Unnecessarily Harsh?

Am I being unnecessarily harsh in my criticism of the Twilight series? Probably. As one of my daughters pointed out to me this morning, bad writing is nothing new. There have been horribly written books in the past. And she was right when she said that 10 years from now no one will much remember these awful books. Just a few die hard fans.

And who knows, the movie may be good enough that more of the books will be made into movies. I understand that Stephanie Meyer is not writing the movies, and unless they decide to go with some awful voice over narration type of thing the movie won't all be from Bella's point of view. Blessed relief! Bella is so boring and self centered, and her internal dialog is all about how Edward looks, so it is painful to read.

As you may have guessed, I don't much care for Bella, and really spent much of the first book hoping one of the vampires would indeed kill her. I know that is harsh, and not very nice of me, but there you have it.

Throughout all four of the books (okay, 3 and one quarter books) I kept hoping for something more. But every time there was a character or story line worth pursuing in more depth I was disappointed. More background on the vampire family that did not glorify or trivialize them? Nope. A more fulfilling relationship between Bella and Charlie? Any type of relationship between Bella and Charlie for that matter? Nope. Jacob coming to terms with the profound way his life changes and is no longer his own? Nope.

I have not bothered to read any fan fiction relating to this series of books, but one can only hope that somewhere out there, a writer with ability took Meyer's half hearted (arsed?) attempts at story telling and wrote a version of this story arc that approaches the potential that it truly has.

Perhaps when Meyer writes things from Edward's point of view (as I understand she has threatened to do) she will be able to tell the story in a better way. Hopefully the characters will not be as boring and flat as they are in the current series.

I'm glad that I took the opportunity to read theTwilight books, so that I could talk about them with my girls. I feel bad for all of the girls who are reading them without an adult to mitigate the negative influences. I'm also glad that my girls were able to recognize most of the flaws of these books on their own. That they believe they have worth outside of a man. That they know love is not stalking or obsession and that 17 is not nearly mature enough to know what love really feels like. That they have read enough well written "fun" books, and true works of literature that they could recognize these books for what they are. It has been fun to share thoughts about all of this with them. It also makes me wonder what other awful things I've let slip through as a parent...