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Opinion

I Like Twilight. Deal With It.

Wallace Yovetich

Staff Writer

Wallace Yovetich grew up in a home where reading was preferred to TV, playing outside was actually fun, and she was thrilled when her older brothers weren’t home so she could have a turn on the Atari. Now-a-days she watches a bit more TV, and considers sitting on the porch swing (with her laptop) “playing outside”. She still thinks reading is preferable to most things, though she’d really like to find out where her mom put that old Atari (Frogger addicts die hard). She runs a series of Read-a-Longs throughout the year (as well as posting fun bookish tidbits throughout the week) on her blog, Unputdownables. After teaching for seven years, Wallace is now an aspiring writer. Blog: Unputdownables Twitter: @WallaceYovetich

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People often assume that because I’m an avid reader, whose favorite authors include the likes of David McCullough, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Sarah Vowell, I wouldn’t like certain genres. For instance, people almost always assume that I’m with them on being a Twilight hater… as in elbow-me-in-the-ribs and laugh at those poor, unenlightened folks who do like the Twilight books. But guess what laddies and lassies… I LOVED the Twilight saga, and I’m not even the least bit shy about saying it. Why did I/ do I love those books?  Let me tell you…

1.) Reading is not always about learning something new (it can be, but doesn’t have to be).

2.) I enjoy having thick books that I can finish in a couple of days; it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something in a world where every time I check something off of my to-do list five more things pop up in its place.

3.) When I need to escape from something that’s going on in my real life, I go for fiction that is nothing like reality. For those of us who need that at specific times, sparkly vampires and smokin’ hot werewolves are about as far from my scope of life as I can get; I don’t know about you.

4.) I don’t need beautiful language and complex characters all the time. In fact, sometimes I relish a little less talk and a lot more action, and having four books full of that really does the trick for me.

5.) Once you get to a certain age (and let’s call this certain age 30, because that’s how old I was when I caught the Twilight bug a little over a year ago), it has most likely been a very long time since you encountered your first love and all of the completely delicious feelings that come with it. And it’s been even longer since you’ve had your first heart-stopping, breath-taking, mad-crazy crush. So when someone comes along and offers me hours upon hours of reliving that… I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. There is nothing in the world like that feeling, and I argue that this is why romantic comedies and romance novels are some of the highest grossing forms of entertainment out there for women (and we all know what the highest grossing form of entertainment is for men… I like to call those winners “romantic soap-operas for dudes,” because let’s face it, they’re not that much closer to reality than the Twilight books).

So there you have it. You can hate Twilight all you want, and I might enjoy a joke at its expense as well (why, you can even joke about You’ve Got Mail a few times before I punch you in the eye… I’m a lenient lady), but I’m a lover not a hater in this arena. In fact, two years ago, I started a book awards given by bloggers just so we could honor an array of genres… the 2011 Indie Lit Awards winners are here: but beware, they aren’t all Literary Fiction and they wouldn’t all be displayed in Queen Elizabeth’s personal library (in case those are the only types of books that are your bag).