Sarah added a quote:
"Really, all you need to become a good knitter are wool, needles, hands, and slightly below-average intelligence. Of course superior intelligence, such as yours and mine, is an advantage." — Elizabeth Zimmermann

Sarah added a quote:
"I dust a bit...in addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.

~Ignatius J. Reilly" — John Kennedy Toole

Sarah read and liked Nicole Talucci's review of New Moon (Twilight Saga, #2):

"Uhg. I read Twilight and was sorely disappointed in it, but I had heard through a series of acquaintances that this one was better--that it introduced werewolves and slightly healthier relationships.

I was deceived.

It was awfu...more Uhg. I read Twilight and was sorely disappointed in it, but I had heard through a series of acquaintances that this one was better--that it introduced werewolves and slightly healthier relationships.

I was deceived.

It was awful--not as bad as its predecessor, but still pretty bad. Right off the bat Bella is crying about how she hates her birthday and dreads aging and wants little to do with her birthday. This was a annoying to read through because I kept thinking to myself, "What teenage girl thinks this way?" Perhaps they do, but when I was a teen, I could only think of how awesome I was going to be when I got older and had more experiences.

Skip to the party. She cuts herself and a unicorn cries, she is suddenly alone on the forest floor. Her life is over now that Edward gone. For the next hundred pages or so we enter DIARY MODE, complete with day-to-day updates on how she is truly dead inside. I found myself skimming though this sickeningly pitiful section like it was a high school biology book till I got to some substance.

ENTER: JACOB (STAGE RIGHT)

A more interesting character with [short term] goals and a little bit more of a personality. Still devoid of any mannerisms, as are ALL the personnel of this series, but he's at least more dynamic. I liked him, but it was painful to see that Bella really only used him for her next "hallucination" fix. She rambles on and on for hundreds of pages talking so much about the "hole in her chest" and how it burned and itched and stung and pussed and--well, showed all the good symptoms of a bad STD--that the plot seemed to vanish beneath her pained musings and constant reminders of Edward.

The story continues along at the pace of a bike going uphill with square tires till--BAM--werewolves. This was nifty to me, having always liked werewolves with self-control and a purpose, but Meyer had no better way to describe them then "exploding." Every werewolf exploded, all the time, over nothing. It was boring at best, and even though this is painted on the walls from the first book, and used as a tool to beat you with during the introduction of Sam and his "cult," Bella is still oblivious. Once she finally realizes what’s going on, she is unphased (I guess we should have expected as much) and uninterested.

An interesting aside to this "section" of the book: They actually introduce a character that is NOT beautiful, godlike, stunning or otherwise perfect. Emily, the wife of Sam, has a horrific scar pattern stretching across her face and down her arm. "Sucks to be her," we are left to assume because she is immediately dismissed as an unimportant character and forgot about; which leads me to the last "section" of the book.

Here is where I got angry at the book. I'm not sure I've ever felt angry at a book before I read this last part. Bella is tired of waiting for her wolf-protector and decides to go cliff diving (as previously mentioned in the beginning of the book). As you might have guessed, she yet again fails miserably and nearly drowns, only to be saved yet again, but not before seeing VICTORIA--the shadowy plot device that has been loosely keeping this story together.

At this time I was thinking, "Ooooh! Finally! No more diary! We might actually have some conflict to gnaw on!"

::anger flares::

Like a stereotypical sad-teenage-boy-that-needs-to-cut-himself-for-attention, Edward runs off to Italy to kill himself. This is where I imagine Meyer had hit writers block, and decided to get her computer chair wet again by gushing over the painfully gross relationship that Bella and Edward share. She kicks Jacob and her father aside like used rags, and jet-sets out to Italy (to an airport where apparently there is no immigrations office to herd you along for a few hours getting injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected, selected and all kinds of crazy stuff), to save Edward.

One hundred pages of overdramatic swooning and crashing and hissing leads to Bella being exposed to the ugly side of vampire-lifestyle and the ultimatum that she has to become one or die. This was boring at best, with four chapters of frustrating mushy googly eyes and epiphanies that the condescending git, Edward, loves the paper-thin floozy Bella and she settles in for a marriage and a blood stained picket fence in Meyer's dress-up-game of angles and demons.(less) "