"Can I have a minute to be human?"

"Novels, in the proper sense of the word, are not written to vanish in a month or a year. That most of them do, today, that they are written and published as if they were magazines, to fade as rapidly, is one of the sorriest aspects of today's literature." --Ayn Rand

Well, I finished it. Twilight--appropriately entitled Book 1 of the Twilight Saga, and I emphasize the word 'saga'.

I was admittedly curious about all of the attention this book received...from the media, from young teenage girls, and from desperate housewives all over the country. So I read it...and I'm no longer curious. I'm absolutely perplexed.

Does anyone actually relate to these characters? Bella, the new girl in school, doesn't struggle with acceptance as one might expect. Nope. Instead, she's the hot new item and happens to win the heart of the untouchable and irresistably attractive Edward...who turns out to be a 100-yr. old cannabalistic killer.

Naturally, Bella has no doubts whatsoever about this relationship and confidentally leaps from being intrigued to being in love. I mean, lust moderately camouflaged as love. She spends the whole book staring at his quarried body (quarried here meaning cut from stone) and...their first kiss fills her with such intense desire and consuming passion that she starts to hyperventilate. It actually makes her faint when they kiss again. Sorry, was that a spoiler?

Edward, on the other hand, pursues Bella not because of any redeeming qualities she may possess but because her neck smells so very good. I'm sure we could have done without the plug for strong perfume.

The fact that each successive chapter is more painful than the last is not solely a result of the overwhelmingly unrealistic romance--where the only thing Edward and Bella argue about is who loves who more--but also the abnormal use of adjectives. Things like "inescapable jeans," as if they somehow had it in for her, and "primordial cedars," a word generally used with soup or mass...or dwarfism. Not to mention this description: "He paused to catch a stray lock of hair that was escaping the twist on my neck..." The twist on her neck? Is she suffering from a severe case of scholiosis?

I suppose I should give the author credit for creating a whole series of books based on a dream. If I wrote a book inspired by a dream, my main character would steal a bus, drive it off a cliff, and end up unharmed by a cabin in the woods dressed as Aladdin.

I'm just saying...