After seeing the movie I decided to read the books to see what the whole fuss is about. I must admit I couldn’t bring myself to read the whole damn thing so I just cheated and read only the first and the forth book from the series created by Stephenie Meyer. After this traumatizing experience and must demand some sort of explanation: what is wrong with you people? Yes, you, the one that bought the books, you back there that created a blog or a forum on the subject, yeah, I mean YOU, the one that supported them and gave them good reviews and prizes of all sorts. I know this is going to turn into a shower of toxic comments, but I must know, I must understand. And I’m not going to pick a fight with the writer or the publisher because I couldn’t possibly hope to blame them for the books’ popularity, it’s not like they forced anyone to buy them. So I must turn to you, my fellow consumer and hope, ask and even beg for your time for you must let me know: why?! Why are they so popular?! Please have mercy and tell me.

There is only one good thing about them and I must give them that: they’re catchy and fluid, they’re nicely written. But apart from that, there’s nothing in them, really. The story neighbors that of a soap opera where the only difference is the diet of some of the actors. The whole love thing makes me want to puke blood because it just screams “under aged”, “pimples” and “pink” at you at every two pages although some of the vampires are older than most countries on Earth. Most of the characters are just puppets, they have no backbone whatsoever, they’re just sketched and whenever they get slightly bolded it only happens in direct connection with the leading man and woman (or was it boy and girl?). And on top of that, after a while it gets really predictable like you read all before and just forgot about it. So you start wondering why are you reading in the first place when you can simply guess what’s about to happen and most of your predictions land right on target. But I’ve been a good boy and finished them (again: just the first and the forth), mostly because I paid for them and needed to feel like something more than a money wasting idiot. Bottom line: I still don’t get it. Why are they so popular?

I’m asking because they are not bad, but they’re just… common, popcorn, background noise. I’ve accepted popcorn culture when it came and poisoned music and movies, but I had hoped that literature will prove to be an unconquerable bastion for the hordes of mediocrity driven individuals. And that’s because I thought most of them can’t read and write – guess I was wrong and the text from the back of the CDs paid off eventually. Now I can only stand corrected and broken and rock myself to sleep while holding to my chest the scorched pages of Dumas, May, Verne and Jerome, which a long time ago have fed my childhood with the best food any word sucking newborn vampire could hope for.