Mike's Review of Twilight

Which he listened to as a book on tape, as he is constantly listening to books. This is a dictation of his rant to me. Unfortunately, he can rant faster than I can type.

That was lame. Nothing happened in that book. Trash. It wasn't even as good as the trash I read in middle school. Makes Maniac Magee look like High Art.

It was really not interesting. It was boring and the resolution was unsatisfying. You don't even see the villian defeated. It all happens offstage because she probably didn't have enough ability to write an action scene. I don't even know what happened to the villian. For all I know, they took him outside and gave him a stern talking to. Most of the other characters just fell out of the story. That annoys me.

Even I could kick that vampire's butt. He makes Spiderman look like a self-assured ladies man. Ooo, I'm so dangerous and conflicted but you've tamed me. I want to eat you but I know I'm bad for you. It just ends up being one big teenage sex fantasy.

I was trying to enjoy it the whole way through, but it left me so unfulfilled at the end. Her two big problems in life are that she's bad at badminton and she's too embarrassed to dance to go to prom, even though four boys have asked her. What a tragically misunderstood teenage heroine.

The only thing that maintains plausability in the novel is that Edward, who really likes her, is constantly pointing out how stupid she is, so it fends off readers' objections. I don't think I could read another Twilight book because I couldn't bear to listen to her go on for 300 more pages about how god-like Edward is and how sweet his breath is. I pushed through it hoping I would eventually get to something other than "ooo, I'm so bad and dangerous" and "ooo, he's so god-like and beautiful and I'm swooning over him." It's not even clear why they like each other, other than that (from his perspective) he's 125 and she's 17 and he likes the way she smells (pretty creepy if you think about it). And (from her perspective) he's sooooo beautiful and soooo handsome and soooo god-like and soooo sterotypically aloof and mercurial and mysterious and conflicted and soooo running around with his shirt off so she can feel his (literally) rock hard pecs. And there was no pay-off. There's nothing worth slogging through all that crap for.

Peter Pan, though, is already great and I'm only 20 minutes into it.

Mike came into the ice cream store tonight rocking his MP3 player. One of his young, hip employees said, "Hey, what are you rockin' to tonight?" Mike said, "Peter Pan." Young, hip employee laughed and said, "No, really, what are you listening to?" "Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. It's a classic," cute hubby said. "Mike, you are the essence of cool," young employee astutely stated.