Twilight

Sam told me that I have to read Twilight before the movie comes out. She told me this back in July. I realized the other day that the movie comes out next month. Since the book is longer than the comics section of a newspaper (which is all my attention span can handle), I decided that maybe I should start reading it now so that I'll be about a quarter of the way through the book by the time the movie comes out. The past couple of days I've made it through three chapters, and here is what I've gotten out of it so far:

The main character in the book is Elisabeth [create your own last name], but she goes by Bella. Why does she go by Bella? I don't know, maybe it's because she wants to confuse people when she first meets them with the Elisabeth/Bella thing, and while they're busy pondering that she picks their pockets. At the beginning of the book her mother kicks her out of the house and she has to go live with her father, who works for the secret service in Washington. It talks a lot about the rain in Washington, and I always thought of that area as being kind of sunny, so the book must be set in the future after the oceans have risen 40 feet due to the melting polar ice caps.

On Beth's (I'm gonna call her Beth from now on, just for kicks) first day of school, she meets some kid named Matt who has two classes with her and follows her around everywhere. (Turns out Matt followed her because he's trying to convince her to invest in his friendship bracelet business.) I kind of lost track of where the book was going from there. I think in chapter three she met a boy named Eddie who is good looking, except for his pale skin and bags under his eyes. Turns out his washed out appearance is due to the fact that he is a professional gamer, and he plays Halo3 fourteen hours a day trying to increase his world ranking. Also, he is addicted to meth and PCP. Something happened where Beth almost got hit by a car, but Eddie saved her because he's a wizard or something. After Eddie saved Beth from the car, he realized how short life can be and decided to profess his love for Matt to her just so he wouldn't have to hide it any more.

That's as far as I got in the book. I hear that the rest of the book goes something like this: Beth finds a magic apple in her backyard (see the cover picture) that gives her the ability to read minds. She is faced with the decision to use her new-found powers for good or for evil. At first she uses the ability for good, as she plays matchmaker at her school between people who were secretly in love with someone else, her first set up being Eddie and Matt. Eventually she tires of making other people's lives easier, and starts using her power for evil. It started with cheating on a test or two, and eventually grew to finding out the innermost secrets of those around her, and posting those secrets on her My Space blog.

At the climax of the book, Beth loses her mind reading ability as she snacks on the apple when she is unable to find a misplaced bag of Cheetos, not realizing what she has done until she reaches the core. In an effort to retrieve her gift, she plants the seeds from the apple if her back yard, hoping to grow another magic apple tree.

The second book in the series, New Moon, tells about Beth's cultivation of the tree as it begins to produce blossoms (see book cover below), and her thirst for the power she once had.

I wonder if the movie will be anything like the book.