Twilight

I'm not ashamed to admit it...I read all the Twilight books.  

Not only did I read them, I inhaled them.  It was December 2008, and I was going to the Canyon Ranch spa in Arizona for a week by myself.  I started the first book on the plane down there on Saturday.  It was like crack, and I couldn't stop reading.  Here I was at this amazing world-class spa, and everywhere I went, I took my book with me.  At every meal, in between classes, while waiting for my spa treatments...I was reading.  I'm pretty sure I finished the first book that same day, started and finished the second book the next day (staying up til the wee hours of the morning to finish), and then made myself take a break from reading the books so that I could focus on relaxing at the spa.  I'm pretty sure my break lasted a day, and by Thursday I was done with all four books (for those of you who haven't read them, these are no small books we're talking about...on average they are 640 pages each).  I read 2,560 pages in six days.

Maybe because I read them so close together, or maybe because of how they're written (or some combination thereof), I was completely immersed in their world, even after I finished reading the books.  I was enamored with the characters and the world they lived in, and I wanted to live there with them.  It took quite some time for that effect to wear off.

When the first Twilight movie came out, I refused to see it.  It was such a sacred thing in my head, and I didn't want their images of the characters to replace the ones that already lived in my head.  I held out for many months, and finally watched it on DVD.  It was pretty cheesy, and couldn't quite capture things the way the book did.  Still, I was hooked, and I watched the next two movies in the theater.

Tonight Donovan and I went to see Breaking Dawn, Part 1.  This movie covers the first half of the fourth book.  So much of the fourth book takes place in Bella's head, so I was interested to see how they would capture that on film.  The reality of it is, they didn't.  The movie was entertaining enough, and imparts the basic storyline.  But to a true fan of the books, it just doesn't measure up.  The power of the fourth book is in all the internal pain, struggle and agony that Bella goes through, and a majority of that was lost in translation.  Still, they ended the movie in the perfect place and, like a true addict, I can't wait to see Part 2!  :)

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