The Friday Five
1) What is your favorite orange colored food?
2)What’s the best way to drink orange juice?
3) Which orange colored candy’s pieces taste the best?
4) What are your feelings about orange soda?
5) When did you last wear an orange item of clothing?
Ok, you caught me. This is another post about Twilight. I can’t help it.
So this morning I woke up and checked my phone like I always do. A twitter message had come in.
First off, please excuse my husband’s glaring typo.
But at that moment a light bulb turned on for me. I’ve been kind if struggling with the fact that I seem to be more than a little obsessed with the Twilight saga. It was an uncomfortable feeling, because there’s nothing that I’m really fangirl about. Well until now. As I said last time, I devoured the books. Life was kind of put on hold while I tore through the pages. Now that that’s over, I’m going back through and picking up a lot of things I didn’t catch the first time around.
So anyhow, the epiphany.
Twilight is to me what WoW is to others.
Like Star Trek
Like Second Life
Like Star Wars
It’s something that clicked with me, that I love, and it doesn’t matter that I’m crazy over it. I’m no different from anyone else who’s a big fan of something.
Jason jokingly asked me if we should book my ticket to TwilightCon09. Wiseguy, that husband of mine. I wouldn’t go that far, yet. 
What I’m trying to say is that there’s no reason I should be bothered because I’m so into the story. So what, I’m ok with it.
And just because I think he’s completely delicious…
yum
I really have no idea how this happened. One night I’m reading before bed like normal. The next thing I know, I can’t think of anything except reading. I don’t want to eat, I don’t want to sleep, I want to be left alone to read read read.
I’m a very causal reader. Most of the time, I have a book at my bedside. A lot of nights, I’ll hop in bed and read through a chapter of whatever the current crime fiction novel is I’m reading at the time. If I’m lucky, it’s a Rain novel by Berry Eisler or maybe even a Lucas Davenport or Virgil Flowers novel by John Sandford. Those are easily my favorite characters to read about. Or were, anyway.
Let me tell you what I don’t do. I don’t jump on literary band wagons. I’ve never read through an entire Harry Potter book. I had 2 of them in my posession at one time, but when it was clear I would never actually read them, I sent them off to goodwill. I even had the audio book for the Gobblet of Fire and started it. Never got through it. I did read through Lord of the Rings a while ago before that was the cool thing to do just because the first movie was coming out.
I’m big on the series format. I love following a character through his or her many adventures.
And then there was Twilight. I’d heard about these books, but not until the release of Breaking Dawn. Blogs were buzzing about this book and to be honest, I had no idea what the heck they were even talking about. Then one day my oldest child came home with a thick book in her hand. I looked at her baffled because she hates to read, and the fact that she was holding a book that was 498 pages long, and she intended to read the whole thing had me totally confused.
Then there was the movie. “OMG, MOM! I HAVE TO GO!!!” She plotted and schemed with her friends, asking us to get the movie tickets early so she’s be certain she had her. I collected her friend and we headed off to the theater where she’d be meeting some girlfriends and a very brave parent. You could feel the electricity in the car, the building excitement. I didn’t get it.
I had never intended to read Twilight. It feel under one of those bandwagon things to me. Everyone was talking about the series like raving lunatics. I just didn’t get it. Then one day my dear friend Kelly asked if I wanted to read it. I was just finishing up a book and said, sure bring it over. I guess I’ll give it a go. It started casually, like the rest of my books. A chapter here, a chapter there a few nights later. And then something happened. I didn’t want to wait until that night to read. I read whenever I had a free minute to spare. This story that is aimed at teen girls had me completey entralled. I couldn’t put it down. As I was nearing the end, I realized I HAD to get the next book. But that wouldn’t do, there was more and I knew I’d have to read that too. I got New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn all on the same day. There was no way I was going to finish one without having the others at the ready.
I’ve never read through so many pages in such an incredibly short time. I feel like I was in some kind of haze and I couldn’t do anything besides read. When I wasn’t reading, I was anxious. I needed to be reading! It was like this weird fog I was living in and not much else mattered to me but getting to the end of Breaking Dawn.
I finished it last night and of course the ending was the way it was supposed to be, and for that I’m glad. It was satisfying. And as I closed the cover, the air cleared and I felt as if the fog lifted. I’ve never in my life been so obsessed with a book(s) ever. It was weird. I’m so glad that’s the end of it too. If I had another book to go, I might go completely nuts.
I do plan to read through Twilight one more time. But this time there’s no urgency. I know what’s going to happen. I don’t need to rush through. I just want to go full circle. From beginning to end to beginning again. To see how far the characters have come. But this time, I have no doubt it’ll be like I usually do. A chapter or two before I to sleep. No rush, no urgency, no fog.
This has gone around the internet a few times and I thought I’d put Photo Booth to work and see what happens.
Jen
And Jess. Hilarious.
In all fairness, I did this last night, but we left before I had a chance to post it. And yes, those are glasses. Little $1 readers (+1.25) from the Target dollar bin, and so so necessary. *sigh* I’m getting old.
If you want to play along…