The Twilight Saga

I am a bit of a Twi-hard. I hopped on the bandwagon pretty much the moment I started hearing about the "amazing books by Stephanie Meyer." I happened to be going on a trip to Colorado to visit my girlfriend Kelly and so I picked up the first book. I had no time to read during our visit, but she had the second book New Moon and let me take it with me. While waiting for my flight back to Minneapolis, it was delayed and so I started to read. By the time I actually got onto my flight (2 hours late) I was over half way through the book. It was THAT good. I think I nodded a hello to the person sitting next to me and that was about it because the town of Forks and its inhabitants had me hook, line and sinker.

After finishing Twilight I dove right into New Moon. The romance of Twilight is definitely NOT present in this book so as I was reading it it was kind of a real downer of a book. Don't get me wrong, in hindsight this book is completely relevant and necessary to develop the strong bond between Jacob and Bella, but at the time I was a bit let down. Friends who had read it and were now on to the third installment(Eclipse) told me to have faith and I will most definitely be surprised. Which of course I was after reading Eclipse and the final book Breaking Dawn which basically comes full circle.

I do not believe that there has ever been a series of books that has captured my attention the way this series has. Sure, I was all about Christopher Pike books as a pre-teen and I owned hundreds of them, but the way that these books are written reach something deep inside that I think that most of us can relate to or aspire to on some type of level.

I have watched the movie Twilight many times. It never gets old. I could probably watch it three times a day and enjoy every bloody, creepy, edge of your seat moment. When New Moon was about to come out, I decided to re-read the book. It had been over a year since I finished the books and I felt like I wanted to be on the same page(pun intended). The movie was so similar to the book that I could finish lines of characters in the movie. I loved the movie and the day it came out we got it. The second movie had a much larger budget and a different director. The movie was definitely filmed better...but the story was still the same. It had a huge cliff hanger moment but it was basically a filler movie. So, when I hear people gripe about how the movie "sucked" I simply shake my head and say that in the scheme of the 4 book saga, the second book sucked, but again it was neccessary. Not to mention, two of those people who didn't like the movie also have not read the books(my point exactly).

With the announcement of Eclipse to hit the theatres on June 30th, I immediately started re-reading the book. Eclipse is the third book and it is large and very involved. There are a lot of things going on in the book and I found myself re-reading paragraphs trying to make sure that I have all the facts down. I adored this book. It brings everything and everyone together to fight a common enemy. I also got invited to a friends house for an evening of The Twilight Saga. We are going to watch both movies back to back, have some popcorn and chit chat about the movie. I was elated to get the invite and I simply cannot wait for Saturday! As dorky as this sounds, it's true.

I was reading in my EW magazine last week and came across a delightful piece of information. Stephenie Meyer has written a book that is kind of a companion piece or spin off of Eclipse. It is called "The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner." Bree is one of Victoria's newborn vampires who along with Riley were created by Victoria to seek revenge on Bella. You can read the book online for free at breetanner.com. Little things like this, along with the trailers for the movie get me so excited that I can hardly stand it.

So, who out there is a fan of Twilight? What was your favorite book out of the series? Is anyone as nuts about these books as I am? Let me know! See you on June 30th at the theatres!