Let’s talk about Twilight

Yes I know, it’s been 10 years since Twilight came out, it might be a bit late to be posting about it. But I just re-read the books, and now I have some things I want to say. So here goes.

I read Twilight when I was 13 years old, one year after it was published. The movie came out in 2008, three years after the book was published. During those two years, it felt like I had the book to myself. I loved it when I first read it – what 13-year-old wouldn’t? But when I tried to tell people how good it was, they looked at me like I was mad. I remember standing in front of my grade 8 class, doing a book review oral on Twilight. I had found it in the library and was the third person to ever take it out, even though it had been on the shelf for a year. I tried to tell my class that the vampire wasn’t the bad guy, that he didn’t drink blood or kill people. He could go out during the day and didn’t sleep in a coffin, but it was all a foreign concept back then – the idea of a vampire being good, or sexy. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my point across. So I gave up, I stopped talking about it, bought myself a copy (which is a super old hardcover that has a different cover from the red apple we’re all used to), which still sits on my bookshelf today, just a tad bit tatty.

Sadly I’m not home, otherwise I would have put a pic of my copy, but for now this will have to do. Pic sourced from here.

Take a trip to the Scottish highlands

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon was published 25 years ago, before I was even born, but has recently become popular again due to a new hit TV show based on the book. Outlander was the first in a series of 8 books, the most recent of which was published in 2014.

As usual, I could not bear the thought of watching the on screen version before reading the book, and so I delved into it despite my heavy workload. This was before my exams at the end of last year and I didn’t manage to get more than halfway before studying had to take preference. Plus the show (which I had managed to keep ahead of while reading) hit a mid-season break, which meant that I had a few months to get around to finishing the book before the show started off again.

I then forgot about the book until spotting articles all over my Facebook timeline proclaiming that the midseason break of Outlander the TV show was over. I couldn’t believe that I had put down such a brilliant book for so long and immediately dug it out again. It took me less than 2 days to finish, even with lectures to attend.

So what makes this book so brilliant? There are a lot of contributing factors – timetravel, a female heroine, a hot Scottish bloke…and quite a lot of sex.

Image sourced from http://roberthuntstudio.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Robert_Hunt_illustration_gabaldon.jpg

Better than Lord of the Rings

I’m about to make a bold statement.

Last year, in my English 3 class, we had an elective called British Modern Fantasy, and in it we studied The Lord of the Rings saga (it’s not a trilogy). I loved it of course; it is pretty difficult not to love Tolkien. However, there is a certain similar set of books which I personally think are better than The Lord of the Rings.

The books I’m talking about are the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini. The first book is called Eragon  and I read it for the first time when I was about 12-years-old. The series grew to be extremely popular among young adults as the second (Eldest) and third (Brisingr) books were released. There was a three year wait between each book, which meant that by the time the final book (Inheritance) was released I was almost 18, and I have to say that I was in no way patient in each of those three year gaps.

I had such conviction during the Christmas holidays that I was going to sit down and read every book on my list that I had been wanting to read but had not gotten around to. This failed miserably. I spotted Eragon on my bookshelf one day towards the end of the holiday and I couldn’t restrain myself from plucking it off the shelf and starting to read it. Before I knew it, I was just as engrossed in the series as I had been back in high school. I sat and read them at every spare moment. I sped through them at a pace that alarmed even me, especially since the entire cycle consists of about 2 779 pages. I realised with only 4 days to go in my holiday that I still had the whole of Inheritance to read. I knew that I couldn’t take it back to Rhodes with me because 860 pages was a few too many to fit into my carryon bag. Let’s just say I may not have spent as much time with my family as I should have in those last few days. (I did manage to finish it, in case you were wondering).

Guaranteed laughter – my favourite kind

When I was 12 years old, I came across a book that would soon become the book I turned to everytime I needed to smile after a hard day or week. No matter how many times I read this book, I laughed until I was crying. The book is called Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison. It is the first in a series of 10 books that were released between 1999 and 2009. I have every single one of them, and I still read them almost every year.

I thought a bit of a throwback would be appropriate today because I am officially on the brink of adulthood. Today is my last day of being 20 years old and I thought the best way to celebrate would be a trip into my childhood. I have memories of sitting in my grade 7 classroom, reading this book after I had finished an exam and was waiting for the rest of the class to finish. After about 10 minutes I had to put the book away because I was snort laughing and disturbing the poor kids trying to concentrate on their exam.

When I was 15 or 16, I was reading them in class again and my constant laughing peaked the interest of my friends. I lent the book to various people in my grade and I love the idea of  my (now quite worn) copy going from backpack to backpack and spreading it’s humour to those around me. By the end of high school, I had dog-eared the pages that made me laugh the most, so I could prepare myself for them whilst reading. Although, to be honest, I knew most of the book by heart at that point.

It had been a while since I had last read it, but I just got home after my third year of university and the first thing I wanted to do was read this book again. It has so many happy memories for me, and as usual, it didn’t fail in making me giggle uncontrollably. I know that I will be carrying this book with me wherever my life takes me, because no matter what may happen, I know it will always cheer me up.

Writing a bad review!

If you type “badly written book review” into Google, one of the first things that comes up is Fifty Shade of Grey, simply because Google picked up key words. Such as ‘badly written book‘.

I feel that doing a review on a book that I strongly disliked would be a change of pace that might be good for me. Plus it is part of my ‘Reading Like A Writer‘ assignment to write about the work of others that I find ‘abysmal’ and this is definitely more relevant than what I mentioned in last week’s post.

When the Fifty Shades books first came out, I made it my mission in life to read them. My theory was that I couldn’t say terrible things about them unless I read them and could prove how terrible they were. And they really were awful. This may not be completely relevant to my copyediting career dreams, but I must say that if I were E.L. James’ copyeditor I would have done something to make these books less of a train smash.

I read the first book in the trilogy (which I borrowed from a friend because there was no way I was spending money on those books) while I was travelling overseas to London and New York in July of 2012. I soon found myself ashamed to take out the book on the plane or on any bus or train (or anywhere public at all really). This was not because I didn’t want people to judge me for reading a book that is so openly raunchy; it was because almost every second person at the airport, or on any public transport wherever I went, seemed to have the book open in front of them. The idea of conforming to what every other person across the world seemed to be doing horrified me. However, I convinced myself that I had to get through it or I couldn’t openly judge it, so I settled for reading it at the hotel, where no one could see me.