Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Of Vampires and Werewolves

I started reading Twilight at Anne's suggestion. She was right, it is the ideal book to read while in the throes of early motherhood. It's absorbing enough to keep you awake during various feedings even while on codine! And, it's light enough that you can follow the basic plot points in your sleep deprived, codine happy state. However, it is so much more. It's actually literary crack...

The basic premise is that Bella falls in love with a vampire (Edward) who has a strong desire to devour her but by the power of twu love, he can resist. Over the next 2 books (the last one comes out this Saturday), they suffer separation of epic angst and Edward is forced to manfully defend his virginity. There aren't a ton of books that have managed to suck me in quite so wonderfully. Harry Potter, of course, managed quite nicely but before that there was the Outlander series. It lost some of it's hold when I found myself thinking "Damn, abducted by pirates again!" However, Outlander is ideal if you find yourself moving, without children, to a place you know no one, have no transportation and need to supervise movers, wait for cable guys, etc. It's now one of those series' that I will always read the next book but I can wait to get it from the library until it gets marked down at Books-a-Million.

Anyway, on to the point of the post. So, in the second book (New Moon), it comes out that Bella's soul mate- not true love, but soul mate- is a werewolf. Now, there are a good hunk of fans that hate Jacob (aforementioned soulmate). But, I found myself thinking that I would much rather a werewolf than a vampire. I found this to be the case in the Sookie Stackhouse books as well (another fabulous read- they are great bathtub books). I couldn't figure out why for some time until I realized that my preferences in supernatural partners seems to come down entirely to the issue of body temperature. I hate to be cold and the idea of cuddling up to a cold guy apparently goes against the grain for me. I would much rather have my own personal space heater. Unfortunately, in the third book (Eclipse) Jacob gets a little too Alpha Male stupid for me and I'm stuck realizing that my self-insertion is apparently screwed as I'm not out of male protagonists to long for but there we are.

1 comment:

Anne said...

do you have the 4th book on preorder like me or will you be standing in line at the barnes and noble at midnight? :)