by Riley MacDonell

Created on: September 26, 2009   Last Updated: September 27, 2009

Twilight: it's the latest, greatest, vampire sensation that's sweeping the nation, or at least that's what everyone has been telling me. I'll admit it, I've read the books - all four of them - and I've even seen the movie. Now I don't know how many hundreds of thousands, or millions even, have read the books and seen the movie, but I'm under the impression that at least ninety-five percent of said book readers and film viewers have fallen in love with the whole franchise. They belong to either Team Edward or Team Jacob. They swoon just at the thought of Edward Cullen and plaster their walls with every picture of the character cut out of every teen magazine imaginable. They can't even begin to imagine a world without this worldwide phenomenon. Okay, so maybe most fans don't go quite so far as that, but the whole you get the picture.

I am the exception. Unlike most Twilight readers out there, I am no fan of the series. I never have been, I currently am not, nor will I ever be. That's not to say that I hated everything there is about reading it; if that had been the case then I just would have stopped altogether. You see, my co-workers finagled me into reading the series and, having nothing better to do during the few hours of downtime at work each day, I skeptically complied.

Twilight was a quick and easy read because it was made to be read by teeny-bopper girls, targeting the pre-teen to teen age group the hardest. Of course now that it has caught on everybody and their mother seem to have read the series, or at least part of it, but primarily it was meant for young teenaged girls. That most likely explains why there is no real extensive depth to the storyline; this is no Slaughterhouse-Five or Brave New World. This is the kind of book that you could pick up at a kiosk in an airport, begin reading after the whole safety spiel is done by the flight attendants on the airplane and have finished by the time you have reached your destination (assuming your flight isn't only a few cities away that is). It leaves you feeling accomplished: having read a four hundred and thirty-four page book is nothing to scoff about, even if the content of said book is rather questionable as far as literary masterpieces goes.

Now, there is a pretty decent crowd of Twilight (and Stephenie Meyer) haters out there who not only criticize and condemn the Twilight book series but also the writing skills of the author. I don't run with that crowd. Sure, you'll be disappointed if you're expecting

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