Skip to main content

Through the Scrambled Looking Glass

The apple on the cover of Twilight tempted. John saw that it was pleasant to the eye and good for reading so he took it from the shelf and waited until a dark hour (because vampire books are best when opened after midnight) and he read through the nights until he was pale and dark purple circles grew under his eyes. Because the first bite was addicting, he passed the forbidden fruit to me and returned to the shelf of knowledge and plucked the sequential drivel, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn.

When everyone else has turned in for the night, we flick on our flashlights and dive into the next chapter. And we wonder why. These books are pathetic. Trashy romance at its finest. Bella swoons. She bleeds. She breathes. She forgets to breathe. Edward breathes. His icy breath brushes her lips. He is stone. She a helpless disaster. This is a short story bloated into thousands of pages and we must read them all.

We read on our respective sofas and every once in a while I burst out into an impromptu reading with over-the-top-dramatics and excessive sighing.

“Edward, I know who I can’t live without.”
“But…”
I shook my head. “You don’t understand. You may be brave enough or strong enough to live without me, if that’s what’s best. But I could never be that self-sacrificing. I have to be with you. It’s the only way I can live.

The juicy parts can make you tear up if they are read aloud. Tear up because you’re laughing ‘til you can’t breathe.

John comes in the kitchen and lays a rock on the counter, “Look, Mom. It’s Edward.” We double over, gasping and holding our sides while the rest of the family looks around for our marbles. We’re pathetic.

John is almost through the final book. (Thank goodness. The end is in sight.) He’s named it Breaking Down because, well, that’s what happens. The characters fret and sigh and carry on for long enough to put the reader into a coma. John devised a plan to avoid that pitfall. When the melodrama threatens to overwhelm, he reads through a kaleidoscope.


If you use this trick, "Edward, don't you know that I love you." turns into "I don't know that I love you, Edward" Surprise! Maybe Bella does possess an ounce of common sense. I wonder if there is a market for this. (Do you know any books that might be improved using John's secret decoder method?)

In short, I don’t know how we got hooked but we’re having a one heck of a time with the clueless Miss B. Maybe Edward’s deadly hazardous venom can cross over into the real world. If so, count us among the hapless victims.

Comments

Maren said…
I read the first two and didn't understand the attraction, but my girls love them and their friends are all crazy for them. I guess there's something...Happy reading!:)
LOL! That is so funny. I haven't read the books, but I often find books that are overhyped tend to be not very well written. Not always, but it seems that the population in general is being fed "literature" that is dumbed down. Glad to see that I'm not the only one who sees the ridiculousness of some of the current writing!

I love John's solution!!
Xandra
Anonymous said…
I'm laughing because I was so annoyed at Bella in the books that I kept putting them down and saying I refused to finish the book, but then I'd pick it back up and finish it. Then I'd say I refused to buy the next one, and then I went out and got it! Even though she annoyed me so much, the series was addicting!
Mary@notbefore7 said…
I haven't read them, but my friend keeps telling me to. She and all of her kiddos got hooked as well. Maybe...
Alana said…
I have this one, but haven't read it yet!

Popular posts from this blog

The Child's Story Bible

I have recommended the following book so frequently that I think a post is in order so that I may recommend it to the world. In the early nineteen hundreds, when my grandparents were growing from children to adults, when they were meeting and marrying and making ends meet during the Depression, Catherine F. Vos was at work. She had been out shopping, looking for the perfect children’s story bible. The Christian bookstores of the day must have had the same unsatisfactory fare for young children that they carry today. Her standards were high as she was the wife of a professor of theology and she could not find what she was looking for. So she started to write. The results of her writing, The Child’s Story Bible was first published in stages between the years of 1934-1936. It’s been republished in every decade since that time. My grandparents had my parents and they met and married and had me and somewhere along the way I acquired a Bible. I read from the book of Proverbs from time to t

A Sure Foundation

The kids and I have been nibbling our way through the book of Isaiah for months. It's our first venture as a family into the prophets. We wrestle with the message. It's a book for our times. Isaiah wrote to his people, the people of Judah, at the dawn of a long season of international turmoil. Assyria ran rough shod over the Middle East, followed in quick succession by Babylon, Persia and Greece. According to Isaiah, each empire was brought down because of they were quick to gloat over their achievements but failed to give God the time of day. The sin of haughty eyes he calls it. I brown the meat and simmer the stew and slice a crusty loaf of Italian bread but do not bow my head before I eat. It's the little red hen complex. I ground the wheat and kneaded the dough and sliced the carrots. I don't take into account that I didn't make the carrots or the wheat grow. I forget to be thankful that there are groceries in the pantry and healthy children around the table.

Notes From the Road

Stuart* just returned home from a month long business trip.  These are clips of Facebook entries and emails home, pieced together to recreate his big adventure.      Calling home while on safari in South Africa. Mongolia It is 3AM here in Mongolia and we just checked in at the hotel in Erdenet. So, if my calculations are correct, it took me 45 hours of travel to get here from the time I left the house. The last six hours were a fairly torturous car ride up into the mountains. I wouldn't hesitate to say that the very best stretch of road that we were on was equivalent to the very worst road that you can think of in PA. There ain't no sleeping in the car while riding here! Most of the ride was fairly teeth rattling. I was correct that, as soon as we left the capital city, I lost cell phone coverage and we never passed through another town. We did stop at a little outpost to pick up drinks and a snack. I will call it an outpost, rather than a rest area for several reaso