I am moving some of Tawnya's points from the comment section of the last blogpost to the body of this post because she makes some good points and I want to discuss them a bit more.
good story, horrible writing & typos but somehow you wanted to keep reading and see how it ends. Even through her horrid writing, she still taps into that teenage girl fantasy with the story.
I think this is why it is so popular with the girls at the jr. high. There are not a lot of good stories out there for this age group, and Stephanie Myers does do a good job of capturing what appeals to them.
I hated Jacob as a character and thought New Moon was pointless, didn't mind Bella as much as others did, thought Edward was a good character. Esme and Alice were my favorite, though.
Pretty much how I felt. I really loved Esme, she was my all time favorite and I would love to have Alice as a friend. I wish we could have seen a bit more interaction between Bella and her other friends, though.
I thought the town not seeing the vampires was ok. Lots of kooky things happen that I ignore & you tend to see what you want to see. Not a big stretch to me. Besides. We're talking vampires. A little suspension of disbelief is needed, right?
Ok, you are right about the suspension of disbelief. I don't have a problem with there being vampires living among them, I had no problem with it at all when I read "Sunshine". But of course, in that book everyone knew they existed. I guess my real problem is that I really have a problem with stories, movies, etc. where the children are all smarter then the adults and never need the adults to help them out and the children never turn to the adults in their lives for advise etc.
Teenage love angst? Again, pretty realistic, but WAYYYYYY overdone. Not to mention that a high school girl is the least likely to see a 'destructive' relationship (not that I agree with you on that point...not every high school fling needs intervention!).
Again, I agree with you that a high school girl is least likely to see it and not every h.s. fling needs intervention, but when it ends and you shut down and/or self desctruct... And where oh where are the adults in her life? Well, I guess for all intents and purposes, Bella is the only adult in her life. Her parents pretty much checked out as soon as she was born. I guess I expected her to be "grown-up" in this area as well and was dissapointed when she wasn't. I still see it as a bad relationship if she needs Edward in order for her to be a whole person.
You aren't the first one to mention how Edward is 100+ old & should 'know' better. I didn't get that at all. Yes, he's been around awhile, but how do your sensibilities stop when you are made into a vampire at 17? He isn't really a 100 year old. He's still 17 in many ways. No matter how many years have passed.And I'm hoping a little of Edwards Victorian standards are throw out the window with the next one...
Ok, valid point- not a 100+ year old but a 17 year old having the same experience for over 100 years. But still, he should have learned something about the world in those years. And the reason I liked his Victorian standards are the fact that jr. high girls love these books. We really don't want them acting like Bella in the end of Eclipse in order to show some boy how much she loves him. There is already too much of this going on, so I appreciated some show of restraint.
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Aaaaah! I would have tried to sound smarter if I had known you would do this!
However...for this "I guess my real problem is that I really have a problem with stories, movies, etc. where the children are all smarter then the adults and never need the adults to help them out and the children never turn to the adults in their lives for advise etc."
I would have to counter that it IS Young Adult fiction. What young adult wants to read about the "adults" being right all along? That wouldn't have gone over very well. Yes, teens are generally stupid and do stupid things, but at that age, they don't want adults telling them that. (this argument could go for the relationship between Edward & Bella as well) If she had written it to reflect the adult world, it would have been a much different book (hello Anne Rice!). Adults are also stupid. They overlook things that don't fit their mind's eye. They overlook the strange and the quirky in order to have things fit they way they "think" it should. They all knew something was off, but they didnt' want to examine it too hard because it wouldn't fit their grown up world. And, quite frankly, some adults are dumber than kids. Who should she have gone to? Her parents? I wouldn't ever trust their advice!
On the other point, Edward DID learn a lot about relationships, but (again with the suspension...) Bella evoked things in him that he HAD never dealt with before. This was new to him and all sensibility went out the window. I know I'VE had relationships like that. You don't care the hows or whys or conventional wisdom you've developed. You just know this person NEEDS to be in your life, everything else be damned. Couple that with the teenage experience (hello high school crushes that are all consuming even to those of us who are somewhat grounded!) and you have a relationship of that magnitude.
And on the Victorian standards point, we'll just agree to disagree about that last paragraph. We'll a lot of it, anyway!
One of the conventions of children/teen fiction is that there are no responsible adults around--for a variety of reasons. I hate that, but it's pretty much industry standard. It's extremely rare that you find a main character who is part of an intact, loving family.
Ok, Tawnya, you are right it is YA fiction, and as I said Bella is really the only responsible adult in her life and I wouldn't go to her parents either. And I can even conceed that as an adult I have ignored things right under my nose to make it fit with what I wanted to be true. I am sure I did so as a teenager- too long ago to remember clearly. So she probably did act the way a teen girl would act in those situations. And you are right about Edward's view point as well. (I hear that there is going to be a book told from his view) And I guess that given she just moved to town, she wouldn't know who to trust adult wise...
However, as Karlene points out, in this type of story there are NEVER responsible adults. Every day at school I deal with children that live with that type of situation and somehow I become their responsible adult. I don't always know what is going on, but they can tell me things in their vague way. I don't always do anything about it, mostly because they are vague and I don't know, but I am at least a listening ear that they know cares and will try to help if needed. I wish there would have been someone that Bella could have gone to if she had wanted, even if she never did. I think that would have been better than pretending that all adults are totally stupid (though when you are in jr. and sr. high all adults are totally stupid.)
Oh, and you sounded sufficienty smart.
Grrr. I just deleted my post! Let's try again.
Ha! I'm not sure I did my degree justice, but I'll take it!
This is where discussing lit gets tricky. You are taking your experiences with your life and your job and projecting them into the novel. Fair enough. However, I don't have those experiences, so I take my background and use that. Same story, but you come up with "stupid teenager not going to adults and all the adults around her are stupid and uncaring..." (paraphrased, of course!)
I come up with "of course the adults aren't going to figure into this because it's YA lit". Though, if one wanted to, I could argue for the fact that Carlisle & Esme were her adult role models and the most stable adults around her. However, even with their guidance, Bella still acted much like a hormonal teen girl and still did her own thing. So it wasn't the lack of adults (Charlie would have helped if she'd let him in, Jacob's grandfather (?) could have offered advice, the aforementioned Carlisle & Esme) but that the premise of the book is about Bella figuring things out and finding her own way. As much as I dislike Bella 80% of the time, I understood her need to figure things out and hold people at a distance.
(But maybe I'm just closer to that time in my life and remember it more vividly....HA! KIDDING!)
Man. I feel like I'm back in college with all this lit analysis!
The first chapter of Twilight from Edward's point of view (Midnight Sun, I think) is up on Stephenie's website and I thought it was an interesting contrast to the original chapter. It definitely cleared a few things up!
"Edward DID learn a lot about relationships, but (again with the suspension...) Bella evoked things in him that he HAD never dealt with before. This was new to him and all sensibility went out the window."
This is probably the main point where I cross over from feeling like they are ok, mindless entertainment in to thinking that they are way too flawed for me to really enjoy them. I can and do read a lot of different stuff and can suspend that disbelief like nobody's business, but I just hated Bella so much that I couldn't get past that we never see any glimmer in her character that would show us why she is so great. And not just Edward but, uh, ummm, what's his name, the werewolf guy. They talk about her like she is just the worlds greatest girl, worth doing anything, giving anything for but the author never gives me one reason to buy into this belief! Way too much suspension. I mostly just wanted to punch her in the head.
On another note, someone told me that she read an interview with the author where she said the books were not originally intended for YA and were originally much more R rated. When she learned that her publisher intended them for YA, she cleaned them up. Yikes!
"I mostly just wanted to punch her in the head."
Ha!!!!! That's the best line ever.
And I COMPLETELY agree that Meyer needed to flesh out Bella's character more. I don't think she gave us any glimpse as to why every male loved her, but maybe she couldn't help it. She may have been too wrapped up in describing Edward as beautiful for the 3 kazillionth time to be bothered to do so (or to crack open a thesaurus - my biggest complaint!)!
So are you calling me old, Tawnya? JK ;) and that also is a good point. But, I too wanted to just just punch Bella in the head most of the time, not take her in my arms and comfort her and yes, why don't we see more of why everyone loves her? Probably because it is told from Bella's point of view and if she doesn't see herself as lovable, she wouldn't get it.
A thesaurus, they make such things and writer's can use them?? she said with sarcasm laced voice.
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