On a recent work trip, I picked up the third book in the Twilight series, Eclipse. I'm not sure why I did it--probably because I've already read the first two books, and the momentum to finish is carrying me forward. The first book wasn't so bad...the second book was downright ridiculous. This third book promises to be more so. And in the fourth book, I hear there's a vampire-teeth C-section to look forward to. Excellent.
If you know nothing of these books, here's my summary: they are overwrought-but-super-cereal teenage romances that center around a sexless (so far) relationship between a vampire (Edward Cullen), and a human girl (Bella). Oh, and there's a love triangle of a sort involving a wolf named Jacob. In this iteration of the vampire world, vampires can read minds, but the only mind Edward can't read is (conveniently) Bella's. Oh yeah, and her blood calls to him--so it's both torture and ecstasy to be around her. Bella is a bland, bored, not-generically attractive, pale and dark-haired young woman, who lives with her doltish, overprotective father in rainy Oregon, and sometimes visits her kooky, childlike mother in Arizona. Is that a recipe for angst or what?
Much more fun are the "Dead" Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris. I also picked up the latest installment, Dead in the Family, on the same work trip. I read the Twilight books tongue-in-cheek, and they produce at least two eye-rolls per chapter; I read the Sookie books with unvarnished delight, much as I did the Harry Potter books. Guilty pleasures? Maybe, but at least I don't feel ashamed to read the Sookie books, while I did try to hide the cover of the Twilight book from view while on the plane and in the airport. I mean, these books are terrible!
I wouldn't say I have a "thing" for vampires, at all, even though I have certainly consumed my fair share of vampire-themed stories in my adult life. I watched "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" from start to finish, I've read the Anne Rice books. What I do like about fantasy or SF of any kind is the ability it has to go places that regular, 3D, reality-based fiction cannot. These supernatural stories tell our own story back to us in a reinterpreted way that, I think, can sometimes resonate more than a bland old human story can because it engages the imagination. Frankly, I am bored with feel-good human drama crap that ostensibly tries to teach us the meaning of life, or hit us over the head with the comedy and tragedy of it all. I'd much rather get that same message in a world filled with demons, fairies, wolves, vampires, and shape-shifters, or alternately, one that has at least been removed from time and place, like Victorian lit or early English lit. These stories often deal with the same themes--love, loss, fear, triumph, etc--but how they get there is much more interesting.
So I'm reading vampire tripe, but I am also simultaneously reading a book about Victorian sexuality, a book on babies, and Middlemarch. I am capable of reading at a higher level, and am clearly 'slumming it' by reading these vampire books. But to my mind, every book has some value, even the terrible ones. I also realize that not everyone that reads the Twilight books thinks they're stupid like I do. Heck, I know people my own age who read them and moon over them for the "romance," which is a concept I despise. But still I read on.
Fantasy can be dangerous. People who take it literally and try to apply it to their lives only succeed in making themselves miserable. Almost always, romance is a fleeting concept designed to entrap and mislead, yet humans seek it out like a death wish. I live in the world and deal with the mystery and frustration of human relationships and confront the meaninglessness of life on a daily basis. I will read my vampire romances if I want to!
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