Twilight- Preface and Chapter One.
I know everyone and their mothers online are doing this, but I'm rather determined to read this book and finish it without ruining my little brother's hearing by yelling about how awful it is.
You don't have to read these bits and they won't be everyday or anything.
Sorry if you like Twilight- I'll probably shred it. But in a nice, polite way. Mostly.
Covering the Preface:
I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me.
OK, I'm not an English major. I haven't written anything worth reading in years. But I read this sentence over and over again, but "pleasantly" does NOT fit. It doesn't fit at all.
The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me. OK, hunters don't saunter. Hunters creep, crawl, approach delicately. Why would a hunter smile in a friendly way, for that matter? If someone was going to kill you, they wouldn't smile in a friendly manner.
I might be nitpicking a bit, but this sentence is what really threw me off when I first tried to read this book.
CHAPTER ONE-
At the very beginning of the book we are informed of the weather and what our dear protagonist Bella Swan is wearing and that her "carry-on item was a parka."
I don't give a fuck. I'm sorry, but that's not the way to start a first chapter. You start it with "They went to see the Mark of Zorro and then got shot in an alleyway."
OK, that's Batman, but the point stands. Telling me that she's on the airport with a parka is so... drab.
The next issue is with how she describes her mother- "loving, erratic, harebrained mother" and "she had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got lost,"
Really? Your mother is that pathetic? How did she get gas in the car before you were old enough to grasp the pump? Why would she run away from Forks, Washington with a baby that was only a few months old and survive all on her very own without your premier guidance?
Holy fuck, even Anakin Skywalker didn't look down on Obi Wan this fucking much.
Next is how awkwardly her father, Charlie Swan (she calls her father by his first name in her head!), behaves around her. I'm sorry, but if you've been regularly hanging out with your kid for a few months out of the year, you should be able to be relaxed around her. Also, if poor, suffering Bella had to hang out with her father for a summer, how on God's green earth did her mother manage to LIIIIIIIIVE?
There's a bit where she complains about him buying her a truck, but this sentence really made me confused- "No need to add that my being happy in Forks is an impossibility. He didn't need to suffer along with me."
Now, Bella very clearly tells you she made the decision to go to Forks against her mother and to the added confusion of what appears to be a bumbling father. Why would she go to a place when both her parents said she didn't have to and it would be more annoying considering she's halfway through high school and should be looking at college applications and taking her PSATs?
My issue so far is with Bella's FAILlogic.
Bella then complains about rain and things being green (here I thought people liked green things, but hey, whatever), and then mentions a communal bathroom in her house.
... Does Mrs. Meyer know what a communal bathroom is? That's where lots of families living in one building share one bathroom.
It's not communal if it's there's only one bathroom in your house and there are only two people. It's just a bathroom you have to share with your dad.
Next, Bella muses on how freakishly pale she is and on how she'll never fit into a place that is apparently stuck in perpetual shadow because everyone must be tan as hell.
Bella comments that to Charlie, the police office is his wife and child- ignoring the fact that his wife and child abandoned him several years earlier, following with "he never got over mom". I think I will be forever confused.
She complains about the rain, the plainness of buildings, and wonders why there aren't metal detectors at school in a fit of nostalgia.
Her surprise at the warmth of the office also surprises me. Why would that surprise you? Do people not like to be warm?
More confusion- she went to a low income school in Phoenix, but there were Mercedes' and Porsches? And no one jacked those cars? I would jack them, and I'm the furthest thing from a criminal. Anyway, the best car here is a Volvo, which makes me wonder- don't any of these people have Volkswagens? Those cars are awful cute~
Bella continues through school, relieved to find that black is still in fashion (why is this a surprise? Every teenage in America has a black jacket).
Apparently the lives of the children of Forks are so bloody lackluster that they must crane their heads to gawk at the new girl. Bella is then unappreciative of a helpful classmate named Eric, who she classifies as "a gangly boy with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick" who is also a chess club type (what is wrong with chess? Those people a brilliant, motherfucker!). While he very obviously shows interest in her she finds his attentions irritating.
She was dreading being hated at school and when a person is helpful, she rejects it. I'm so damn confused. She also never has to use a map, because the children of Forks High are kind enough to help her out.
Or are hoping that if she likes them, when her father catches them throwing a kegger she'll bail them out.
Also, are there midgets? Bella mentions a girl who is several inches shorter than her 5'4", which would make this girl really short for a junior in high school.
Then she goes to lunch and sees the Cullens and we get the most detail so far in the book. There is sparing detail on everyone else (even Bella, who is the main character) but she seems to detail them down to the fingernails. And mentions that they're all inhumanly beautiful, yet no one seems to notice or care about them.
A girl named Jessica (whose name Bella has difficulty recalling, for all that it's a common name) names all of the Cullens- Edward, Emmet, Rosalie, Jasper, and Alice. Bella comments that those are old sounding names- which confused me (again) because the only name that sounds old is Jasper.
Bella finds Jessica's shock of the Cullens dating each other to be amusing for a small town. I don't know why the shock is funny to her because the inter-family dating, even though they're all adopted, is WEIRD AS FUCK.
Bella then goes to biology, has Edward Cullen act all repulsed, and then meets the pleasant, "baby-faced" Mike, who is from California.
He apparently understands her love for sun, but I somehow want to know WHERE in California he's from, because if he's from the Sierra's, sun isn't all that common.
Why does everyone assume that California is all surf and sun when it's the 3rd largest state in the Union?
Anyway, Edward trying to transfer out of Biology is apparently so terribly insulting to her that despite the kindness of everyone else in the school, this makes her cry like a baby.
FINAL THOUGHTS: This does not bode well. Bella is not inspiring and is very confusing.
You don't have to read these bits and they won't be everyday or anything.
Sorry if you like Twilight- I'll probably shred it. But in a nice, polite way. Mostly.
Covering the Preface:
I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me.
OK, I'm not an English major. I haven't written anything worth reading in years. But I read this sentence over and over again, but "pleasantly" does NOT fit. It doesn't fit at all.
The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me. OK, hunters don't saunter. Hunters creep, crawl, approach delicately. Why would a hunter smile in a friendly way, for that matter? If someone was going to kill you, they wouldn't smile in a friendly manner.
I might be nitpicking a bit, but this sentence is what really threw me off when I first tried to read this book.
CHAPTER ONE-
At the very beginning of the book we are informed of the weather and what our dear protagonist Bella Swan is wearing and that her "carry-on item was a parka."
I don't give a fuck. I'm sorry, but that's not the way to start a first chapter. You start it with "They went to see the Mark of Zorro and then got shot in an alleyway."
OK, that's Batman, but the point stands. Telling me that she's on the airport with a parka is so... drab.
The next issue is with how she describes her mother- "loving, erratic, harebrained mother" and "she had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got lost,"
Really? Your mother is that pathetic? How did she get gas in the car before you were old enough to grasp the pump? Why would she run away from Forks, Washington with a baby that was only a few months old and survive all on her very own without your premier guidance?
Holy fuck, even Anakin Skywalker didn't look down on Obi Wan this fucking much.
Next is how awkwardly her father, Charlie Swan (she calls her father by his first name in her head!), behaves around her. I'm sorry, but if you've been regularly hanging out with your kid for a few months out of the year, you should be able to be relaxed around her. Also, if poor, suffering Bella had to hang out with her father for a summer, how on God's green earth did her mother manage to LIIIIIIIIVE?
There's a bit where she complains about him buying her a truck, but this sentence really made me confused- "No need to add that my being happy in Forks is an impossibility. He didn't need to suffer along with me."
Now, Bella very clearly tells you she made the decision to go to Forks against her mother and to the added confusion of what appears to be a bumbling father. Why would she go to a place when both her parents said she didn't have to and it would be more annoying considering she's halfway through high school and should be looking at college applications and taking her PSATs?
My issue so far is with Bella's FAILlogic.
Bella then complains about rain and things being green (here I thought people liked green things, but hey, whatever), and then mentions a communal bathroom in her house.
... Does Mrs. Meyer know what a communal bathroom is? That's where lots of families living in one building share one bathroom.
It's not communal if it's there's only one bathroom in your house and there are only two people. It's just a bathroom you have to share with your dad.
Next, Bella muses on how freakishly pale she is and on how she'll never fit into a place that is apparently stuck in perpetual shadow because everyone must be tan as hell.
Bella comments that to Charlie, the police office is his wife and child- ignoring the fact that his wife and child abandoned him several years earlier, following with "he never got over mom". I think I will be forever confused.
She complains about the rain, the plainness of buildings, and wonders why there aren't metal detectors at school in a fit of nostalgia.
Her surprise at the warmth of the office also surprises me. Why would that surprise you? Do people not like to be warm?
More confusion- she went to a low income school in Phoenix, but there were Mercedes' and Porsches? And no one jacked those cars? I would jack them, and I'm the furthest thing from a criminal. Anyway, the best car here is a Volvo, which makes me wonder- don't any of these people have Volkswagens? Those cars are awful cute~
Bella continues through school, relieved to find that black is still in fashion (why is this a surprise? Every teenage in America has a black jacket).
Apparently the lives of the children of Forks are so bloody lackluster that they must crane their heads to gawk at the new girl. Bella is then unappreciative of a helpful classmate named Eric, who she classifies as "a gangly boy with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick" who is also a chess club type (what is wrong with chess? Those people a brilliant, motherfucker!). While he very obviously shows interest in her she finds his attentions irritating.
She was dreading being hated at school and when a person is helpful, she rejects it. I'm so damn confused. She also never has to use a map, because the children of Forks High are kind enough to help her out.
Or are hoping that if she likes them, when her father catches them throwing a kegger she'll bail them out.
Also, are there midgets? Bella mentions a girl who is several inches shorter than her 5'4", which would make this girl really short for a junior in high school.
Then she goes to lunch and sees the Cullens and we get the most detail so far in the book. There is sparing detail on everyone else (even Bella, who is the main character) but she seems to detail them down to the fingernails. And mentions that they're all inhumanly beautiful, yet no one seems to notice or care about them.
A girl named Jessica (whose name Bella has difficulty recalling, for all that it's a common name) names all of the Cullens- Edward, Emmet, Rosalie, Jasper, and Alice. Bella comments that those are old sounding names- which confused me (again) because the only name that sounds old is Jasper.
Bella finds Jessica's shock of the Cullens dating each other to be amusing for a small town. I don't know why the shock is funny to her because the inter-family dating, even though they're all adopted, is WEIRD AS FUCK.
Bella then goes to biology, has Edward Cullen act all repulsed, and then meets the pleasant, "baby-faced" Mike, who is from California.
He apparently understands her love for sun, but I somehow want to know WHERE in California he's from, because if he's from the Sierra's, sun isn't all that common.
Why does everyone assume that California is all surf and sun when it's the 3rd largest state in the Union?
Anyway, Edward trying to transfer out of Biology is apparently so terribly insulting to her that despite the kindness of everyone else in the school, this makes her cry like a baby.
FINAL THOUGHTS: This does not bode well. Bella is not inspiring and is very confusing.