Eclipse (but not Breaking Dawn...yet!)

May I just say that Ms. Meyer is a lovely person who personally responded to some of my students a few years ago when they wanted to interview her. I wish her luck. Her books are popular. There are worse things.

There are also better. Twilight was okay, New Moon was okay but Eclipse really, really irked me. From a literary point of view, I think that all of the books could have been more effectively edited. They all seem to ramble, there are many phrases that are not quite properly turned, and if the books were shorter, I think they would be more coherent. Redundancies bog down the story. We know that Edward is very cold and Jacob is very hot. We know that Bella is conflicted. Please don't tell us again. Introduce some new conflict that isn't creepy, like a young adult werewolf "imprinting" on a two-year-old. Ewwww.

As an independent woman, I found this book irritating. Bella doesn't want to be the sort of girl who gets married right out of high school. But she will be because she looooooves him so much that she can't live without him. She wants to be "closer" to him, but he is traditional and wants to wait until they're married. Fine. But being married to a vampire gives a whole new meaning to "forever". Bella is young. She would rather get married, become a vampire, and follow Edward's family around than go to college, experience the world and, perhaps, outgrow Edward.

While this was an interesting springboard for conversation between my 9th grade daughter and myself, as an undiscussed message, it's alarming. Young girls already get obsessed with boys, and this book seems to be telling them that it's okay.

I'm borrowing Breaking Dawn as soon as possible, but an ardent fan described it as "bad fan fic". I don't have high hopes, but as much as I would like to see Ms. Meyer do well, I would not feel bad if girls get fed up with Bella's sniveling story of conflicted love.