another teacher do that, but when I mention the series in class, I always have to divert my lecture to discuss (with seemingly intelligent students, too) what exactly the series does as literature (or even as Literature with a big L, if you prefer).

My take: I think there’s a decent enough narrative in the series that gets marred by inadequate writing and subversive themes that uninitiated readers may never pick up on but be influenced by. I’ll take A Wrinkle in Time or Harry Potter any day.