why is everyone obsessed with twilight? its a good book but.........

so basically thats my question. i know that the Edward character is completely beyond AMAZING, and Bella is the perfect person for him. I like the series and will not trash it or whatever, but WHY IS EVERYONE SOOOO OBSESSED?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's a social movement. Besides which, like you said, it's a good book. People like good books, and when your friends are reading it, so do you.

I like it because it's a nice fluffy story. I didn't think I would like it but my sister recommended it to me. I read the first book and couldn't put it down.

So in a way it is kind of a social movement for me. My sister was the one that showed it to me and my friend let me borrow her copy of it. Then I got my other sister and mom hooked on it.

I have no earthly clue why people are so obsessed and I have no problem trashing it because I think it's a horrible, awful book :)

I read the whole series coz some friends lent them to me, and I thought the book was just ok, maybe coz I'm a man and it was written specially for women by a woman I didn't like it that much. Maybe people are obsessed with it because it has a lot of romance without being pornographic or explicit, and because the whole book was based on Edward/Bella's love, but that's just my opinion.

Once something becomes a media darling, the popularity feeds on itself. When people see the lines, the screaming girls, the cameras, they think they should be part of what "everybody else" is into.

It's ok to see what all the hoohaw is about, but make your own decisions, don't let the media make them for you.

Something needed to fill the sucking void of the Potter series.

Why was anybody obsessed with Harry Potter? Elvis? New Kids on the Block? Star Wars?

And I can't understand why someone would feel the need to trash it. There are plenty of books everyone seems to love and I find moronic, but it doesn't fill a need in me to "trash" it or disparage the people who like them.

And I also really love Twilight.

Yeah I agree with Annie.

There are plenty of books I don't like that are still popular. I don't like reading The Lord of the Rings, but I'm not trashing it and saying it's horrible.

I made my own decision about liking Twilight. My friends and family led me to read it and my own personal interests led me to like it. Me liking the book had nothing to do with media. Media just led me to it.

>4 bluesalamanders:
Agreed. Pretty awful.

Lord of the Rings: horrible.

I didn't especially like LotR, but I do think that that Tolkien fellow knew how to string words together. He created powerful imagery, interesting characters, and a vast mythology.

There is absolutely no comparison between that and the weak writing, vapid characters, boring world, and utterly pointless story of Twilight.

I will also point out that the reason people - myself included- feel the need to point out the flaws of Twilight is because so many people feel the need to constantly point out what they consider its strong points. Over, and over, and over, the way Bella talks about Edward's looks, uncreatively and repeating the same words, again and again and again.

There is absolutely no comparison between that and the weak writing, vapid characters, boring world, and utterly pointless story of Twilight.

This is true.

Over, and over, and over, the way Bella talks about Edward's looks, uncreatively and repeating the same words, again and again and again.

But he SPARKLES!

14 Lola

I've heard that in the movie it's more like a sort of pale shimmer *snicker*

Yeah, pale shimmer is probably easier to sell. I am serious. Look for Twilight foundations in a drugstore near you!

But now I'll desist with my Twilight-hatering. I think I forgot what it's like to be thirteen.

16: I think that's exactly why so many people don't like it. They don't remember being 13, or even 17, the age Bella is. Meyer does remember and not only does she know what the kids want, but she knows how they think. She can speak to them. And it's not vapid.

I've already broken my resolution to not get involved in The Argument, but I'll stop now. :)

I think that's exactly why so many people don't like it. They don't remember being 13, or even 17, the age Bella is.
Or maybe they do, and that's exactly why they don't like it. ;)

I would have seriously despised Twilight at 17. Thirteen was about the age when I found I couldn't read trash anymore, simply through ever-increasing habit of real literature. I'm not disputing the obvious fact that people are deriving pleasure from these books, nor do I begrudge it. But it's terrible writing, with a questionable message.

What I meant is that I may have forgotten that hunger for romance early in our lives, when we first awaken to the world. That is what burnishes and ennobles so much of what we later discover to be artistically or philosophically worthless.

If I thought Twilight was actually engendering a "social movement," in the traditional sense of that term, I'd be pretty disturbed. It's a pop phenomenon, that's all.

#13- Who are you to judge? Why is it up to you to decide what's worthy and what isn't? And maybe that's the point, that they aren't comparable, they are just different books. That doesn't mean they can't both suck for different reasons. People aren't reading Twilight and thinking Stephanie Meyer is the next James Joyce or William Faulkner. They are reading it because it is a good story and good entertainment and maybe they can relate to it.

That is your opinion, that doesn't mean it's true. And again, I don't understand such hatred for a book. Have you read it? Why not just let the people that like it enjoy it and let it go? I remember hearing so many people talk about the DaVinci Code. When ASKED I would tell them it wasn't my kind of book, but I didn't feel the need to spill out all the reasons that it's worthless and pointless and trash it.

And I've never found a book "pointless". It is getting millions of girls to read. It is a story that is bringing together mothers and daughters. Even the teenage boys I work with are reading these books. If it has reached so many people and entertained so many, how is that pointless?

Looks like the "Don't say anything bad ever about Harry Potter" crowd has redirected their devotion.

Lots of people hate the books I love. I deal with it.

No not really, but thanks for the comment. I just don't see the point in constantly bashing a book for no reason. So you don't like it, so what? What's the point of ragging on people that do and trashing it as pointless and unworthy? There are plently of books I don't like. I don't feel the need to constantly remind people that I hate them and they are stupid for liking them.

And yeah, Lord of the Rings sucked.

"stupid for liking them"

Can't find that said anywhere in this topic.

I didn't say that there was. Thank you for your opinions. And I'm very impressed that you "deal with it".

>21 HelloAnnie: - This will always happen. And that's why I'm always reminded of a quote from Nick Hornby:

The thing that puzzles me about those who feel that contemporary pop (and I use the word to encompass soul, reggae, country, rock - anything and everything that might be regarded as trashy) is beneath them, or behind them, or beyond them - some preposition denoting distance, anyway: Does this mean that you never hear, or at least never enjoy, new songs, that everything you whistle or hum was written years, decades, centuries ago? Do you really deny yourselves the pleasure of mastering a tune (a pleasure, incidentally, that your generation is perhaps the first in the history of mankind to forgo) because you are afraid it might make you look as if you don’t know who Harold Bloom is? Wow. I’ll bet you’re fun at parties.

I just keep it tucked in the back of my mind - it always makes me smile because it really applies to everything - music, books, movies, television...

EDIT, small format error fixed.

27- I like that a lot. Very true. I don't like the implication that because you might enjoy Harry Potter or Twilight you are somehow less of a reader or intellect. I hate book snobbery!

I find it funny how topics that start out questioning popular books (that is how the thread was started) end up with fans of the book feeling personally slighted that others who have read the books have the nerve to voice opinions.

Seems inevitable that these threads end up this way.

I find it ironic and funny that you are taking it way. But that is your opinion and not the way it necessarily is. I am a fan of the book, I don't feel "personally slighted" as you say, that someone "had the nerve to voice opinions." I don't think too many people on here have trouble voicing their extreme opinions.

And I think the point of the thread was that the person liked the book but wondered about the level of obsession.

This thread started out with the question "Why is everyone obsessed with Twilight?"

Somehow people changed the obsession thing to completely trashing the book.

This topic started out with just "its media" blah blah blah. Then people say "I don't like the book" okay thats fine.
But then completely trashing the book is just childish.

People also spend a lot of time trashing books that are written for kids/young adults, which irritates me as a teacher. I am offended when someone calls a book "pointless" when I see that it has gotten a girl in my class to start reading. It was the first book she ever finished. She finished the entire series and has moved on to other books and now always has a book with her. When a book has touched so many people how can that possibly be "pointless"?

33 I agree with you. It's not pointless. I don't like Harry Potter (but like the movies heh), and I don't think I'd like Twilight either (did a 15 minute flick through of a copy, not my thing) but its, as you say, getting people to read. That's a good thing. Honestly, what I read didn't strike me as vapid per se, but more along the lines of simple and uncomplicated - both in terms of the writing, and the storyline. Which, a lot of the time, I like in the books I read. I just don't like vampire fiction. Never have, never will.

Its not a question of it being just for teens either (which I don't think anyone has specifically really said here, but...just in case) - it's the universal love story with a difference. It uses popular motifs, and a popular framework, to encapsulate that universal love story. When I was 15 I was reading Danielle Steele novels. Geez, I loved those books. All told the same story in different ways, and I couldn't get enough of them. They're gone now as I've matured and my tastes have changed drastically. I remember them with fond nostalgia, although I think, on the face of it, Ms Steele is a fairly crappy writer, who perhaps writes by rote to churn them out.

#27:
So to paraphrase Hornsby's argument, "people who listen to only classical music (or old rock music?) are pretentious fuddy-duddies." Doesn't strike me as a much better argument than "people who listen to only popular music are empty-headed sheeple." Both statements are silly generalizations that gloss over a multitude of different motivations that people have for listening to one or the other.

>35 Medellia: Not at all. It's a quote from Songbook which is basically his shameless love letter to Pop Songs that he's loved. They're essays on things he was doing, moments in his life, big and small and a whole series of other things and the pop songs that were stuck in his head at the time.

He's saying that anything can matter. In fact, his point about the classical music is that it was the pop music of the day. So that attempting to state that you're above pop music by saying you only listen to Mozart is actually even sillier than pop music because you're probably listening to the pop-iest of the pop music of the day if you think about it...

Well, and the jab at Harold Bloom is specifically a put-down aimed at the wet-blankets that will interrupt the energetic conversation at a party where a group is excitedly talking about something - and the person has to say something like, "life is far too short to spend their time on something so common and low." If you've read a Harold Bloom criticism on any popular author, it makes more sense.

#36: This is all off-topic, I know, but I think I feel argumentative today. ;)

Is he saying that anything can matter to someone, or that anything should be able to matter to anyone? Because if the latter, this is a guy who said this about classical music:
"I dislike {classical music} (or, at least, I'm unaffected by it) because it sounds churchy, and because, to my ears at least, it can't deal with the smaller feelings that constitute a day and a week and a life, and because there are no backing vocals or bass lines or guitar solos, and because a lot of people who profess to like it actually don't really like any music . . . at all, and because it does not possess the ability to make me feel."

In fact, his point about the classical music is that it was the pop music of the day.
This argument has always struck me as nonsense. The popular music in Mozart's day was not Mozart; it was tavern songs and dance tunes--the music played in pubs and at fairs. (If the classical music of yore was pop music, what is the classical music of today?)

Full disclosure probably requires me to admit that there's likely some part of me that wants to stand up for pretentious classical music snobs (though I believe they're a minority among classical music lovers). As a living composer, these Harold Bloom types are the people who put food on my table... :)

>37 Medellia: Basically, if you get into it, especially with music, you find he "stuck in your head" songs. Think of the ones you can hum over and over - these generally make you feel something. This happens with pop music all the time.

We complain about having a song "stuck" in our head, but let's face it, it's largely a shared experience. And as much as we might call someone "evil" for putting a song in our head, it's usually said with smiles. Because we generally like having things in common with other people. That's basically what Hornby is getting at - he's celebrating the pop music because of the shared experience. When you open up the likelihood of the shared experience and pop music, the definition of pop music gets huge.

The Harold Bloom model (he's undeniably smart, but also an intellectual snob of the highest order) favors intellectually superior work period. Which isn't a problem in and of itself - the problem only comes in when you're attempting to talk about the superiority of your particular POV by slamming the "opposition." In this model, you're now listening to music that's rarely heard outside of critics circles, the odds of shared experience goes down, so no song to get stuck in your conversation partner's head at the merest mention of a few lyrics or the humming of a few bars. This is when you tend to get the music snobs that have no problem telling a room full of people what kind of awful tripe a certain kind of music is - and they tend to say this about pop music a lot.

Which is what this thread reminded me of the Hornby quote. After all - isn't Twighlight about the shared experience as much as it is about reading the book? Sure, Against the Day is the superior book, but is it the same shared experience?

:)

#38: Ha--the "shared experience" argument for pop music didn't immediately occur to me, given the startling percentage of the time that I have no idea what people are talking about when they mention a particular band or song. (There's a reason I told my profs at my last university that I didn't think having me TA History of Rock would be a good idea. Told a friend of mine that if it happened I'd have to have her on speed dial: "Okay, there's a student asking about a guy named John Lemon. Or Lennon. Something. Who's that?!" ;)

21 HelloAnnie

I am a reader. That's who I am to judge. I am an intelligent person who has read many books with good writing, bad writing, and indifferent writing, so I've learned to tell the difference. I have also read lots of discussions about the series, both for and against. And, by the way, I have also read the books themselves. I am not one of those people who will sit there and say things about a book they've never read, thank you very much.

You don't have to agree with me, but don't you try to tell me I'm not qualified to judge a book I've read.

>39 Medellia: Oh, I'm sure it's not that bad! =)

And let's just say that Hornby's book is what got me out of my eye-rolling, "oh you listen to that?" ways and got me to appreciate a lot of what I'd supposedly been missing in the name of "better."

While the Bloom's of this world would have us aspire to this salon-dwelling experience of yore that may or may not have really existed, I think that there's much to be said for balancing the greater shared experiences against narrower pursuits.

At the very least, isn't it that broader experience that drives us to a passion that gives us the more refined? :)

this was my first time posting a thread and it's interesting to see how everyone responded. im a big reader, but enjoy focusing more on classics, and history, and only read twilight because of it's immense popularity. it was fine, but oh well. im not obsessed with it at all, but why does everyone feel the need to trash it endlessly?

:) it's a good book, so deal with it. if you ever write a book that becomes more widespread than twilight, then feel free to trash it.

People did not "trash it endlessly" (in fact, until you posted, the thread had ended!). Why do people feel the need to defend it endlessly? Witter on about it endlessly? And why, tell me this, do they feel it necessary to say that anyone who says they don't care for it or points out the slightest flaw is trashing it?

fangurlz are vicious, eh?

I'm a 29 year old middle school teacher. I would hardly qualify myself as a fangirl. I described an opinion differing from yours. That doesn't make me vicious. It just means I disagree with you. You can't write off everyone who disagrees with you as a vicious fangirl.

And number #43, am I the person to whom you are referring? I just don't agree in calling a book "pointless" particularly when you aren't exactly the intended target for readership. I didn't accuse someone of trashing it when they pointed out the slightest flaw. I would hardly say that you simply stated you didn't care for it and was attacked.

Hm...reading comprehension must be low due to turkey overload...where exactly did I state my differing opinion to yours? And where exactly did I mention you at all? Defensive much?

Not defensive, and not stupid (or to quote you, I don't have low reading comprehension). But those are always good arguments when someone disagrees with you...or wait.....

I was a defender of the book, therefore I must be one of those vicious fangirls of which you spoke.

I think perhaps a remedial course would be in order. my posts in their entirety up to the point where you strangely called me out as your own personal smiter -

#7
Something needed to fill the sucking void of the Potter series.

#44
fangurlz are vicious, eh?

Do you have a Bizzaro World dictionary or something? Where do you get anything about reading comprehension or stupidity in this except possibly your own posts?

Do you want to tone down the personal attacks here? Take it down a level.

You say, "Hm...reading comprehension must be low due to turkey overload". This could be taken to read that your reading comprehension is low or your readers is. It is the Internet. Obviously what you say can be taken different ways if you are not clear.

Way to deflect...hey you are an Internet pro!

Obviously, fan girls are not the only ones who are vicious.

*sigh* I think its time again:

Oh come on...can't a gurl have a bit of fun on a dreary Monday? Heh. Vicious. Oy vey. Too funny. Ok then...I'll take my flail and be off. Have fun duckies.

sorry, people. i didnt mean the "trashing endlessly" bit. but oh well........

anyways, so how did the series become so popular? what about a cheesy vampire romance is so attractive? i dont even know why i like it............althought the last book was kinda....eh....not my favorite.

Please!!!! Does it really matter why people like it? There's no real violence in it and there's no over-the-top sex scenes. Students like to read it and it's encouraging them to read. That's what's important. THEY ARE READING!!!!!

sheesh......defensive much???

you are a teacher, aren't you??

>27 stephmo:, Haha, that's a great quote. Especially the end. Who doesn't love a little Harold Bloom bashing? :)

As a recent reader of the Twilight series who tried before to read the first book and just couldn't, basically for all the reasons cited previously - the not-so-great writing style, the somewhat questionable message, the constant commentary on how beautiful Edward is, Bella's complete inability to function without him & her constant need to be saved by him, and the fact that the books could have used a serious edit (like some of the later Potter books....), I think it all comes down to one's natural proclivities for things and one's mood at the time. I don't know why I can suddenly not only tolerate, but actually enjoy these books all of the sudden, but I find them a nice distraction when I'm feeling sick and tired of all the heavy reading I've been doing for professional/academic reasons.

I think one reason that there is such a backlash against books like this series or the Harry Potter series - which I also ended up reading, after HUGE resistance, when I was sick (recovering from appendicitis) and not able to digest anything remotely serious - is because some fans of the books become rapid in their obsession. I know one of the biggest turn-offs for me with the Twilight books was the proliferation of groups on LT devoted to talking about how gorgeous Edward was. I didn't seek them out, they just overwhelmed the "All Topics" view for a while until I found them all and systematically marked "ignore."