Sunday, June 15, 2008

Do Vampires have Cooties?

I just finished Twilight by Stephanie Meyer for the second time.

I freaking LOVE that book... like seriously... LOVE.

Twilight is part of a series... a saga if you will. The fourth book in the series, Breaking Dawn, is coming out on August 2nd (but who's keeping track), the day we leave Greece.

I am a person who firmly believes in re-reading books before the next in the series is released.

I did it every time with the Harry Potter books, and even with the films. I love catching the little references the author makes to previous story lines and noticing things that you didn't see before. It makes it new and interesting each time I read it (even the millionth time... enter Harry Potter).

Anywho, I decided to read the three previous Twilight books before I go to Greece in a month. I figure the books will be fresh in my mind by the time the fourth one comes out, and I won't have to carry the 700 plus page books with me throughout the Greek islands.

So I started Twilight at 4:30 pm yesterday and finished it at 7:30 pm today.

Hmm.... maybe I should have waited until Greece was just a little bit closer.

But I don't mind. The book is just so damn good.

The book is Meyer's first novel, and was the first, and only, book to knock the final Harry Potter book out of the number one spot on the NYT Bestsellers List. Critics are, in fact, coining Meyer as the next J.K. Rowling.

The books are written for the young adult genre (which leaves more mature audiences craving more... vice, at times... but it's all good), so it's been a hit in only some select areas of pop culture.

That's going to change, though, since it will be released as a movie in December, and because the rest of the literary (and MTV) world is catching on.

OK, so here is why I love these books.

One: they are pure entertainment. It's just pure fantasy (a love story between a teenage girl and a vampire), but it is so much fun, and so engrossing, that you can't put it down. It makes me feel like a teenager again... and in the good way, not the horrible-awkward-hate-everyone-and-my-life-way... though I have read things that have made me feel that way again, too (enter The Perks of Being a Wallflower, another favorite).

Two: I am a huge sucker for romance. I love those super-sappy-totally-not-real-never-could-ever-happen stories. I just can't help it. They have some secret power over me and my weak-overly-emotional-over-sized-aortic-pump. I love the fantasy of it and the pain it makes me feel. All entertainment is fantasy, and sometimes the real world is just too real, so I figure that a good love story, with all the ups and downs, can never be too harmful.

Three: they make me forget about everything else. I seriously will think about them all of the time... even for my second read of Twilight, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I know what happens, but I'm just so excited to read it again. And I love that feeling. Very few things have that sort of power over me, so the fact these books have it shows how good they are.

Now, these books are not for everyone. Mike read it, and although he said it was a "good read", they're not his cup of tea.

I don't think Dad should read it... he just couldn't do it.

And that's OK.

I may be on the same page (pun intended) with 13 year old girls across the globe, and that's OK too. I have made my peace with that.

So this has been a pretty pop culture / book critic post... here's a quick blurb about my Friday to bring my post back to Speakin's usual tone:

Friday's are just tough. I don't care if you have the best job in the world, or if you take your favorite classes on Fridays... they are just tough. Like, the last 3 hours of the day seem like 30 hours, instead. Everything goes as slow as... Twinkies rotting.

So, I decided to take a little break from the grind and make an origami fortune teller, AKA a cootie catcher.

I don't know if I've made one since the 4th grade... actually, I think I had to have Dana or Larisa make mine for me... anywho, I found the instructions and created a supreme cootie catcher.

It really was quite the feat of engineering.

So I decided to write fortunes on it. Numbers on the outside (1-8), colors on the first layer (red, green, purple, blue, yellow, orange, pink, and, of course, taupe), and then the fortunes on the inside. I made these as answers to yes or no questions, much like the mysterious and talented 8 ball.

You know, mystical answers to important questions: hell yes, hell no, let me think on it, I don't give a damn, does it matter, really?, damn straight, and bitch please (there's one more that I can't remember... probably a boring one).

Me to Jeannie: Ask it a question.
Jeannie: Um... will me and *boy she's just started seeing* be together forever?
Me: Geez Jeannie, can you not ask such a school girl question *roll eyes*?
Jeannie: Oh! I'm the school girl? You're the one holding the cootie catcher!
Mark (sitting a few cubes away): You know, Jeannie makes a pretty good case.
Me: I hate you both.

Her answer, I'm sorry to say, was "hell no".

But who's going to believe a cootie catcher?... Don't tell it I said that, though, just in case it reads this.