[Shannywriter Posts: 507 Status: Offline Believe in yourself and never give up WWW]

Good perspective, Auntybooks. 

[Artemesia Posts: 3,817 Status: Offline WWW]

I wasn't at all wowed by the writing, but I thought Twilight was a page turner. I liked the rest in the series less so. I found it interesting that they seemed to be less edited as the series grew, and I've always wondered why. For instance in (I think) Eclipse we had a twenty-five page chapter of Jasper's backstory (literally) and I remember thinking, wow, I bet Jasper is gonna DIE at the end of thsi book. Nope. Just stuck an unrelated 25 page chapter in there for no apparent reason.

To me that was sort of funny. Did the editor know they were gonna make that much money so it didn't matter, or was there such huge pressure to finish the book that things got glossed over?  But I wonder that about a lot of books. Titles by a successful author (not necessarily kidlit) where tons of backstory is plunked into the first chapter or whatever problem is left intact. Is it because it's a BIG author and so no one is going to care? Is it deadline pressure? The author's ego? Is the editor less likely to tell a best-selling author "no" about something?

Editorial Anonymous wrote an interesting post on her blog today about this issue. The original question had to with the Harry Potter books, but she includes other series without naming names.

http://editorialanonymous.blogspot.com/

[Shannywriter Posts: 507 Status: Offline Believe in yourself and never give up WWW]

That was an interesting blog, Artemesia.
No wonder I am falling asleep in the middle of some of these books-its not me, its the editing 

[mswatkins]

Read it after a couple teenage family members convinced me to, and I still regret it.  I struggled through the first book, but enjoyed the film so I decided to read New Moon. I just wanted to strangle Bella. I mean she is just a whiny little wimp. 

I take nothing from the book(s), nor the writer, I just could not connect.  I mean it's full of vampires and werewolves so it really should kick butt, but it doesn't. 

[AnnH Posts: 1,449 Status: Offline I love to read and write! WWW]

I've never been much of a fan of vampires and like NCGirl I loved the first few pages, but then I started skimming.

One (kind of dorky) question.  The girl's name is Bella (short for Isabella, as I recall). Is this a play on Bela Legosi?  Just wondering!   

[EricJ]

I read Twilight. Why was this so popular? The theme of unrequited love? Longing? Passion? Works every time. Didn't read any of the others. One escape book in a row was enough, but gotta give her credit. She did what a lot of us would love to do.

As to "why", even Stephen King chimed in his celebrity $0.02 about how nudge-nudge metaphorical the story was for pubescent teens first feeling their hormones flowing and their blood pulses starting to race...
As for "Why do they read the REST of them?", I hearken back to a possibly apocryphal post on the Internet (very likely a hoax, but if so, an incisive one), about an angry fangirl who wrote an open letter about the "Wolf Man" remake that was still in theaters, saying they got the werewolf lore "all wrong" compared to the handsome, brooding CW-series instant-changers of "New Moon".
...There is no loyalty so fierce as that which teenagers feel they have discovered themselves.

(Call me judgmental for giving up on the Percy Jackson series after one big-studio movie, but writing styles aside, think the OP could watch Twilight's first movie and pretty well get the mindset for it in a nutshell--
Should be checking out either around the baseball game, or the unique revelation that sunlight actually makes sensitive, caring vampires "sparkle like diamonds", rather than be burned to ashes as creatures of the night....The girls want the lure of the "good" bad-boys, but they don't want to be seen tying themselves to the "bad" bad-boys.)

[C. Lee]

I enjoyed Twilight. It was a step outside of my usual reading-- Chick Lit, YA, Vampires and Werewolves all wrapped into a single book. Wow! One book about all of that was enough however. 

[myriad_of_colors]

No. You do not have to read Twilight. I think the pull to Twilight is that Edward, a gorgeous immortal whose very scent draws Bella in, is very attractive to teenage girls.

That being said, I AM a teenage girl, and when I first read Twilight, I thought Edward was just weird. Who says "You are my life now" within, what, two weeks? But I did love it (Jacob was my favorite) until the movies came out and it was, to say the least, really very depressing. But now that I'm a little more cynical of writing styles and characters, I have to say, most of the characters were flat and "blegh." Bella depends WAY too much on Edward for her own emotional/mental security, and my suspicions are roused by Edward. Was he gonna go kill her? Does anyone actually love in this book or is it just obsession??