Twilight

The newest phenomena to reach the US, Twilight, both the books and movies, have made a ridiculous amounts of money. The first movie made hundreds of millions, and the new movie 'New Moon' broke 5-day box office records. The books themselves have sold millions upon millions of copies.

I loathe this new fad. I had a friend who read the first book for the sole purpose of having specific reasons for why it is a terrible book, which is what everything else is based off of. I fully trust in what he has said, and have been told by other friends who are fans of the book that he is right. Virtually every facet of what the vampire mythos is, Twilight ignores. Garlic, transformation, stakes through the heart, all is non-existant. But the worst part of it all, is that when exposed to sunlight, they don't burst into flames or otherwise die or even get hurt, no, they SPARKLE!

I read a chapter or so, and the writing is terrible. It is reminiscent of the RL Stine books I loved as a kid: very simple language, easy to follow, and most importantly, written so that a child could read and follow the story-line. That is what irks me the most about this entire fad, is that the massive fan-base consists mostly of people my age. The book was obviously written for a younger audience, but somehow teenagers and their older siblings have found out about it, and blown it out of proportion. I honestly think that the only real reason that Twilight became as big as it did was because there was a vacuum that needed to be filled with the ending of the Harry Potter series.