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Andhika Wijaya
read and liked
James's
review of Twilight (Twilight, #1):
"It turns out we don't need Dr. John Gray to tell us that men are from Transylvania and women are from Venus. We just need to read Stephenie Meyer books. For example, from this book we learn that the millions of women who have wolfed down the Twilight...more
It turns out we don't need Dr. John Gray to tell us that men are from Transylvania and women are from Venus. We just need to read Stephenie Meyer books. For example, from this book we learn that the millions of women who have wolfed down the Twilight series (pun intended) want men who:
1. Talk about their feelings. Either Meyer's husband is the single-most communicative male on the planet and she doesn't realize how unusual he is, or she, like most of her female readers, is using her fiction to imagine a world where men not only have deep emotions but want to admit to having them and talk about them over and over, articulating even the most subtle of their internal dramas.
2. Make them flutter. But just being a sensitive new-age kind of guy doesn't cut it. A man has to be hard-bodied, chiseled, dashing, and have eyes that pierce the soul, if not the skin (even as they never look at your chest). This book suggests that a real man makes you constantly stumble over your words, bite your lip to refrain from exclaiming adulations, and lose yourself in the sweet smell of his breath.
3. Are fiercely devoted. That a girl of no spectacular beauty, who lacks any trace of conversation skills -- whose only virtue is that she smells really yummy -- can inspire an immortal creature of godlike power and grace to alter his entire existence to serve and protect her, watching over her by night (more on that in #4). This is a woman's ultimate fantasy -- to have the perfect man, perfectly devoted, for no good reason at all.
4. Want them so bad that they won't take them. This, alas, is the most transparent aspect of this book's appeal. It speaks volumes about the differences between men and women to have so many women toss their bodice-ripping romances aside in order to read how a feral man with otherworldly physical desires can contain his passion and lust out of his pure and perfect love for his beloved. It says that women really do wish they could have it both ways, to be an object of lust and devotion at once, to fulfill a man's desire without actually slaking his thirst for her. To have a man watch you sleep and not want to have even a little peek under the covers -- now that's hot fantasy for today's woman who is otherwise told on a regular basis that to be her best self she has to enage in casual and risky sexual behavior.
To see just what an indulgent fantasy this book is, just imagine the male-centric version of Twilight, in which a troubled teen boy moves to a small town to find the hottest girl in town is a vampiress. Such a book would be about 100 pages long (all the unnecessary internal dialogue would be removed). No one would talk except to comment on the awesome size of, um, one's videogame library. The vampiress would be simple: relatively dumb, incredibly hot, wearing almost nothing, and with no expectations of her man but drawn to him only by the smell of his gym bag. She wouldn't hold herself back from trying to bite her intended, but would get so distracted with his bedroom technique that she would never get around to it.
We would laugh at such a book (in fact, we know it would never be a book since men don't read; it would be a movie, and it would be a smash summer hit called American Vam-Pie-er, I'll start the screenplay right away). Somehow, when this story is told in a similarly indulgent female-centric vein, we don't reject it, but sympathize with it. I believe this is because women get to indulge in their fantasies so rarely outside of Jane Austen novels while men are surrounded with theirs. So far I have yet see spam email inviting one to "read hot things devoted husbands would say to their wives" or "see pictures of hunks promising not to get nasty out of respect for their women" or "buy this purple pill so you can stay up late and share your feelings -- seven times in one night!." So hats off to Stephenie Meyer for figuring out what it is that women really want and giving it to them.
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UPDATE, April 2009: Someone has finally done it, someone has created a "Men are from Transylvania, Women are from Forks" guide to love and relationships based on the Twilight books. If you've read and enjoyed this review, you might appreciate the book, which I review here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/51795903(less)
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Andhika Wijaya
read and liked
James's
review of Eclipse (Twilight, #3):
""You gave it three stars?" she asked me, biting her lip and holding her breath.
"Yes," I finally answered with my marble lips, cold yet strangely comforting, even warm. "Stephenie, don't forget to breathe."
...more
"You gave it three stars?" she asked me, biting her lip and holding her breath.
"Yes," I finally answered with my marble lips, cold yet strangely comforting, even warm. "Stephenie, don't forget to breathe."
"Oh, of course." A storm seemed to rage in her for just a moment.
"I gave it a three. It's good." I would never lie to her, could never lie to her. Yet, somehow, she felt it was a lie and brooded in stillness for a moment that seemed to last an eternity.
Finally, I broke the aching silence. "I gave it a three because the vampire lore was that good -- the extended plotline and the setup for a decent fourth novel were all enjoyable." There, I said it. Would it be enough for her? No, it would never be enough.
"But you absolutely hated the tent scene with the [spoiler removed], and you wanted to send Bella straight to vampire hell for her self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-obsessed self-ness by the end."
We paused and I noticed sobs erupting from deep inside her.
"Stephenie, breathe, and stop biting your lip, it's getting really annoying. Quit with the crying already. Yes, all of those things are true, and if I could release myself from your books, I would. But-"
"But?" she asked longlingly, her fingers caressing my face while my fingers caressed her face and somebody else's fingers were somehow caressing both our faces because you can never have too much face-caressing going on -- whose fingers are those, anyway?
"But despite how much I hate Bella by now, I really want to find out more about the Volturi and the process of becoming a vampire and whether Bella is somehow part of an ancient bloodline that stirs up all the vampires and werewolves whenever she's around. That's why I gave it three stars, and that's why-" I gasped, she gasped, we both forgot to breathe and bit our lips, "-why I will be reading the fourth book as soon as it is out."
Finally, I remembered to breathe and stopped caressing her face, looked into her eyes and with my godlike, cool, marble lips, asked, "Satisfied?"
Smiling, she answered, "Yes, very."
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Note from James: It has been fun to have so many engaging comments from people who have enjoyed this review. It has been received well by Twilight fans and foes alike. If you like this one, you will probably also get a kick out of my original review of Book 1: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/264... Enjoy!
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