We head into the end of the book, the actual end of the book, and we are taking a one week break from wrapping it up. This leaves us with two more posts, the final next week and then the capstone. Of which we shall render our final judgments on the book, its characters, and why it may not live up to the hype of neither its detractors nor its fans.
Given that, the question then remains as to what happens next: to the right of this post is a short quiz which I implore readers to take so we can figure out what is happening next. Now the choices are obvious and while I have a personal favorite for what I would like to do next I will abide by the “winner” of the poll.
Doing this series has been a trial for a number of reasons, but it has been a trial which is most strange. At first, it was difficult. I want to be clear that it was not difficult because of the reading, but more difficult to think of what to say and how much to say about it. Originally I didn’t think there would be that much to unpack with this book given its target audience of teenage girls.
Not to say that they are inherently stupid, but one thing I know about demographics is that they usually include one step below what they are said to be. This book is written for teenagers but tweens (I hate that word but what can you do) are also included in its fan base. The language itself isn’t hard or complex, in fact, its at least several grades above the reading level necessary to read something like USA Today. That’s not a compliment for the book but an insult to USA Today.
Back to the trial, once it this project was absorbed into routine the only trial was finding something good to say once a week. I don’t mean good as complimentary but good in the sense of, worth writing. The page numbers governing each post should be proof of this. At times it was really easy, I would only need to read a couple of pages in order to write nearly a thousand words and other times it would be half a chapter.
Troubling were the times in the beginning. At first I thought that this project would only take a couple of months, one chapter a month in the beginning, than probably more than a chapter at the end. Then I realized that there is so much wrong with these characters, especially the main character that pretty soon I noticed that my posts were spanning about 5-7 pages. At this rate given the length of the book I knew I might be in for a long haul. Someone asked me how long this was going to take, and I sighed having no idea what it was that I begun.
The problem for me now is that I have been engaged in a sort of Stockholm syndrome, that we all know from the movies, I almost don’t want it to end but like all things it pretty much has to.
Despite the limited number of followers I have on the “home website” of this series, and the very few comments that I have gotten on the post, I know that more people read this than are vocal about it. That being said, I didn’t write this for the readership. I’ve had a blog for about seven years now, and it’s the writing that I write for. Yet to continue on I think I may need the encouragement.
It’s not the story, it’s the characters. Some of the characters are pathetic and annoying but they are that way because they are supposed to be that way. People like Mike and Jacob are really like that. Other characters are interesting, actually interesting, like Alice for instance for whom the doom of the world is already apparent to her. Yet it’s too bad that they aren’t the main characters because the main characters are infuriating.
I developed the conclusion very early into the book that these two individuals are good examples of what not to be. Bella is an entitled, depressed, ambitionless, moron, whose existence is solely dependent on her relationship with Edward. Nothing matters to her, she trades friends when convenient, uses people with abandon, and lords over what little connections she does make. Edward isn’t better as he is a sociopathic, stalking, control freak who acts nothing like his alleged age. The worst thing about him is that he serves as an arch-type to fans’ ideas of what a boyfriend should be. Without the addition of new characters I really don’t want to read more about them.
So the poll at the right of this page will basically determine the continuity of this series. Three primary choices exist. The first is to stop doing this to end the misery of this universe and these insufferable characters.
The second is the movie. The movie is interesting because we already know the story so basically it will be mostly a write up of the differences between the book and the movie. I know what I would change and what I would keep. This book was almost turned into an action movie in the first place (seriously).
The third is to move on to the next book because it either gets better or worse. Since I’m aware of the whole Edward v Jacob thing from Burger King commercials, I do know that the series will at least get more cliché as we introduce werewolves into the mix. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, True Blood, pushes the ridiculous envelope all of the time but with good likeable characters it’s easy to overlook.
Take the poll to give me some feedback and we finish off this beast next week.
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