The Accidental Twi-hard

I never meant to fall in love with vampires and shape-shifting wolves from the Pacific Northwest, but it happened and now I am what is commonly know as a Twi-hard. As a woman of a ceratin age it seems silly to enjoy a book series created for people a few decades younger than I am. It all started innocently enough with checking out Twilight at the library a few years ago. I had heard some buzz about a book series for teens about kindly vampires. As an educator and parent is not rare for me to read "kiddie lit", its part of my job. A person can not recommend reading for young people if they do not know what they are recommending. Then my sister let me borrow her copies of the rest of the series. And now I shamefully admit I purchased the entire hardcover set from my favorite warehouse store. It was not suppose to go down like that, honestly. This is not the first young fiction series I have fallen in love with, and it will not be the last. I am a complete Potter-head as well (those who know me personally get the complete funny in that one). Back to the Twilight Saga. My issue with the whole franchise has been the movies, the acting is pretty bad and the movies have not done the books justice, until Eclipse. I recently braved the cost of the cinema to go see Eclipse with my young Twi-hard. I planned to be disappointed, and to eat movie popcorn with more calories and fat than I care to speak of. Alas, perhaps because my expectations were low, I ended up actually liking the movie (and the popcorn, which never disappoints). Then it occurred to me that Eclipse is probably the best book in the series. Not that the others were bad, but this book happened to develop the minor characters more fully than the previous two books. Now, instead of just having one handsome vampire to love, there is his whole family, and their back stories. The werewolves even have a folklore based back story and become more central to the whole story. Suddenly, the whole saga is less about lovesick teens and more about how people living on the fringe of society can get along. That is right, I found deeper social meaning in a Twilight movie. By the way, I tried to have a deeper meaning conversation with my young Twi-hard, lets just say she was there for the handsome vampires and werewolves. However, I no long have shame in my Twilight loving game.