I first read Twilight about six months ago at the insisting of my sister. We have similar tastes in everything and I am always desperate for something to read, so despite the description of “teenage vampire love saga” I bit. And it was good! I won’t ever rank it up with favorite books or best book series ever, but the Twilight series is a fun quick escape, and that is pretty much what I am looking for when I pick up a book. Stephenie Meyer has a great imagination, and I look forward to finding out what other books she has percolating in her brain.

            Okay, for my first post I am going to talk about the first five chapters of Eclipse. This is my favorite book in the series, and I think it’s because Edward and Bella are together the whole time. No getting to know each other, no separation for 200 chapters, they are together. In my opinion, the more Edward, the better.

            The first chapter starts off with Charlie trying to make dinner. Now, Charlie is one of my least favorite characters in the series. I find it impossible that a man who lived by himself for 14 years doesn’t know how to cook spaghetti. 10 year olds can make spaghetti. I mean, I’ll let the whole vampire and werewolf thing go, but I draw the line of unfeasibility at grown men not knowing how to make simple pasta dishes!

            Anyway, Bella gets ungrounded after Charlie mutters the line, “You’re remarkable non-whiney for a teenager.” I laughed out loud at that part. Really, Charlie? Really? Just goes to show how little he knows his daughter.

            In the chapter Bella talks about how her friends at school are divided between who sits with the Cullens and who doesn’t which makes me ask the question: Why do the Cullens even go to school? Prior to Bella, they never interacted with anyone, never made friends, never even ate the food and already know all of the lessons, why go to school at all?

            Also in the first 100 pages of the book is my least favorite thing Edward does. I hate it when he disables Bella’s car when she wants to go see Jacob. It drives me insane that vampire or no, werewolf or no, that he feels he has the right to tell her who she can see. It is controlling and obnoxious and it really bugs me that Bella pretty much trips over her own clumsy feet in her haste to forgive him because she is needy and codependent. For the one sentence she shuts the window to block Edward out I had half a second to think “Good for you!” before reading the next sentence when she opens the window again. Oh, Bella. It’s okay to be angry at some one when they are overstepping their boundaries and being a chauvinistic pig.

            Another issue I have with the book is exactly why all these guys are in love with Bella. I want to like her. I really do. At least in the first book she is written as strong and intelligent, capable of making her own decisions and defending herself, but by book three she is a whiney, sniveling, codependent unable to pick up her room without getting Edward’s approval first. And Edward never satisfactorily answers why he loves her. The most we get is a thin “You don’t see yourself the way I do.” What kind of answer is that? Bella seems nice enough, but I honestly do not get what is so special about her that Edward hasn’t found it in any other woman in the last 100 years? It because he can’t read her mind and isn’t treated to the inane internal dialogue we readers get? Is it the way she smells to him? If either one of those are factors, how will it change the way he feels about her when she becomes a vampire? And a one point of the book Bells comments about how Alice and Jasper’s relationship isn’t as flamboyant as Emmett’s and Rosalie’s and my response was Wah? If it weren’t for the fact that that it is stated in black and white that any of them have relationships, I wouldn’t know it was happening. The books so focus on Edward and Bella’s affair that there really isn’t any character development for the other vampires. I have never really seen anything between the other characters to suggest affection, much less an immortal passion.

            Those are my thoughts for now. I know that it seems like I am bagging on the book. I’m really not, I really do like them. But seeing as it’s mentioned every other page that Edward is attractive I feel that is information I don’t have to discuss …