Your book nerd checking in.

I was at Target last night with my cousin and suddenly decided that I absolutely could not live for ONE MORE DAY without reading the Twilight book. I am a firm believer in reading the book before I see the movie. This comes in handy since I've seen about three movies in three years - I have plenty of time. But it looks like a pretty quick read, so I decided to pick it up. Kate and I got to talking about what this Twilight "phenomenon" is, however, and I started thinking. It's not really the "next Harry Potter" - it seems to have a slightly older audience and this thing begins when they're teenagers. It's also not really the next Ann Rice - it's way more "normal" than that and it seems to be way lighter in tone than Interview with the Vampire. It also doesn't seem to be the next Sweet Valley High, but OHMYGOSH Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield SERIOUSLY need to make a comeback into my life. That bitch Lila Fowler just NEEDS someone to teach her a LESSON. And a couple of super-sleuthing blonde twins would be the PERFECT ones to do it.

Yes, in case you can't tell, I was a capital-R Reader growing up. Those "Reading Incentive" sheets where you had to read for 15 minutes a day to get an invite to the pizza party at the end of the month? Yeah, my mom stopped making me keep track and just signed it without times on it. We weren't allowed to watch TV on school nights - seriously, I was EIGHTEEN before I saw my first permitted episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 - and so I read like crazy. I would venture to guess that I learned more about the birds and the bees through VC Andrews, The Baby-Sitters Club and Judy Blume than from my actual parents. Thank God. Eww.

But I digress. Best I can compare the Twilight book with?

Christopher Pike. Oh yes, we remember him. The one who basically paved the way for I Know What You Did Last Summer and the Scream trilogy. You started to read the book, and you were usually halfway convinced that it was a ghost or some monster that was chasing after the heroine, who was that awkward-and-just-wants-to-fit-in-and-usually-named-Jamie-or-something-slightly-cool-but-unassuming. Then at the end it was that drifter who came by her house around page 12, and the popular-and-cute-but-doesn't-like-it-when-his-fellow-jocks-are-so-jocky-because-he's-secretly-really-smart-and-doesn't-need-the-extra-math-help-that-Jamie-tutors-him-for ends up saving the day. They end up presumably dating and the mean girl gets in trouble for breaking curfew.

Okay not really a direct comparison to Twilight, but the character development still seems to be the same. Stay tuned. If I can get through the first quarter of the book, I'll update you soon.

PS - I got this idea from a friend of mine. Not necessarily for this book per se, but would anyone be interested in doing some sort of Book Club blog? What we can do is all be contributors for it, and there's some sort of questions that go along with the book. At the end, we all post our reactions to it. I generally detest going to the book clubs where it ends up being 10 people sitting in a circle, all of whom don't want to be there, and half didn't read the book. This way you only have to post if you read it and want to talk about it, and we can abbreviate the posts so that people who didn't read it can spare themselves the spoilers. Any takers?