Best This Nonsense is the Worst (featuring Surprise Twist Ending)

I can't remember, did I ever blog about how I "read" (listened) to Twilight last year?

When I work I have to listen to things, or else I'll lose my mind. Last fall I decided I'd listen to Twilight, write down everything dumb about it, and then make a blog post where I really stuck it to Twilight.

I know, original.

But the funny thing was . . . I got sucked into it. By the time Bella got her truck, I was with them. Don't know how it happened, can't explain it, but I was entertained. Not entertained greatly, but kept at a state enough above "not entertained at all" for me to look forward to listening to it each day (for the few days it took).

And eventually I watched the movie, I watched it on my iPod, and I think that was the best way to watch it. The perfect venue. Tiny. And I appreciated its low production values, if Twilight is going to be a movie, then it should definitely be a B movie. But I was a little irked by differences between the book and movie (I'm just a stickler) and Bella's house and dad didn't look anything like I imagined them while reading. But I had already been trained to imagine Bella as Kristin Stewart, that was useful.

Anyway, time passes and a couple weeks ago I think, "Hmmm, maybe it's time to 'read' (listen to) New Moon." So I did.

New Moon was so stupid. That book, it was so stupid. I was never with it like I was with Twilight. I felt like I was watching Dora the Explorer because I constantly wanted to yell what to do at Bella.

Things I wrote in my notebook while listening to New Moon.

• Does Bella really have a hole in her chest? She talks about it so literally, constantly.
• It is good this book are written in first-person, a third-person narrator would get so fed up with nonsense and this dumb girl and just quit before the story was done.
• And Bella sure can narrate the heck out of her story. Was this thing written in present-tense? I can't remember. But, like, she falls into the ocean and is swept away in the current and she has, like, five pages of thoughts about that before she is rescued by an iron bar.
• SURPRISE! Spoiler Alert! The iron bar is JACOB'S ARM!
• What flight attendant ever asked people not to keep their voices down on an airplane? I have to ask Cher if she's ever done this. Especially if they're having a secret vampire conversation.
• Also, when the Girl Vampire (names have already been forgotten!) is like "Shhh! Bella, don't talk about vampires here on the airplane in public!" You know what? That's not necessary because NO ONE BELIEVES IN VAMPIRES! If I heard two girls on an airplane talking about rescuing a vampire before he sparkles in public I would not think "Oh my gosh! There are really vampires!" I would think "These girls are making up a story" or "Dumb."
  
• Girl Vampire bribes a guard with a thick wad of thousand dollar bills. THERE ARE NO THOUSAND DOLLAR BILLS, DUMMY! (better said: the thousand dollar bill has not been in circulation since 1969) also YOU ARE IN ITALY, VAMPIRE GIRL. WHY ARE YOU BRIBING THE GUARD WITH THOUSAND DOLLAR BILLS? This is like those stories about people trying to use million-dollar bills with George W. Bush's face on them at Walmart. The wad of thousand dollar bills is where my brain gave up on this book. I just coasted from there.
  
• There is a vampire with the secret vampire power to see relationships?! Do you know what a terrible power would be? The power to see relationships.
• I wonder if Meyer knows what a grimace really is. Because she uses it a lot, in a lot of different ways.
• Two most popular words in this book: Probably "always" and "pale."
• This book has a vampire fist bump in it.
• In the first book, we see that vampires love baseball. In this book, we learn that they also love birthday parties.
• There is a lot of hedging in this book.
• Bella says "My heart stopped beating." No it didn't! Because then you'd be dead! I know you were being figurative, but use some figurative language!
• Speaking of hearts not beating: The vampires don't have beating hearts because they don't have blood. Okay. But the vampires breathe. Why do they breathe if they don't have blood? Ever think about that?
• At one point rain oozes down a passenger window. Gross. Water is thick in Forks.
• Bella begs and begs to be turned into an immortal vampire BUT the concept of marriage is too much of a commitment for her? Sheesh.
• Also, nothing happens in this book for so long! For such a long time Bella just misses Edward. When the audio book narrator was like, "Chapter Seven: Repetition" I thought "Really?!"
• And then there was this funny thing where, a few times, a new chapter would end with the first word of the last chapter. For example, ". . . I'm putting it to a vote. CHAPTER 24: Vote."
• Bella's voice goes up "two octaves" fairly regularly.

Also, adjectives and adverbs and vocabulary are out of control and often very redundant. Dialogue cannot be left alone, nothing is simply "said." Some examples of all of the above:

• "bunkering down"
• tires "squelching through the mud."
• "contoured comfortingly"
• "frowned in perplexity"
• ". . . asked mechanically"
• ". . . muttered resentfully"
• "the tires screaching like human screams"
• "the plane touched down with a jarring impact"
• "she eyed me speculatively, seeing the incomprehension in my face"
• "her face was chiseled from ice."
• "red flags dripping like long ribbons" I would have rather read about ribbons waving like flags in the wind.
• "the wind whooshed into me"
• "his arms spread wide, protectively in front of me"
• "Edward said conversationally"
• "I eyed the hole doubtfully"
• "glowered darkly"
• "I pursed my lips consideringly"
• "I repeated scornfully"
• "I glared at him through narrowed eyes" Isn't glaring done through widened eyes? Through narrowed eyes, you, err, glower, I think.
  

Agh! Forget it, it just goes on and on. I wish I could just leave it alone and let the obvious be obvious: this book was dumb.

BUT here's the Surprise Twist Ending!

To get the full New Moon experience I watched the movie of it Saturday night and . . . it wasn't so bad? It really showed what it means to write a screenplay. All the most stupid, most nonsensical, most counter-intuitive or redundant stuff was left out and things were actually added in to make things make more sense. I was shocked. So nice to have Bella and girl vampire fly to Italy and get to the vampire town in, like, a 25 second sequence as opposed to . . . I don't know, two or three chapters, most of which is spent with girl vampire pressing her fingers against her temples and telling Bella what Edward is doing every second as he tries to get murdered.

So . . . am I about to listen to Eclipse so I can see it in the theater? Don't know. I saw Knight and Day Saturday morning, it was just terrible and I don't think I can stand to see another summer movie, they've all just been so lame, I've given up hope and I don't want to go through this nonsense again. I'll just go to bed and wake up in 2011.