In which I rant about a crappy book and the people who read it.

So Sunday morning I decide to go to the bookstore after dropping Mariel off at work. I mean, I had nothing else to do and I was looking for a couple of things in particular.

Of course, Sunday was Mother's Day, and apparently it was also last minute gift time with a lot of teenagers and men in looking for that ever so thoughtless gift for mom. Almost all of the customers, and I'm NOT making this up, were talking about that stupid ass Twilight book by Stephenie Meyer. "Do you have Twilight?" "What Twilight books are out in paperback?" "Do you have the Twilight book with the movie cover?" "What's the newest Twilight book?" "Do you know where I can get the Twilight DVD?" These were all questions I heard the customers asking the clerks, and they were all being asked multiple times. I was in there for about a half an hour and I wanted to fucking scream.

What the hell is it with these books? See folks, I read one. I like Vampire Books. I've read Dracula. I've read Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. I've read a book about vampire and occult crimes in the modern world. I'm familiar with the subject. So I read the first Twatlight book and you know what.....it SUCKED.

The main character is a total teenage emo douche bag who has zero self confidence, and the author has to remind us every ten sentences about how clumsy she is. Oh, and her self confidence is low despite the fact that everybody in the school thinks she's hot. Yeah. Right. Little hot miss Molly Mormon. The boys wanting what they can't have. Right. Yeah. I get it. Anyways....she falls in love with this VAMPIRE boy (OMG SQUEE!!) who is just like SOOOO PERFECT (OMG SQUEE!). But of course being good, proper Mormons, they can't do it or anything like that, so Emo Vamp boy just resorts to the only thing a guy can do in that instance....stalk her and hover over her while she sleeps. Oh, and this after he uses his super vamp powers (OMG SQUEE!) to save her life. Really though, if she's so damn clumsy, isn't this natural selection at work?

Oh yeah, and this vampire who SPARKLES (OMG DOUBLE SQUEE!) isn't a real vampire at all. Well, I don't think so. He comes out during the day, doesn't mind the sun (makes him SPARKLE), goes to school, and DOESN'T DRINK PEOPLE's BLOOD. Right. Good little Mormon vamp. Just have your bread and water at Sacrament. It's ok. Douche.

In the Vampire Chronicles, there's a vampire that gets uneasy about biting people. His name is Louis. Louis is a pussy. Everytime I read about him in this way I want Lestat to smack him in the back of that immortal, not so vaguely homosexual head of his.

Also, in a lot of vampire fiction, the biting of humans and the sucking of blood is symbolic of sex...all he way back to Bram Stoker. Yet the Twilight attitude about sex is profoudly dysfunctional. Yeah, whatever, wait till you're married. That's fine. A little boring and a little risky, but that's fine. Don't you wanna take the car for a test drive? Beyond that however, it goes downhill. Emo teen douche chick is afraid do it even after they GET married (I don't really care if I spoil it for you). She's embarassed. Nice. So it seems to me the attitude that Meyer is trying to portray in regards to sex is that even after you're married it's not enjoyable and dirty, and something to be embarassed about. Of course the only reason she marries douche vamp boy is that she wants him to bite her (which really means nail her), and is that a good reason to get married?

By the way, it might very well be dirty, but if it's unenjoyable YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

In short the plot sucks, the characters (hmmph) suck, the writing itself is simple, dull and sucks. The conflict...there isn't one. That and the douche author spends 4 books trying to convince us and herself that emo non-skank teenage girl MUST HAVE A MAN in order to have any meaning in her life. That's really too bad, because it pretty much takes apart everything that women have achieved in the last 150 years or so in our society, but that's the Mormons for you.

The real kicker for me though--Nobody in this state would give a flying rat's ass about these books if they wouldn't have been written by a Mormon. If a Protestant or Catholic had written these books, they wouldn't be a blip on the radar here, but Utah has this deep dark need to justify the existence of the LDS church by claiming all of these famous people and their stories. "Oh look what this MORMON did! She wrote a bestseller!"

I'm gonna go catch my breath and write a letter to Lestat asking him to come kick Edward's sparkly, boring, and decidedly unvampirelike ass.

OUT.