Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Literary Depression

I was finally talked into reading the Twilight Saga recently, something I had been avoiding not because I don't enjoy that genre but because of the tween craze. Nevertheless, I gave in and to my surprise, enjoyed the first book! It is no Pride and Prejudice, but it was a fun, easy read and I loved the plot idea! Nice vampires, unlikely love, it was an entertaining twist.

As I read through the next two books in the series, I was feeling a little disappointed in the quality of the characters and the storyline. The more I read, the less I understood about their relationships and almost didn't want things to work out for them. They were whiny and selfish (besides Edward, but but he was also degraded to a piece of pathetic background noise later on) and seemed to just be satisfied that mystery and physical attraction was the reason for the "love" triangle. Sigh, I was beginning to become disenchanted with the Saga, but hoped that Breaking Dawn would pull it all together and save the day!

Oh boy... How I wish I had never opened that dismal book!

This is not intended to be a book review, so I will not explain all the ways that I was so disappointed in the last book of the Twilight Saga, but let me just say that it sent me into a "Literary Depression" for a few days. Because I had never read any reviews I had no preconceived ideas of how others liked the book, so I assumed that I was alone in thinking that this was a travesty among book Finales! This thought made me even more depressed. What had I missed? Had I expected too much? Why did I feel like this book wasn't even written by the same author?? When did the sweet innocent first love story turn the characters into cardboard afterthoughts, sex addicts and mutant baby producers?!?! Ok, let me get my composure back....

Ok, so this anticlimactic and frustrated feeling lasted a few days until I was brave enough to search for someone else that might have felt the same way. So I typed "Breaking Dawn book disappointment" into google hoping I might find a lone blogger who shared my let down.

Lo and Behold! I begin to read review after review of people just as chagrined as I was!! Luckily Matt and Corie had gone to the church to play basketball and Evie was already tucked asleep in bed, because I would have been embarrassed for anyone to hear my hysterical laughter and jubilation over a hostile book review! I was not alone! As I read and saw everything I had been stewing over in other's typed words, I began to feel better (ok so elated!)

In conclusion, I will not brand myself as a Twilight fan. As I said above, I did enjoy the first book and do think that the storyline had potential to be a really good series. The author was either too inexperienced, to "dazzled" (haha, i dare you to find out how many times that word is used in the series!) by the media, or had too much pressure writing the final book. Either way, while I am no longer in my "Literary Depression," mostly because I was not the only one to be disappointed, I am sad that it had to end on a sour note.


*disclaimer* -For those of you who do not know me well, I would like to point out that I love to read and enjoy books immensely, sometimes obsessively. BUT I also enjoy being overly dramatic in my writing and it just made it more fun that Twilight has been such an over the top craze, I couldn't help myself. I was never actually depressed, I hold no hostile feelings toward the author, and I can go on with my life and forget I ever read that stupid series. That's all.

"Team Edward!" (Just Kidding!!)




2 comments:

  1. I read the last book when Eden was just a few weeks old. I would wake up in the middle of the night to feed her from dreams that she was a vampire baby. It was pretty creepy, and the book was worse...

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  2. Ew, what a horrible feeling! That happened to me after I saw a strange movie preview, I hated feeling like I was in a horror movie while I was going to feed my baby! We should try to avoid any creepy feelings toward Baby Boy and Baby Girl this time around. Have you come up with a name yet?

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