Tag: Stephenie Meyer

August Reading Roundup

I was all set to post this on Friday, and then the news of RBG’s death broke, and I reached levels of despair about the state of the world I haven’t felt since March. It’s hard to believe that 2020 could get any worse, but on top of the plague, huge parts of the country are literally on fire right now, I don’t even know what hurricane is hitting where at this point, and I don’t even have words to express what RBG’s death and the upcoming battle for the Supreme Court means to me, so yes, 2020 did get worse. A lot worse. To my friends affected by the fires and the floods and the plague, my thoughts are with you. Please stay safe. And for anyone feeling hopeless, there are steps we can take beyond just wringing our hands and panicking. I never wanted this blog to be about politics, but I can’t ignore the fact that our very democracy is at stake. This is the time to call your senators, donate to campaigns, volunteer, and vote, vote, vote.

But this post isn’t really about politics. It’s about books. So let’s talk about books.

Nothing major happened for me in August. I continued to stay home and work from home and take Neutron for as many walks as I can. This past week marked my one-year anniversary working at the FCC, which is really cool. I definitely feel more confident in my work than I did on day 1, but it also doesn’t feel like it’s been a whole year, probably because half of that time I’ve been at home.

Collage of the covers of the books I read in August: Midnight Sun, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, Life and Death, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, A Constellation of Roses, Uprooted, Sticks and Stones, Artemis Fowl, Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, and The Mystwick School of Musicraft.I read eleven books this August. This felt like a minor miracle to me when I counted them all up, because in case you didn’t read my whole post on Midnight Sun, I got kind of hung up on Twilight again. Two of the books I read were in Braille, which gets me up to eight Braille books a month, which means I’m back on track to reach my goal of reading twelve books in Braille this year. There wasn’t quite as much variety in what I read last month as I’ve noticed in the past few months, but I still really enjoyed most of what I read. Three of the books I read were rereads, but the rest were new to me. I read one YA contemmporary; four middle grade fantasies, one of them a mystery, and two YA fantasies; three YA paranormals; and one fantasy that I’m honestly not sure what age category it belongs to. I also got two books on the day they came out in August and just blasted through them. I haven’t done that in a long time and it was really fun. For one of those books I also got to attend a virtual launch party, and I’ll talk about that experience in a bit.

My first book of August was A Constellation of Roses by Miranda Asebedo. Tricks has been on her own and on the run from the foster care system ever since her mom abandoned her. And she’s good at being on her own, because she can steal anything she wants, and she’s never caught. When the police finally do catch up with her, she’s given a choice, prison or going to live with her father’s family in the middle of nowhere. Tricks never met her father, never knew she had other family, but they welcome her with open arms. And it turns out she’s not the only one who do magic with her hands. All the women in her new family have special, powerful talents. As you must know by now, I’m a sucker for found family stories. Throw in a pie shop and a little magic, and I’m hooked. I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend.

After that, I squeezed in the second Upside-Down Magic book, Sticks and Stones, by Sarah Mlynowski, Emily Jenkins, and Lauren Myracle. Strange things are happening at Nory’s new school, and everyone is blaming the Upside-down Magic kids. They’re even starting a petition to end the UDM program and kick the UDM kids out of school. Nory and her friends have to figure out who is trying to frame them, and working in a little kittenball wouldn’t go amiss either. This book was just as fun and delightful and full of heart as the last one. By this point I’ve read the third one too, and I can say this series is definitely going on the favorites list unless it goes, well, upside-down.

Then Midnight Sun came out and I was lost. As I’ve discussed at length over here, I loved Midnight Sun despite the many reasons I probably shouldn’t. And then, because Midnight Sun got me stuck back in the Twilight world again, I read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner and Twilight Reimagined: Life and Death, both also by Stephenie Meyer. I think I read Bree Tanner my first year of college, though I didn’t remember it until I reread it. And you know what, it was actually a lot better than I was expecting. Life and Death, though, was another matter. I was torn between hysterical laughter and utter horror as I read it. Far from demonstrating that the story would have worked if Bella was a boy, I actually feel like Life and Death made the mysogyny in the Twilight books that much worse. The two scenes in the original series that involve sexual violence against female characters are simply changed to muggings gone wrong, which is an excellent example of the idea that if the crime can be changed that easily, then it’s only a sexual crime because the victim is a woman and that’s not great. Never mind that Edythe (AKA female Edward, also I can’t get over the spelling of that name) frequently has less agency than Edward, and her inability to stay away from Beau comes across more as because she’s a girl, and I’m just going to stop here because this book made me really angry and I don’t even want to rant about it. Life and Death was an interesting experiment, I guess, but it didn’t work for me. But on the upside, it did the trick of getting me out of Twilight world for the moment.

After I read Midnight Sun, but before I read Bree Tanner and Life and Death, I spent a lot of time trying to find books that interested me enough that I wanted to read them instead of reading Twilight again. I ended up reading Uprooted by Naomi Novik. Did I pick it up because a friend described it as like Twilight for her? Yes, yes I did. But I didn’t find it to be very like Twilight for me. Every ten years, the lord of the valley, the immortal wizard called the Dragon, chooses a seventeen-year-old girl to be his servant for the next ten years. This is the price for the Dragon’s protection against the corrupted wood encroaching on the valley. Agniescka is seventeen this year, but she, like everyone else, is convinced the Dragon is going to choose her best friend, Kasia. Except, of course, he picks Agniescka. Because Agniescka has something the other village girls do not. She has the power to become a witch herself. The strongest aspects of this book for me was Agniescka discovering and grappling with the consequences of her new power and Agniescka and Kasia’s friendship. I didn’t really find all the political intrigue, epic war, and romance parts of the book all that interesting, and on the whole I felt like I was dragging myself through the book, which was unfortunate. It’s entirely possible I was still in recovery from Midnight Sun, but on the whole I’m sorry to say this isn’t a book I would recommend.

Next, I read Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer. I’ve never read these books before, and after a lot of friends telling me they were good, and a desire to be able to join in on the discourse around the new movie, I got the first one out of the library and gave it a shot. Artemis Fowl is an evil genius. Also a millionaire. And a criminal mastermind. And did I mention genius. His father has disappeared and his mother is slowly going insane from the grief of losing his father. And Artemis has concocted a plan to get his hands on some fairy gold. Only he might have bitten off a bit more than he could chew when he kidnaps the fairy lieutenant Holly Short and soon finds his house under siege. This book started out slow for me, but it picked up really quickly and on the whole was fun and engaging. I have the second book out of the library now and I can’t wait to read it.

After that, I sped through Midnight At the Barclay Hotel by Fleur T. Bradley. This was a middle grade mystery/ghost story that reminded me a lot of And Then There Were None, the one and only Agatha Christie book I’ve ever read. A whole bunch of people are invited to the Barclay Hotel in the mountains of Colorado for a weekend getaway. Twelve-year-old ghost hunting JJ tags along with his mother, and bookish Penny comes with her grandfather. JJ and Penny befriend Emma, who’s lived at the hotel her whole life. They’re all set to have a fun weekend full of cupcakes and bowling and swimming pools and of course trying to find the ghosts rumored to haunt the Barclay Hotel. But then the butler announces that the owner of the hotel, Mr. Barclay, has been murdered, and all of the adults are suspects, so the kids set out to figure out who the killer is and to prove JJ’s mom didn’t do it. This was such a fun, fast mystery with all kinds of twists and turns. I loved the characters, and the twists were exactly right for the story. This was the second book of August that I snatched up the day it came out and just sped through. (Yes, the first was Midnight Sun.) I also went to the virtual launch party Fleur Bradley held, and it was so cool to hear her talk about how to write a mystery and where the ideas for the Barclay Hotel came from. On the whole, this was a great book and I would definitely recommend.

Then I got The Mystwick School of Musicraft by Jessica Khoury from Audible. It was free with their new Audible+ thing, and I’ve had it on my wishlist for a while, so I grabbed it, and oh I loved it so so much! Amelia Jones wants only to go to Mystwick and become a maestro, basically a super high-powered magical musician, and learn about her mother, who attended Mystwick herself and whom Amelia knows very little about. But then she fails her audition in a horrible way—like she gave the maestro a very, very impressive mustache kind of way. She thinks all hope is lost, and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. But then a mix-up leads to her getting a second chance. If, after two months at Mystwick, the maestros think she’s Mystwick material, she can stay. But not only is the work harder than anything she’s ever done in her life, someone is out to get her, and something dark and sinister is closing in on Mystwick. I feel like my description of this book doesn’t do it justice, but it is absolutely fabulous. Magical music stories are right up there with found family stories and space adventures for me, so I was probably bound to love this no matter what. But I adore all the characters, and I was hooked from start to finish. It was fast and fun and full of so many feelings. And the audiobook had actual musicians playing the songs the kids were playing in the background, which made it super epic. I don’t know if there are going to be any sequels to this but I would be so so happy if Mystwick was a series.

Finally, I finished the Harry Potter series with Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. My thoughts on the books themselves haven’t changed, but finishing the series this time felt especially bittersweet to me (mostly, bitter actually). I don’t know when I’ll pick them up again. I do plan to reread them in Italian before I go back to Italy, because I need to practice and I already own them in Italian and never finished them. But I don’t know when I’m going back to Italy. The plan was this October but with Covid of course that’s not happening, and it’s not happening any time soon. Also, as she-who-must-not-be-named continues to demonstrate her despicable transphobia, I just don’t feel right rereading the books again when there are so many other books out there that are just as good and whose authors aren’t horrible people. On the other hand, Harry Potter is such a huge part of who I am—it shaped me as a reader, a writer, and a person—and I’m not ready to just let the books go. So I don’t know, and adding all those mixed feelings to the Battle of Hogwarts was a lot.

And that’s it for August. Let me know if you’ve read any of these books and what you thought of them. And of course I will always happily take more recommendations for found family, magical music, and space adventure stories.

Midnight Sun Madness

Cover of Midnight Sun by Stephenie MeyerWell, friends, I promised it was coming, and here it is: all my thoughts on Midnight Sun, the good, the bad, and the confused. I have a lot of criticism for this book, but on the whole I really enjoyed it, and my primary reaction to this is that I want more Edwardian Twilight please give me more Edwardian Twilight!

Before we go on, I just want to flag that the real Quileute tribe is currently seeking donations to move to higher ground. I’ve learned since posting my last Twilight post that a lot of people didn’t think the Quileute tribe featured in the Twilight books is in fact a real tribe. They are a real Native American tribe, living right on the water’s edge in Washington, and they are attempting to move their at risk communities to higher ground to secure the survival of their tribe. If you’re a fan of the Twilight books, or have recently purchased Midnight Sun, please consider a donation.

For those who don’t know, Midnight Sun is Twilight told from Edward Cullen’s point of view. Stephenie Meyer started the project more than twelve years ago, while she was working on the original Twilight series. But in 2008, someone leaked her unedited, unfinished draft on the internet, and she set the project aside, much to everyone’s disappointment, because what we did see was so great. I found out recently (I didn’t know it at the time) that there were rumors she had picked up the project again and it was going to be published in 2015 with the tenth anniversary edition of Twilight, except then the Fifty Shades book from the guy’s point of view came out. I never got into those books and so know literally nothing about them except they exist and started as Twilight fanfiction, and I’m going to keep it that way because I’ve gone far enough down this rabbit hole. Anyway, when that came out apparently Stephenie Meyer set Midnight Sun aside, again, and we ended up with the gender-bent Twilight book, Life and Death, which I also just recently discovered and don’t really want to talk about (but I probably will, more on that later). Which brings us to 2020. It feels like everything in the world that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong, and everything is awful, but finally, finally, Midnight Sun has been published!

When I heard Midnight Sun was finally going to be published, I reread all the Twilight books in preparation. You can find my post about my feelings about the Twilight books over here.

There will be spoilers in this post. I’m assuming you’re familiar with the first Twilight book, at the very least. If not, read on at your own risk.

As I said, I really enjoyed Midnight Sun, against a lot of my better judgment. Because as we’ve already established, when it comes to Edward Cullen I’m apparently still sixteen and I don’t care how awful he is I love him so much.

Lots of people have gone through all the problems with this book. I don’t really want to tear it apart, because others have done a really good job doing that, but there are some things I just have to point out, in no particular order.

This book is still about the start of a toxic, abusive teenage relationship. There’s just no getting around that. Also, the way Edward thinks about female characters is pretty gross. Rosalie and Jessica come to mind in particular, but they are by no means the only ones in this book. Also, I don’t care what justification Edward has, it is still really bad that he is sneaking into Bella’s room to watch her sleep. He says he’s there to protect her and there’s nothing creepy about it, but he’s a vampire with super senses, and he can protect her from the front lawn or the roof or something, I don’t care. He’s in Bella’s room, while she’s sleeping, without her knowledge or consent, and that is creepy and wrong and not romantic at all. Also it’s made weirder by the fact that his whole family knows what he’s doing and is okay with it. Yikes! And finally, while it might have been okay to include Orson Scott Card on your list of favorite authors in 2005, when Twilight is set, that isn’t really an okay thing to say now in 2020, when the problematic issues of Card’s books and the fact that he is really homophobic have been common knowledge for a long long time. Disclaimer, I haven’t read Ender’s Game or any of his other fiction, and at this point I probably won’t,  so I don’t feel qualified to say more than that. But the fact is that Stephenie Meyer’s readers are living in 2020, and I never really got a strong sense of time in Twilight anyway. Like if someone hadn’t told me it was set in 2005 I wouldn’t have guessed that year, and it could just as easily have been set in 2020 without too many changes (like maybe there’s better internet in Forks in 2020, but there’s still a massive digital divide in this country so also maybe not). Anyway, my point is that including Orson Scott Card on Bella’s list of favorite authors felt too deliberate not to be a point Stephenie Meyer was making, and it made me uncomfortable.

Like I said, there are certainly many other problems with this book, but I’m really not here to rant about how problematic it is. Others have done that much more eloquently than I could. These are the problems that really jumped out at me, and I wouldn’t feel right not pointing them out up front. But Midnight Sun also did a lot of really cool things and brought a whole new perspective to Twilight for me, and what I really want to do in this post is talk about why.

One of the coolest things, as a writer, was being able to see how Stephenie Meyer has actually grown as a writer from the first Twilight to Midnight Sun. The writing isn’t bad in Twilight, in my opinion, but it certainly isn’t fabulous. Because Midnight Sun is essentially the same story, it’s really easy to see how Meyer’s writing has improved. I’m sure some would disagree with me, but I would actually say that Midnight Sun is quite well-written. Okay Edward says Bella has translucent skin a few too many times, and since a friend started referring to the monstrous part of Edward that wants to eat Bella as the eldritch horror living inside him, I can’t help cracking up every time Edward refers to the monster. But Meyer uses metaphors and symbolism and deliberate repetition in this book, along with other techniques she didn’t use in the first Twilight book, and she uses them well. She also captures Edward’s angsty teenage boy/hundred-year-old vampire voice really well.

Also, I have to give Meyer points for pulling off what had to be a really difficult point of view to write. She’s writing in first person, but it’s also kind of an omniscient style because Edward can hear everyone’s thoughts, with one notable exception, of course. Which makes Midnight Sun not only Twilight from Edward’s point of view, but almost Twilight from everyone’s point of view.

The new scenes that were added were pretty cool too, like the family conference after the car accident when Jasper and Rosalie are arguing for killing Bella because she saw too much, or how Jasper is actually using his powers at the baseball game to hide Bella. And the bit in the end where Alice is going through how she’s going to fake Bella’s accident, seeing how each decision will play out and making new decisions to make it go just right, is super awesome.

There were also some points in Midnight Sun where I felt like Meyer was actually taking this opportunity to respond to some of the criticism Twilight has faced without actually changing what happens in Twilight. This was a really intriguing idea to me. Obviously this might not be the case, but it’s how I interpreted it. The big ones that stood out to me in this regard were Edward’s justification for watching Bella sleep and Bella’s character. As I said earlier, Edward’s justification for watching Bella sleep still doesn’t make it okay in my opinion, but I accept that Meyer couldn’t just rewrite that part out of the book or significantly change it so that Edward asks Bella permission and she says yes. Still not okay though. As for Bella’s character, in Midnight Sun we get to hear Bella’s side of the Q&A chapter, which is glossed over in Twilight. Bella has things she likes and dislikes. She has plans for college and dreams of becoming an editor or a creative writing teacher. It makes sense that we don’t see this exact scene in Twilight, because we’re from Bella’s point of view and it would have been boring and very telly, but I do wish we had gotten these details from Bella’s point of view in other ways, because we have literally no inkling of any of this in Twilight, which of course is one of the criticisms of Twilight. So I’m glad we get the details in Midnight Sun, but it does feel kind of like Meyer is trying to say “look, Bella is a fully developed character,” while trying to retcon in all her hopes and dreams. As I said, I could be totally wrong on this, but it kind of does feel like Meyer is trying to respond to some of the critiques of Twilight, and even if it didn’t work as well as she may have hoped, I think it’s really brave of her to accept that she could have done better in the first Twilight and to try to show how she would have done it if she was writing it now. Again, just my interpretation.

Finally, I want to talk about the end of Midnight Sun and why I want more from Edward’s point of view. The ending was definitely the right ending for this book, but it wasn’t a good ending for Edward’s story. Spoilers ahead. Basically the book ends with Edward deciding, while Bella is in the hospital, that he is going to leave her. Not now, but some point soon. And as we know from New Moon, he does indeed leave. End of spoilers. So I know that everything works out, but I want to see the rest of the story from Edward’s point of view. At the very least, I want to see New Moon and Eclipse from Edward’s point of view. I really don’t care about seeing Breaking Dawn from Edward’s point of view honestly but I would read it if it were to be a thing.

I am aware that Stephenie Meyer has said she isn’t planning to write more of the Twilight books from Edward’s point of view. I’ve read various interviews where she’s said that writing Edward has made her anxious (and New Moon would be even worse) and that she didn’t enjoy not having the freedom she would have writing a completely new book. I appreciate both of these sentiments, but just in case Stephenie Meyer or anyone who has the power to change her mind is reading this, I just want to say that I kind of feel like I’ve been left hanging by the end of Midnight Sun, even though I have the rest of the Twilight books and I know it works out. And I would love, love, love more Edwardian Twilight. I know New Moon would be super depressing, but since Edward is apart from Bella, it would also basically be a completely new book. And I feel like Edward has the most character growth of the series in New Moon and Eclipse and I want to read that so much! So I will continue to hope.

I would also take any of the Twilight books from Alice’s point of view. Just saying.

In the meantime, since I’ve already reread all the Twilight books, the end of Midnight Sun left me listening to the last chunk of New Moon (from the point when Alice returns to the end) on a loop for days and days. I only managed to get out of the loop and start reading other books again by reading The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner and Life and Death, which I’ll talk about in my August reading roundup post soon. I also made a deal with myself that if I reach my goal of reading 100 books by December, I’m allowed to reread all the Twilight books again, reading Midnight Sun between Twilight and New Moon so things feel more resolved.

I could go on and on about Midnight Sun, but these are my main thoughts. As I said, on the whole I really enjoyed the book, despite its flaws, and I’m really really hoping for more from Edward’s point of view someday. If you’ve read Midnight Sun, I’d love to know what you thought of it.

July Reading Roundup

As I’ve mentioned in my last few posts, July was a pretty hard month for me emotionally. Mostly because it sunk in that this pandemic is here to stay and I’m not going back to work or going to see my friends for several more months, possibly almost a year. I recognize that I am extremely lucky. I have a stable job where I can work from home, I’m in a safe place, and I’m not struggling to get food or anything. But as much as I want to go back to work and see my colleagues and have writing group in person and go to trivia with friends and work-out at in-person barre classes and all the great things I was doing pre-pandemic, I also don’t want to venture out of my safe bubble unless I absolutely have to. The outside is kind of terrifying. Social distancing is not designed for the blind, and I have to rely on other people doing the right thing all too often for my own comfort. So my feelings are all confused.

So in July, I did what I always do when I have feelings. I read. A lot.

Collage of the 14 books I read in July: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, The Sound of Stars, Orbiting Jupiter, You Should See Me in a Crown, The Kingdom of Back, Chasing Secrets, Record of a Spaceborn Few, The Waste Lands, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Castle Hangnail, and Upside-down MagicI read fourteen books in July, bringing my total for the year up to seventy-two. Six of them were rereads. I read two sci fi, two contemporaries, four paranormals, four fantasies—two of them middle grade—and two historical novels—one of them a historical fantasy. One of the books I read was in Braille, bringing me up to six Braille books for the year so far. I’m still one behind where I want to be to meet my goal of reading twelve Braille books this year, but I’ll catch up. This was a very eclectic reading month, and I really liked most everything I read.

I started July with The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow. Aliens have invaded Earth, trapped all the humans in centers where they have to work for the invaders, and banned all forms of art because they inspire rebellion. Janelle is a human teenager operating a very illegal library of books she managed to save from the aliens’ purge. Morris is a teenage alien with too-much of an interest in human art. When Morris discovers Janelle’s library, he doesn’t turn her in, on the condition that she find him some music. But then they’re caught and they have to run for it, and then they wind up trying to stop the aliens from turning Earth into an alien resort planet. I love so much about this book. I love watching Janelle and Morris grow from enemies, to suspicious but curious companions, to friends, to something more than friends. I love that Janelle is such a diverse YA protagonist. She’s black, queer, fat, and has a thyroid condition. It’s not important to the plot, but it’s who she is and I love it. Most of all, because I’m as much of a nerd as these two, I love all the references to my favorite books: Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight, The Mortal Instruments, The Hate U Give, and even The Light Between Worlds. My only problem with this book is the ending, and it’s only a problem if there isn’t going to be a sequel. Without giving spoilers, if there isn’t a sequel, then that was a really unsatisfying ending. If there is a sequel, it is a great ending. But I don’t know if there is going to be a sequel yet. So we’ll see.

Next I reread all four of the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer. I’ve already talked about these at length over here, so if you’re curious go check that out. I’m not going to reiterate my thoughts here, because I’m currently trying to dig myself out of the Twilight-shaped hole I fell into post-Midnight Sun. Never fear, Midnight Sun will be getting its own post too, because I have so many feelings.

Next, I read The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu. This was a fascinating historical fantasy book. It’s about Mozart and his older sister as children, growing up and touring Europe as composers and musicians, and also their adventures in a fantasy world called the Kingdom of Back. I knew vaguely that Mozart had a sister and that she composed and even that there are theories that she composed some of his pieces, and this was a great look into what it must have been like for her growing up in Mozart’s shadow because she was a girl. I admit I had a hard time with this book at first, because the excursions into The Kingdom of Back felt disjointed, and at times while I was reading this, I didn’t understand why Marie Lu didn’t just write this book about any two children, instead of tying it to the Mozarts. But then I read the author’s note at the end of the book, which said that there’s historical evidence that the Mozart children did in fact invent a fantasy land they called The Kingdom of Back while on tour in Europe. This made it all make sense, and I wish I’d read the Author’s note first. This wound up being a really good book, and I would definitely recommend it.

After that, I read Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt. This was a short contemporary middle frade book. I read it in one evening. Twelve-year-old Jack has a new foster brother, and the new foster brother has a daughter he has been separated from. This book deals with all the preconceived notions foster children with troubled pasts might have to face. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking and I just love it. I was definitely balling my eyes out by the end of it. And I definitely recommend this book.

I needed something light after that, so I reread Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon. Castle Hangnail needs a new master, but when twelve-year-old Molly Utterback arrives claiming to be a wicked witch, well it’s not what anyone expected. Crazy adventures ensue, including deals made with magical moles, turning donkeys into dragons, and fending off a corrupt real estate agent with his own shadow. And then of course the evil sorceress who’s supposed to be Castle Hangnail’s real master appears. This is such a fun book and I love it so much and I will always love it.

Then, because I love middle grade fantasy and Castle Hangnail wasn’t enough to satisfy me, I read Upside-Down Magic by Sarah Mlynowski, Emily Jenkins, and Lauren Myracle. Nory’s magic does not do what it’s supposed to do. Instead of turning into a kitten, she turns into a dragon-kitten, or dritten. Instead of turning into a skunk, she turns into a skunk-elephant, or skunkafant. When Nory’s wonky magic causes her to fail the entrance exams to her father’s prestigious magic school, he sends her to live with her aunt and attend a program at the local public school for upside-down magic. Nory meets a bunch of new friends with magic as crazy as hers. She deals with bullies and magical accidents and also how much she hates that she doesn’t have normal magic. This book was just so much fun, and I loved it lots. I’ve since read the second book and loved that too.

After that I read Chasing Secrets by Jennifer Choldenko. What I didn’t realize when I picked this up is this is a plague book. Oops. Lizzie  is the daughter of a prominent doctor in San Francisco in 1901. There’s an outbreak of bubonic plague, and Chinatown has been quarantined, and the family’s Chinese cook is trapped inside the quarantine. But Lizzie knows what a quarantine should look like, and the Chinatown quarantine isn’t that. Lizzie is determined to get their cook out and to uncover the truth about the plague. Even though this is a middle grade book, it deals with issues of class, gender, and race in the early 1900s. The plague aspect of this book was pretty disturbing right now, so if you’re interested in reading this, I might wait to read it until the plague is over here. I’m also not sure the subplot about Lizzie’s brother was satisfying to me, but on the whole this was a good book.

My next book was also about a girl named Liz, though this was not an intentional choice on my part. I’ve been adding a lot of books by Black authors to my want to read shelf on Goodreads, and this month I got You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson out of the library. Liz is depending on getting a music scholarship to attend her top-choice school, and when she doesn’t get it, she decides to run for prom queen to try to get the scholarship that comes with it. Her hometown takes prom, and the race for prom court, very, very seriously. We follow Liz as she steps way outside her comfort zone and makes new friends, mends old relationships, falls in love with the new girl in school, and faces down some truly epic mean girls who are trying to use her race and sexuality to force her out of the race. This is a great book, and I had so much fun reading it. I actually caught myself wishing I’d gone to my own high school prom (I came to my senses later and have no regrets). I definitely recommend this book.

Next, I read The Waste Lands by Stephen King, the third book in the Dark Tower series. I think this was my favorite book in the series so far. Until we got to the suicidal talking pink monorail, which, I’m sorry, I just can’t take seriously.

And then I read the next book in Becky Chambers’s Wayfarers series, Record of a Spaceborn Few. This book follows a group of people living on the Exodan Fleet, the fleet that left Earth hundreds of years ago. Among these characters is Ashby’s sister (Ashby is the captain of the Wayfarer in the first book). This book is really about the lifestyle of these particular humans and how some cling to it, some reject it, and some seek it out. And it’s beautiful and I love it. I just love these books so so much, and I can’t wait for the next one to come out in 2021.

And finally, it took me all month, but I reread Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling. I also talked about this a little in my Twilight post. It was a hard book to read, particularly this month, because the ministry’s denial of Voldemort’s return feels very much like certain politicians in the U.S. denying the coronavirus and letting it run wild. But I read it, and enjoyed it by the end.

And that’s it for the month of July. Have you read any of these books? Do you agree with my thoughts?

Twilight Cookie Dough

If you’ve been following my reading roundup posts for the last few months, you know I’ve been working my way through the Harry Potter books again. This started as a combination of my annual reread and a deep need for some literary comfort food at the start of quarantine, and rereading the first three books were great. Then She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named revealed that she is a terrible person, and that really slowed down my reading of the fourth book as I worked through my feelings about this and what I wanted to do with those feelings. The fifth book was another story. The ministry’s denial of Voldemort’s return, coupled with Harry’s feelings of isolation, made it very bad quarantine reading. Which leads me to the actual point of this blog post.

Collage of the four books in the Twilight Saga: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn.At some point in the past few months, a friend in my writing group said that rereading Twilight was a good quarantine decision. Her recommendation, along with the announcement that Midnight Sun is finally coming out in August, pushed me to reread the Twilight books in July. And it was quite an experience. As often as I was cringing through the books, I have to admit that I enjoyed the books, and now that I’ve read them again, I judge myself a little less for how much I liked them in high school.

All through my sophomore and junior years of high school, I read and reread and reread the Twilight books. It was all I talked about, much to the annoyance of everyone around me who wasn’t a high school girl. I even had Twilight T-shirts and a poster of Edward on my bedroom wall. Then Breaking Dawn came out the summer before my senior year, and it was so bad and such a disappointing end to the series that by the middle of senior year, I was the one cringing at the freshmen and sophomores in my Spanish class who couldn’t talk about anything else.

I have spent the intervening ten years either vehemently denying that I was a Twilight fan in high school or else admitting, grudgingly, that I read them but then ranting about how utterly terrible they are. So much so that when I picked them up again, I found I barely remembered the books themselves, and I was shocked by how not terrible they were.

Don’t get me wrong, the Twilight books aren’t great. They aren’t great for a number of reasons, and so many people have talked about those reasons in depth. I’m not here to rehash that. There were definitely a lot of moments where I cringed on this reread. There’s a lot of casual racism and sexism and I was horrified that once apon a time I found the scene where Jacob kisses Bella against her will and her dad takes Jacob’s side, even though Bella actually got hurt defending herself, to be a funny scene. But I will say that in my opinion, the biggest flaw of the series is that it taught a generation of teenage girls that the gold standard for romance is an abusive relationship. I came to my senses by the end of high school, and I know many of my friends did too, but I’m sure not everyone did, and the damage this series might have caused is really problematic.

But after rereading the books last month, I have to admit that in a lot of ways, they aren’t as bad as I’ve been giving them credit for. Honestly, I was a little alarmed by how quickly I was sucked into the books and how unwilling I was to put them down. I felt like I was reliving all those times I read the books in high school, all the lunchtime arguments and fangirling in the back of my precalculus class and smuggling my original iPod shuffle into my confirmation retreat so I could listen to the end of New Moon. I’d honestly forgotten a lot of the books (especially New Moon, because I’m pretty sure after the first time through I only read the beginning and then skipped to the part where Alice comes back). There’s a point at the end of Eclipse when Jacob tells Bella that Edward is like a drug for her, and I felt, both back in high school and this month, that this applied to me and these books too. I needed to be reading them all the time, at the expense of everything else, including sleep. When I did sleep, my dreams were very much Twilight themed. And again, it wasn’t until I got to Breaking Dawn that I managed to snap out of it.

But revisiting all these memories is a lot of the reason I feel a little more kindly toward the Twilight books now, because rereading them reminded me not just of how much I liked them but of how much I actually gained from them.

I had a hard time socially in high school. I had a few close friends but often felt like I didn’t fit in any one group. But the time when we were all reading Twilight, sitting around crowded lunch tables after band and arguing about whether we were Team Edward or Team Jacob, or fangirling about Edward and his silver volvo all the way through algebra 2 and precalculus are honestly some of my happiest high school memories. Even the shared disappointment at the way Breaking Dawn went.

I’m also pretty sure Twilight is the reason I first picked up Pride and Prejudice in high school, though I admit I didn’t really appreciate it until I was in college and had put Twilight behind me.

Finally, the Twilight series really impacted how I write, and I’d forgotten how much until I reread them just now. No, the writing in the Twilight books is not a masterpiece of literary genius. But it does what it is meant to do: it is clear and engaging and it moves the plot along, and that’s totally fine. Of course, I do hope I write better than Stephenie Meyer, but I have to say, Twilight is the reason I first tried writing in first person, which is a style I really enjoy and use quite a lot. I also spent hours on Stephenie Meyer’s website—at one point it was my homepage—and her writing advice is also why I first tried writing scenes from other characters’ points of view to really get into their heads, and why I still make playlists of songs that speak to my ideas for each project. All these things have really helped my writing, and I have to give credit where credit is due.

So is Twilight a great series? No. Would I recommend it to anyone? Absolutely not. But did I enjoy it? Yes. Will I reread it again some time? Maybe. Will I buy Midnight Sun when it comes out tomorrow and read it obsessively for the rest of the week? You bet. And I’m okay with that now.

To quote another friend from my writing group, Twilight is like the equivalent of eating raw cookie dough. I’m totally aware of how it’s unhealthy, but once in a while… Yeah it’s good stuff.