While I was waiting in a doctor’s waiting room the other day, I overheard another lady admitting (confessing, bragging?) that she had read a book over 150 times.  Any guesses as to what book she was referring to?  If you’re thinking that she was a patient mother, faithfully re-reading her young child’s latest favorite, you would be wrong.  The book that this lady had read over 150 times was Stephanie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn.  Not only that, but this lady happened to have her copy of Breaking Dawn with her, and after her confession, proceeded to commence yet another re-read, pencil in hand to underline favorite passages.

There are many books that I have re-read many times.  My Personal Classics list contains quite a few of them.  But Breaking Dawn?  150 times?  Seriously?  Now I’ve never read the book, but I have read the first one in the series–Twilight.  I found Edward to be slightly abusive and Bella to be whiny and weak.  Nothing I’ve heard or read since then leads me to believe that anything has changed for these two characters.  In fact, Wired.com had a tongue-in-cheek article entitled Top 20 Unfortunate Lessons Girls Learn From Twilight. I know that the article was intended to be funny, but it pretty accurately summed up my feelings about the series.

If you have a book that is worthy of being re-read 150 times, I’d love to hear about it, unless it’s a Twilight book, in which case I don’t want to know.  It hurts me too much to think of more reading time wasted on Edward and Bella.

2 Comments »

1. 

   I won’t tell you how many times I read it…lol 😉 You still have to have love me anyway. To be honest I only read it once BUT I loved the series. Bella is whiny and weak and Edward is controlling but I really did enjoy the love story between the two of them. The thing that bothers me about this series is that while it is a story of young love it is not a story for kids. I don’t think it belonged in the YA section. Haley is always asking to read this one and I’m not even sure I will let her read it when she is in high school let alone 5th grade.

   Comment by shannon Brouwer — December 12, 2010 @ 2:57 pm

2. 

   Of course I love you anyway. 🙂 Everyone should have their guilty pleasure series that is just fun to read. Have you read Poison Study and its sequels? It’s not exactly fine literature, but it does have a good love story too. I totally agree that 5th grade is too young to be reading the Twilight series. But by high school, you’re going to have a hard time keeping it away from her if she really wants to read it. I had the same feelings about the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. It started out with the girls in middle school, and so was appropriate for 5th/6th grade. But as the characters got older, the series got really trashy and would be completely inappropriate for fans who discovered the series in 5th grade. Don’t tell my mom (hi, Mom!), but I read lots of TRASH in high school, and somehow, came through OK. I do hope my own kids will be more discerning, but I guess we all have to learn too, right?

   Comment by rpikk — December 13, 2010 @ 4:07 pm

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