I am always up for quality Young Adult lit. I love Harry Potter (although it is flawed - Hermione hardly got to kick any butt at the end, ok...tangent!), and Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series is the BEST. Oh, and UnLunDun rocked. Right now I have The True Meaning of Smeckday on my night stand. Anyway. So we recently rented Penelope (very cute modern fairy tale) and one of the features was a preview of the Twilight movie. I only watched the first 20 seconds because I could tell it wasn't going to a very Amelie-appropriate place. I've also been hearing about this series from the internet, in Comic Con coverage, and in my Borders e-mails. I was going to check it out, first, literally, from the library, and then since the waiting list is months long, from my BOMC2 subscription. I had added it to the queue (it's like Netflix for books) but not to the top. Then this article, and these discussions that followed, convinced me to drop it. How insipid Bella sounds! I guess sometimes the Mormon housewife in an author is going to come through.
It's funny, because I did get kind of an ick vibe when I saw the teen vamp carrying the girl around like a baby in the preview, and I was looking for a good place for a dispassionate take on the whole thing. You get too many gushing reviews for something like this on Amazon. So here it is, thankfully in time to save me 10 bucks. I'll rent Buffy instead, thanks.
4 comments:
ok, here, I'm commenting.
I only recently heard of this series, and didn't have much of a desire to read it, anyway. Most "YA" books, even Harry Potter, are pretty silly, I think. Dark Materials, though, I loved. What's that other one you mentioned?
There were 2 - UnLunDun by China Mielville, reviewed on Salon here:
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2007/03/05/mieville/index.html, I still have that, I'll bring it. And The True Meaning of Smeckday. It's by Adam Rex who wrote and illustrated one of our favorite picture books, Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, which is wickedly funny and clever and the pictures are a hoot. Amelie's favorite is Godzilla Pooped on My Toyota. I just started it, but so far it's just as promising.
I read the first two books of the series and agree that Bella is no Buffy. Bella's pining over Edward is nauseating. We get it. He's perfect, you're not, but now that he loves you, you're complete. Bleh!
The weird thing is that Ross and I were in the Seattle area for vacation recently and ended up in Port Angeles near where Twilight takes place. We met a mother and daughter in the restaurant, the Bella Italia. They were in the area vacationing because of the book and because Bella and Edward have dinner there.
Doesn't anyone vacation in Sunnydale? :-)
:-) You and I went through similar processes on this one. Was enticed at first, then came the second thoughts. But thanks for mentioning that other series you liked---I will have to check it out sometime.
Hope all's well in AZ.
-Becky
Post a Comment