gutsy dear, i was actually going to post this in the comment section as a response to you. but then i realized it was getting a bit long, and that i had opinions coming out of my ears about these books! so i decided to just blog about it very quickly.

so, stephenie meyer’s twilight series — i liked it, although i didn’t think i was going to at the start. started off a bit slow for me, but as i continued reading (especially through the end of the first book), i found that i couldn’t put it down.

i liked a lot of things about it, like how the author kept some parts of the vampire and werewolf mythology and tossed out others (garlic, crosses, etc) to really make them out to be the ultimate predators. definitely upped the books’ cool factor.

i also liked how the cullens were written — they were quite fascinating, even endearing. the action sequences and the sudden changes of pace every now and then were great too.

it reminded me of a very goth sweet valley high — essentially the problems are the same (dad doesn’t like boyfriend, boyfriend is overprotective, girl falls into a bad crowd, etc) but in a totally different context.

i found the love ‘bits’ a bit much, and tended to forward through them. it was actually like wuthering heights in that way, lots of pages spent on declaring passion for each other and all that. i did find that the mushy parts were useful for a bit of a slowdown before the big, set-piece, how-cool-is-that epic action parts. parang… love love blah blah and then biglang BAM! tracker vampire! vampire-werewolf dustup! newborn vampire army! yeah! rrrrawr! bring it on!

funny, while i was back in manila and marlon was alone in the flat, he saw these books in our bookshelf late at night and freaked. paano ba naman, they were lying beside my copy of william peter blatty’s the exorcist (which has such a freaky picture on its spine that i store it spine facing into the shelf) and tony perez’s spirit questors series (which i bought freshman year when doreen brought up the idea of me becoming a questor).

“what is this black book with the ghosty hands and the flower dripping blood?! why do you have such scary books?!” he demanded. “why are you bringing these things into the house!?!?!”

i think i scared him even more when i said, “what? what black book? i don’t own anything like that!” he really freaked out then. “how did it get here then?!” he practically bellowed, before vowing never to pick them up.

when i got home and saw the books in question, i realized that i’d actually borrowed them from my sister, and forgot that i did. oh well.

now i actually think he’ll find them more girly than scary. kasi naman, all the passages rhapsodizing on edward’s godlike good looks! kind of reminds me of how i would write when i was younger — all my short stories had some unbelievably handsome, sophisticated guy falling madly in love with plain old me. haha! girl’s fantasy talaga.