Early, very early (maybe too early) this morning, I read a great article written by Kim Voynarover at Cinematical regarding the "Breaking Dawn" backlash that I mentioned yesterday.

I considered simply posting this on Twitter but I thought it might be of interest to others who may be curious about the developing situation and who don't follow me or read Cinematical regularly. It's an interesting read, one that I agree with nearly 100% and Kim brings up and expands on a few of my thougths. Definitely worth checking out.

Sunday afternoon I devoted 2 solid hours of my day to "reading time", something I haven't done in a few months. With a stack of DVD's sitting on the coffee table, I curled up instead with a blanket and the last 300 pages of Stephenie Meyer's "Breaking Dawn".

I wasn't going to write anything extensive about the book, mostly because it was brain candy, but after reading something about the backlash for the book, I thought it may be worthwile to add my two cents. One of the reasons the "Twilight" series has been so popular has been the fact that it features an epic romance. It has nothing on Diana Gabaldon's Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall romance (now that's epic romance right there) but there's a certain innocence in Bella and Edward's relationship and the "can't have that" threads that run through the first three books are what really kept me interested. I always assumed it was just good storytelling - an impossible love - but I was not surprised to find out later, much later infact, that Meyer is very religious and thinking back to the novels, it was clear that she was purposefully keeping things relatively clean.

The other selling point was the female protagonist though to be honest, Bella stood out to me as someone girls would latch on to. She was awkward and sensitive and managed to get the perfect guy which could have some appeal to girls but other than that, she seemed a bit too meek for me - if I want to read about strong young women I'll turn to Tamora Pierce, so it didn't surprise me much when in "Breaking Dawn", Bella comes across much the same way as she did in the previous books: needy. Surprisingly, Meyer also infuses her with a streak of intelligence and power. Not a bad thing: we all have secret powers if we only know how to tap into them.

What I didn't expect was that people would latch onto the pregnancy part of the story so darn much. So yes, there is a clear anti-abortion message here but is that necessarily a bad thing? Could one not argue that it's pro-choice since Bella chose to continue carrying the baby? Worse still, do we really want to ruin a perfectly good and innocent story by looking into it this deeply? Depending on which side of the fence you're on, you could argue the series from both sides of the fence - there's plenty of fodder for both, but is that really necessary? I don't think it is.

Because I don't agree with the backlash, doesn't mean I absolutely loved the book. Yes, it kept me enthralled for a few hours and I loved re-entering the Cullen's lives but to be honest, the story took a turn I wasn't expecting and didn't much like. I preferred the danger of Bella and Edward's relationship. Take out the danger and I pretty much didn't care anymore. The entire thing became about the pregnancy and the resulting baby and to be honest, I didn't much care. I would have rather followed Alice and Jasper on their search but I'll take what I can get.

I still haven't managed to get through "The Host", it simply didn't suck me in like "Twilight" did and to be honest, I have a sad little feeling that Meyer will be unable to write anything worthwile outside of Twilight Series. I can see a few more not-so-well received books being pumped out before she decides to return to the Cullen's. Until then, I'm sure I'll find something else of interest - "Uglies" has come highly recommended and "Zombie Blondes" sounds interesting. I also have 2 bookshelves crammed with material...

I read something yesterday which really surprised me. I knew that Stephenie Meyer's closing to the so-called "Twilight Saga" would be a big seller but I'm not sure anyone expected it to sell quite this well. In fact, there were so many pre-orders that the publisher printed a second run of 500,000 books before the launch on Saturday. What really blew my mind were some numbers I read over at Scifi Wire regarding the sales of this in comparison to the last Harry Potter. According to the numbers, "Breaking Dawn" sold 1.3 million copies in the 24 hour period after it's release at 12:01 on Saturday morning. Loads right? Peanuts in com parison to Rowling's megaton bomb "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" which sold 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours in the United States alone. Holy mother. That's a truckload of books. Rowling is the Spielberg of the book world. I haven't looked at the numbers but I'm willing to guess that the only other book to even rival Rowling's domination is the Bible.

My search for the book was a bit of a disaster. I started off on Saturday morning at Costco who had all of the other books in the series (I nearly re-bought them all - I'll have to do that next weekend) but not the new one. Wal-Mart didn't have them either. I spent the afternoon out and about so I didn't have a chance to stop anywhere else. I knew I was in trouble when I spotted a little girl of about 14, at Ridgestock holding the book. I made a bit of a scene with hubby, more as a joke than anything else.

I did manage to finally lay my hands on the book on Sunday morning when Cuz and I met hubby out at the car show in Coquitlam. There was a Chapters accross the street with an entire wall of books so I managed to pick-up my copy. I've been trying very hard to be reasonable about the reading schedule so I haven't been staying up late or anything but I have been overlooking things like DVD's and podcasts. I'll get to that at some point next week.

In the meantime, I have some thoughts about the book so far. There will be some ****MAJOR**** spoilers after the picture so if you plan on reading the book, you may want to skip the rest of this.

• Bella and Edward are married
• Bella and Edward have had sex (this is where the imagination comes into play since Meyer gives you very little - she's good that way)
• Bella is pregnant
• Bella is dying
• Jacob has left the pack

Ummmmm, where the heck is she going with this?!?! I'm not confused but I'm anxious to find out what happens next. *sigh* it's a few hours before lunch which means a few hours before I get back to it.

As expected, the long weekend was wall to wall chalk full of action and adventure.

My thwarted plans were slightly appeased when hubby took me to the Chinese market in Chinatown. It's much, much smaller than Richmond but I managed to get a case for my phone which was exactly what I was looking for so that worked out quite well.

Saturday turned into a gong show of a day with tons of running around including an appearance in Surrey at a party being thrown by one of the local LX Group members in prep for the car show on Sunday. I was soooo bored, I Twittered my way through the party.

We made a quick getaway and headed to Ridgestock 2008. We were completely unprepared with no chairs, blankets or drinks and I was insanely bored for 20 minutes but once the band started, things picked up a little. Sadly, the band kept taking long, drawn out breaks and as it started to get colder, I started thinking I'd rather be at home. I took this short video in between sets:


Things went a little better on Sunday. Hubby headed out to a car show in the morning and I met up with my cousin who volunteered to take me to run some errands. I felt bad about it so rather than drive me around, I asked him if he'd be interested in going to the car show. We ended up heading over to see hubby who was in surprised shock when we showed up. It was a pretty small show but it was still fun and I've posted the photos at the usual place. I managed to find the time to head across the street to Chapters where I picked up my shiny new copy of "Breaking Dawn".


After that, we headed out to sis' place for swimming and dinner. After a few glorious hours in the warm pool, we had a fabulous dinner and after mom and dad left, the drinking started. The night included a whole load of alcohol, night swimming and a 4AM bedtime. I managed to roll out of bed at 11AM on Monday, went for a hop in the pool and then onto the sidelines with my book for a few hours of reading. For the most part, I simply spent time in the pool. It was a fabulous 2 days.

Little sis, the brother-in-law-to-be and the kids (the dogs - the little one is MIA from the picture) were excellent hosts. We'll have to do it again before the summer is out!

I just had the ultimate fangirl moment.

I knew I was looking forward to seeing Twilight but to be honest, I didn't know just how much. I'd totally forgotten about the "sneak preview" attached to Penelope...and then I saw it and woohoo....it actually is a very short clip of actual acting and wow, it was pretty good - actually...really good!

Along with that tinsy clip, I still need to get myself together to head to thew bookstore to  pick up my copy of "Breaking Dawn".

It almost feels like an all "Twilight" day...

I *should* have known but I didn't. Shortly after I finished reading Stephenie Meyer's trilogy, I took all three massive books to a Bookcrossing Meetup where vanbiohazard took them home. I didn't think twice about it at the time but I can't tell you the amount of times I've kicked myself since then. I should have kept them and damned it, now I don't have them to refer back to. I just never knew this entire Bella/Edward story would blow up the way it has.

"Breaking Dawn" is due out a bit later this year (59 days and counting) but clicking around Meyer's site, I found a link to "Midnight Sun" which is essentially Edward's take on "Twilight". Now that's mighty interesting. The pdf to the first chapter is here but I don't want to read it until I have the original to compare it to. You know what that means right? Looks like I'll be dropping some money on the book. A second time. *sigh*