Twilight

Sometimes I read a book just to see what the buzz is all about. I remember when Twilight was published. It caught my eye because of the vampire angle. When I was younger, I tended to sink myself into one genre and stay there. I went through a horror phase, and vampires were certainly part of the attraction. I remember staying up all night to read 'Salem's Lot. Those vampires were a little off-putting, not nearly as charismatic as Barnabas Collins, a favorite in my teen years.

I haven't read horror for years. Either the writing got worse, my nerves got weaker, or my tastes just changed. But my former love of horror, and knowing my newly-turned-30 daughter got up very early to stand in line for a free Twilight tote bag made me put it on my "to-read" list.

And I'm hooked. "Sucked" in to use a bad and I'm sure very old pun by now. I find that Twilight is drawing me away from books on improving work culture, mysteries set in Minnesota, and even Heart-Shaped Box, by Joe Hill. Hill is Stephen King's son, so I know I need to read it, I've been waiting for months for the book on CD, and I'd better get at it before it's overdue.

Listening to Twilight makes me ponder one of my favorite mysteries--what makes a story compelling? It doesn't have to be great literature. It doesn't have to be life-changing. It doesn't have to be plausible. With this one, I get little nostalgic flashbacks of the angst of being a teenaged female, and all that goes with it. The romanticism of first love, although that usually seems a little more comedy than romance, looking back. Maybe it's the intensity of the feeling, the speed at which those chemicals and phernomes start vibrating.

In any case, Twilight is one of those books. And most importantly, in my view, it's one of those books for teens. Any story that can inspire so many teens to read as much as this one can gets my attention any day.