I Read Twilight and Hate It: Chapter 4

       A note on spoilers and what I know about the series.  I feel I should mention, just in case anyone was worried about spoilers, that I don't plan on spoiling anything in the book early.  That is to say, I'm going through everything in order and I'm not going to spoil something that I haven't come across yet.  However, these reviews are meant to be a substitute for actually reading the book, so any spoiler information that occurs in the book will occur in my review as well.  For example, if there were a big spoiler in the 15th chapter, I wouldn't mention it until my review of the 15th chapter.  If you want to avoid spoilers, it'll pay to read my reviews in order.  It would be hard for me to spoil information early on anyways, because I haven't read the book before (each chapter's review is written before I start reading the next chapter), and know little about the events that take place.  What I did know before starting this project is: It's about a girl named Bella and her Romance with a boy named Edward.  Edward is a vampire and sparkles in the sun.  Also, all the fan-girls want to jump his bone.  Even though the fact that Edward is a vampire hasn't explicitly come out yet, I still don't consider it a spoiler, since anyone who knows someone who knows someone who likes Twilight is aware of this fact.  I also know that there's a character named Jacob at some point in the series (whose bone none of the fan-girls want to jump) and a certain piece of information about him which may actually be a spoiler so I wont bring it up now.  For everything else that happens in the book, I'm hearing about it for the first time when I do that chapter.  Anyways, on to chapter 4: 

    The dream that Bella hinted at at the end of Chapter Three was surprisingly boring; just your standard chasing-after-someone-but-can't-catch-up-to-them affair.  "After that, he was in my dreams nearly every night, but always on the periphery, never within reach."¹  
    At school, Bella ponders about why no one saw Edward teleport across the parking lot.  I use "teleport" loosely here, because the book doesn't actually describe how he got from point A to point B; it just makes note of how fast he was there (and, of course, how gorgeous he looked once getting there).  For all I know, he could have ran super-fast, or just made a really long leap. None of these are the kinds of actions that would go unnoticed be a large crowd of people.  Bella has a theory as to why no one noticed him, though: "no one else was as aware of Edward as I always was.  No one else watched him the way I did.  How pitiful."¹  Edward may have super-strength and super-speed, but Bella has acquired her own superpower: Stalker Senses.  Also, I sincerely hope that she's using "pitiful" here to describe herself for obsessing over Edward, rather than everyone else for not obsessing over Edward.
    Actually, this raises the question of why the other girls aren't obsessing over Edward.  I mean, it's not like Bella just has really uncommon taste in men.  It seems like every Twilight fan out there wants to marry Edward, so it only makes sense that lots of the girls in the school would be interested in him as well.  Maybe he did something just a week before Bella arrived that turned all the girls off to him, like showing up to school in nothing but a cape and soiled Spiderman underoos, and everyone remembers it but no one's mentioned it to Bella yet. Who knows.
    Anyways, Edward is back to his Bella-hating stoner mode, and has stopped talking to her in their Biology class (because I guess the plot was just moving too fast).  There's a girls-ask-boys dance coming up and a lot of drama circulating around the school because of that (or at least a lot of drama circulating around Bella's head).  Jessica asks Bella for permission to ask Mike to the dance.  She asks him, he says maybe, because he wants to see if Bella will go to the dance with him before he agrees to going with Jessica.  So, he asks Bella to the dance, and she makes up some excuse about going to Seattle that weekend.  Actually, pretty much every character with a name, including the guy who almost hit her with his van ("Tyler") asks her to the dance.  Edward, however, does not.
    Edward, in Biology class, calmly tells Bella that it would be better of the two of them weren't friends.  He didn't say why not, because that would be all too un-mysterious.  Bella kind of freaks out and has a bitch-fest at him when he tells her this (I guess because she's not used to when guys don't all bow down before her).   She then storms off to P.E., where she continues to think about him some more.
    Actually, when she's storming off to P.E. she stumbles and drops all her books before right in front of Edward, and he picks them up for her.  It's supposed to be one of those "OMG, I was so embarrassed I could die" moments (along with another showcase for Ed's super-speed), but really it's hard to feel sorry for her.  Everyone has a friend (you all know who yours is) who just likes complaining.  They make it sound like they have the worst life in the world by taking every little thing that happens to them and blowing it up like the Hindenburg.  They're not really miserable, though, they just act miserable because they enjoy telling people about all the bad things that happen to them; it's fun for them.  Bella is that kind of person.  She complains about the weather, she complains about her parents, she complains about being unattractive, she complains about being attractive, she complains about Edward being around, she complains about Edward not being around.  I'm sure when she was in Phoenix, that she complained about everything there, too.  So don't feel sorry for her when she dumps her books in front of the guy she lust-hates; it'll just give her complaint fuel for months to come.
    That night, her dad is (allegedly) suspicious when she starts cooking peppers that night because "the closest edible Mexican food was probably in southern California."¹  Yeah, too bad they're not in a Mecca of international cuisine like Arizona.  Actually, as a point of fact, Washington is an agricultural powerhouse, and many people living there have immigrated from Latin America (both legally and illegally).  A quick Google Maps search of Forks reveals that there are no less than four Mexican restaurants in the small town (none of which are Azteca), and the census info states that roughly 15% of the population is “Hispanic or Latino.”²  I’m sure at least a few of those 15% (or 485 people) are from Mexico, but I guess that Meyer doesn't consider the food made by Mexicans to be real Mexican food; only that made by Californians.
    Anyways, she and her dad have some boring discussion about gas-mileage and her getting lost in Seattle, etc.  She points out that she used to live in Phoenix, which is five times the size of Seattle.  I don’t know how she figures this.  Phoenix is actually less than four times the size of Seattle, as far as square-mileage goes.  The population of Phoenix is roughly 3 times that of Seattle, and population of the Metropolitan area is less than double.³  
    The next day, Edward displays his super-speed again, grabbing Bella's fallen keys in the parking lot.  Because he loves drama, apparently, he's now going back on his previous no-friends proposition and offering her a ride to Seattle on the weekend she planned on going (with the pretense of his Volvo getting better mileage than her truck). He does this in a "velvet, muted"¹ voice.  To review,Edward's voice is  "low,"  "attractive," "soft," "musical,"  "velvet," and "muted."  Edward himself  is "interesting," "brilliant," "mysterious," "perfect," and "beautiful."¹  That's not a list from all the descriptions so far, though; all those are from one paragraph.  Anyways, Edward insults her/offers her a ride and Bella hates him/accepts the ride (abusive relationship in the making?) Bella also questions Edward about his flip-flop on the friend issue:

        "Honestly Edward," I felt a thrill go through me as I said his name, and I hated it.  "I can't keep up with you.  I thought you didn't want to be my friend."
        "I said that it would be better if we weren't friends, not that I didn't want to be."
        "Oh, thanks, now that's all cleared up."  Heavy sarcasm.¹

    Yeah, thanks Meyer.  The sarcasm was so subtle; thanks for labeling it.  I wouldn't have been able to guess that that was sarcasm without you cluing me in. 
  And so ends chapter four.  Stay tuned for Chapter Five.

 

¹Meyer, Stephanie Twilight. “Chapter 4: Invitations” Little, Brown and Co., 2005

²Source: US Census.  http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFFacts?_event=Search&geo_id=&_geoContext=&_street=&_county=Forks&_cityTown=Forks&_state=04000US53&_zip=&_lang=en&_sse=on&pctxt=fph&pgsl=010&show_2003_tab=&redirect=Y

³Information from Wikipedia, because I’m lazy.

I read Twilight and Hate it: Chapter 2

Previous: Chapter One

Here's the short version: Edward was gone from school the next couple days, then it snowed, them he came back with new eyes and started acting nice to Bella for no apparent reason. That's basically the gist of chapter two. Except it's drawn out over twenty-two pages and sprinkled with lots of trivial teenage social problems and flowery descriptions of how gorgeous Edward is (something tells me that a lot of the chapters are going to be like that).
It starts with Bella talking about how she's been having fantasies about telling Edward off for not bowing down/paying attention to her, or whatever. She notes that she'd never actually do it, though, because she was a wuss and "made the Cowardly Lion look like the terminator."¹ I have no idea why Meyer decided to capitalize "Cowardly Lion," but not "terminator." Some subtle display of her admiration for the Wizard of Oz and disdain for Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, perhaps? Or just a lazy copy-editor. I guess I can't really blame Meyer for that one.
Anyways, all the guys that she met the previous day (except Edward, who doesn't show up to school) are swooning over her and having jealous little almost-fights for her attention. At least that's what she says. Since this is all being related to us by the character of Bella, rather than an impartial narrator, we don't really know that these boys are jealous over here; we just know that she thinks that they're jealous over her. Is this to demonstrate that Bella is self-centered or has a run-away ego? Probably not, because this book doesn't seem that deep.
The helpful guy from the day before (who is named "Mike," by the way) "who was taking on the qualities of a golden retriever, walked faithfully by [Bella's] side to class." She talks about him as though he were a dog for much of the chapter, and notes that she "was going to have to do something about Mike, and it wouldn't be easy."¹ Ouch. Nice guys finish last in Meyer's world. Bella makes a third reference to her being bad at volleyball, and leaves school to get groceries, but not before pausing again (in the parking lot) do note how damned sexy the vampire siblings are (even with Edward being AWOL).
After a pointless-seeming explanation that her dad can't cook, she would be taking over the kitchen duties, and explanation of what she was cooking that night, Bella checks her email to find three "OMG, I'm so worried about you" messages from her mom. She replies with an "I'm fine, but angsty. Also, you're worthless without me." Then, more pointless talk about what she's cooking her and her dad for dinner. The whole dinner things seems vestigial to the plot, except for that her dad gives her some information about the Cullens. Their adoptive-father is a very gifted surgeon, and all the kids act really well-behaved and mature (probably because they're so damned old).
The next week or so passes by in a couple paragraphs. Mike is up to his dastardly tricks, like inviting her on a group road-trip, and Edward continues to not show up. Then it snows, and Bella has more angst about that. Grease-boy from before (who's name is "Eric") hits Mike with a jealousy-snowball. Bella then retreats, but at lunch she finds out *gasp* that Edward has returned to school and he's *gasp* no longer acting freaked out by her. Also, he and his posse no longer looked like they were coming down from a three-day high.
Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction: we're going to be told the reason that Edward voided Bella at first but now doesn't, and it's going to be something incredibly stupid; like... she looked so yummy that he could barely hold himself from biting her neck, or... he heard some ridiculous rumor about her and accepted it without question. Something stupid like that. I haven't actually read this book before, so I honestly don't know what the explanation is going to be. Let's see if I'm right as the book pans out.
Anyways, Bella spends lunch freaking out about Edward's presence to her friend, Jessica. Jessica, incidentally, has a crush on Mike. Or, at least, Bella narrated that she has a crush on Mike. Knowing how Bella perceived all the guys to like her, I'm surprised that she didn't narrate that Jessica had a crush on her.
She heads to Biology, where Edward introduces himself to her today in a "quiet, musical voice."¹ You can add that to "deep" and "attractive" from the first chapter. They make awkward small talk, and go through the lab, demonstrating how much better they both are at science than every other student (probably because neither of them originally went to the vastly inferior Forks public schools). Bella also notices something different about his appearance:

I vividly remember the flay black color of his eyes the last time he'd glared at me - the color was striking against the background of his pale skin and his auburn hair. Today, is eyes were a completely different color: a strange ocher, darker than butterscotch, but with the same golden tone.¹

Seriously, she gave him colour-changing eyes? I guess Meyer just couldn't decide whether she found "dark, piercing eyes" or eyes with a "golden tone" to be more attractive. This is getting to be so fanfictiony, I'm surprised she doesn't give him cat ears.
They continue the small talk and Bella explains her reason for moving to Forks anyways (so her mom would be free to travel around the country with her new husband, a small-time baseball player). Edward, at this point in the conversation, has taken to telling Bella how she feels, rather than asking. To this, Bella says:

"My face is so easy to read - my mother always calls me her open book." I frowned
"On the contrary, I find you very difficult to read."...
"That must mean you're a good reader then," I replied.¹

Bella's kind of an idiot, I realized. Let's look at the logic again. Bella is easy to read, and Edward finds her hard to read, so that would make him a good reader? No, it would be the opposite. For example, if you saw an adult reading The Little Engine that Could, and you walked up to them and said "hey, that's an easy to read book," and they said "actually, I find it quite difficult to read," you would think that they were mentally handicapped. The thought that they're a good reader would be the last thing from your mind.
So, Biology ends and Bella walks out with Mike. He gets a jealousy-face when they talk about Edward (and considering how much she narrates about Edward, Bella probably talks about him a lot). They go to P.E. together, and Mike is on her team in Volleyball, covering the week-spot she creates; a fourth reference to her being bad at the sport in half as many chapters. Is this going somewhere?
After school, she catches a glimpse of Edward outside his car in the parking lot and, in her lust-frenzy, almost crashes into a Toyota Corolla, "just the sort of car that my truck would make scrap metal of."¹ Take that, foreign car manufacturers! Thus end chapter 2.
Stay tuned for chapter 3.

¹Meyer, Stephanie Twilight. “Chapter 2: Open Book” Little, Brown and Co., 2005

I Read Twilight and Hate It: Chapter 3

    Bella wakes up the next morning to find that the snow has stuck, and rain from the previous day has frozen, and has some more angst about this.  Actually, she admits that it looks nice; "all the rain from yesterday had frozen solid - coating the needles on the trees in fantastic, gorgeous patterns, an making the driveway a deadly ice slick," but still complains about it.
    She then spends the rest of her morning thinking about Edward (considering how much she does that, though, it seems like it would just be a time-saver to tell the audience when she's not thinking about Edward) and how much she wants wants him.  I realize that this book was mostly meant to appeal to a female audience, but I'm sure there are some teenage boys out there who read it, and what advice about women is it giving them?  "To get girls to like you, be mean to them as soon as soon you meet them (especially if they're new and don't have any friends).  Then, start being nice, but tell some really obvious lies.  Chicks dig that."  Anyways, Bella describes this part of the chapter better than I could: "I was eager to get to school because I would see Edward Cullen.  And that was very, very stupid."  Yes, yes it was.   
    Bella makes her way to school through the snow, pondering to herself about what hot stuff she is and how all the boys want her.  When she gets to school, she realizes that her dad had put chains on her truck for her that morning.  Every time she mentions her dad, she calls him not-awkwardly-at-all by his first name, Charlie.  Because, you know, I guess it's easier for the author than showing to us that she doesn't think of him has a father figure.  And FYI; if it was that icy out, they would have just closed school.
    After getting out of her car in the parking lot, she suddenly notices something shocking.  That an out-of-control van is heading towards her?  No.  Well, there is an out-of-control van sliding on the ice towards her, but before that she notices that Edward is staring at her (along with a number of other students); staring at her because she's about to get nailed by the out-of-control van.  God knows Bella isn't going to do anything to rescue herself from the van of doom, so Edward teleports across the parking lot, knocking Bella to the ground in the process.  While she's down, Bella narrates, "a low oath made me aware that someone was with me, and the voice was impossible not to recognize." I guess Edward has the only low, attractive, soft, musical voice that she's heard.  Also, I don't know what Meyer thinks that "oath" means, but it's pretty far from it's actual definition, unless she's telling use that Bella heard Edward pledging fealty to his lord.  At this point, Edward pushes the van away.  With his bare hands.
    I'm going to take a minute here and talk about vampires.  First of all, Vampires aren't super-heroes.  It seems that every new writer who thinks that they're the coolest thing ever wants to one-handed-type up a story giving them some amazing new ability that they never had before.  Vampires don't teleport, and they don't have super-strength.  And for that matter, they don't walk around in the middle of the day without dying, overcast or not.  Originally, vampires were just mindless, unholy, reanimated corpses that hungered for human blood at night, while resting in their burial place during the day.   But, Bram Stoker had to go and write Dracula, which wasn't a bad novel per se, but it did pave the way for decades of shitty, semi-erotic vampire-fiction. The kind of vampire fiction, which reached it's nadir with Twilight, and now I'm making fun of it.
    An ambulance arrives to take Bella and Edward to the hospital, but they don't get out of there before Bella's dad (now referred to as "Chief Swan") arrives to give the ambulance a police escort.  People die in ambulances all the time, but (despite Bella's worries) very few of the deaths are by embarrassment.  Don't worry, though, Bella was fine.  Nothing but a bruised ego and a new sense of angst, this time at Edward for A)Teleporting across the parking lot and B)Not falling down himself, so he was allowed to walk into the hospital instead of being carried in on a stretcher with a neck-brace.  Conveniently, despite the fact that there was a large group of people watching the accident, no one but Bella saw Edward teleport, so he asks her to keep it a secret.
    Bella's placed in a room with the driver of the van, who has some minor cuts (or "shallow slices"), and Edward walks in to act nonchalant.  He's followed soon afterwards by Dr. Cullen.  "He was young, he was blond... and he was handsomer [sic] than any movie star I'd ever seen.  He was pale, though, and tired-looking, with circles under his eyes."  What's with all the vampires looking like people you'd see in an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue?  What happened to the good old days, when the unclean looked like this:

    Dr. Cullen pronounces Bella to be healthy, and she leaves the room to go harass Edward about his apparent super-powers.  He just brushes her off and acts like she's crazy, which she kind of is.  I mean, they're not even dating yet, and already she's being pretty possessive.  Bella then leaves, with a new-found source of angst.  She gets a ride home and continues to obsess about this guy she barely knows.
    "I was consumed by the mystery Edward presented.  And more than a little obsessed with Edward himself.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  I wasn't as eager to escape Forks as I should be, as any normal, sane person would be. ...
    That was the first night I dreamed of Edward Cullen."
    Ewwwww.  That's where chapter three ends.  I'm sure a steamy, sticky dream description soon to follow in chapter four.

I Read Twilight and Hate it: Chapter One

I picked up the book at the library today. Despite having a number of friends that read the series, I wasn't able to borrow a copy from anyways, so I put myself on the waiting list for the book, which lead to me getting a copy yesterday, a worn paperback with a ripped and creased and some water damage near the end. Which is good, because I wont feel too bad about dog-earing the bottom, but bad because I'll have less than a month to write as much as I can before I return it. But anyways, let's dive in to Chapter One:
It starts with Disney-Princess-esque-named heroine Bella Swan departing from her previous home in Phoenix, AZ in order to live with her dad in the town of Forks, in "Washington State." ¹ She laments and complains about this move, through narration, all through the chapter. Oh my, could we maybe expect her to find that maybe appearances are deceiving and she'll actually grow to decide that Forks is where she was meant to be? So, she says goodbye to her mom, flies to Seattle then to Port Angeles, then gets picked up by her (who split with her mom long ago) dad for the drive to Forks. On the drive, they talk about a car that he plans to help her get. One passage stuck out to me:

"I found a good car for you, really cheap," he announced when we were strapped in.
"What kind of car?" I was suspicious of the way he said "good care for you" as opposed to just "good car." ¹

The reason that this stuck it to me, is that she would be most likely misinterpreting the "for you" in his sentence. Often, people add "for you" onto a sentence when they announce that they did a favour for the listener. "I made some cookies for you," "I got rid of that hornets' nest for you," I cut off my right ear for you," etc., etc. Of course, her father could have emphasized the "for you" in such a way that made it clear that he thought it was good enough for her but not a goo car in general, but that seems unlikely (unless her dad is an asshole). Talking like that sounds really unnatural, unless you're trying to sleight the person you're talking to. It's also possible that Meyer intentionally wanted to show that her protagonist made unfair assumptions about people in order to give her personality flaws and make her a more three-dimensional character, however Bella is turning out to be a major Mary Sue (in general) so that seems unlikely. Chalk it up to the writer forgetting that the characters don't know everything that the writer knows.
During the ride, she describes her new environment as being far to green for her tastes, claiming "Even the air filtered down greenly through the trees... It was too green - and alien planet." ¹ First of all, Arizona is not so barren that grass and trees would make somewhere feel like an "alien planet". And if it is, I'm truly sorry to everyone who lives there. Second, "greenly"? Seriously, "greenly"? This series is known for purple language and excessive verbiage, but I didn't think it would get this ridiculous this fast. My Journalism teacher always said that adverbs were a crutch for poor writers. I guess made-up adverbs would be a crutch for poor writers in elementary school.
Anyways, her dad says that he bought her an old, but reliable, 50s or 60s pickup truck, which she decides that she just wont like. But when they get to the house and she sees that it's an old, but reliable, 50s or 60s pickup truck, she suddenly decides she loves it. Don't ask.
As she's getting settled into the house, Bella narrates to us some information about the high school, including the exact number of students (which is kind of feasible that she would know) and the fact that "their grandparents had been toddlers together,"¹ which is a piece of information that seems like it would be beyond the grasp of the students there themselves, let alone someone who was just moving in. Bella was having another one of those "I know, because the author told me" moments.
She then goes on to explain that she didn't "look like a girl from Phoenix should." Explaining that (apparently) the expectation for Phoenixian girls was that they're "tan, sporty, blond [sic] - a volley-ball player of a cheerleader, perhaps. I don't really know where she's getting this stereotype. ¹ The only Arizonan I can think of is John McCain, and he's so pale that he doesn't cast a shadow. Also, is it really necessary for every "underdog" high school heroine to point out that she's not a cheerleader? I put "underdogs" in quotes, because it's clear from her subsequent physical self-description that Bella is not hard to look at. The description is kind of awkward, because it seems like Meyers wants it to sound like Bella doesn't consider herself attractive, but she uses language one would generally use to make someone sound attractive. For example, where-as most people who thought their complexion was to light would use "pale," or even "transparent," to describe it, Bella opts for the much more poetic and flattering "ivory-skinned." She describes her figure as "slender, but soft somehow,"¹ as the the prevailing standard of beauty was for women to be heavy-set with hard features. None of this would be so awkward if it were an impartial narrator talking about Bella, but Bella is the narrator; this is how she thinks of herself, which seems like an odd thing to do, even if you don't immediately afterwards say that you'll never fit in physically (which she does).
Anyways, Bella unpacks her clothes, and after a long day of sitting in various modes of transportation, complaining through narration, and insincerely judging her appearance in the mirror, she's beat. So she heads off to bed.

___________________________________

And crying. She's also tired from a long night of crying, she informs us the next morning. After a non-descript breakfast, she dons her It's-always-raining-in-Washington parka and drives to school. It is, literally, always raining throughout the first chapter. I've never been to Forks specifically, but I did live just north of Seattle for most of my life, and let me tell you: it is, in fact, raining less than half the time. Somehow, Seattle (and Washington in general) got this reputation for constant precipitation. Try watching "The Ring." There's not a single sunny scene in that whole movie, but I digress. Bella gets her schedule from the school office as well as a piece of paper on which she has to collect all her teachers signatures and then return it at the end of the day; I guess new students aren't trust-worthy enough for regular attendance-calls or something. She parks in the student lot, mentally prepping herself for the first day. "I can do this, I lied to myself feebly. No one was going to bite me." ¹ Hahahaha, get it? Because it's a vampire novel, and vampires bite people! Hilarious! Really, though, who actually thinks that before an awkward social situation. I mean, if someone is acting like they're afraid of you, you might tell them, "It's okay, I wont bite you," but you do it jokingly; it's not like you actually think the other person was afraid that you'd bite them. Not unless they were raised in the wild or had some kind of phobia about being bitten by other people (neither of which seems to describe Bella).
She makes her way to her first class, English, where she's given a list of reading for that term, which she already happened to have read at her previous school. I guess Forks' educational standards are inferior to Phoenix's. In this class, a friendly male student who was "gangly," and had "skin problems and hair black as an oil slick,"¹ (no Bella-snogs for you, grease-boy) started a conversation with her and offered to show her to her next class. Actually, she had an escort to pretty much each of her classes, including lunch.
During lunch, Bella first spots the legendary apple7 of every fangirl's eye, Edward Cullen. He was sitting with a group of four other (I'm guessing) vampires. They stood out to Bella, because they were all just sort of staring at nothingness, not really looking at anything in the room, and just threw away their lunches without taking a bite either ("unbitten apple" ¹ Get it?). Also, they appeared to be too old to be high school students and

"every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students... They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes - purplish, bruise-like shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose..." ¹

Now, maybe I'm just really jaded, but if I saw kids that fit the above description in my high school, my first thought would be that mind-altering chemicals played a large part in their lives, or at the least that they had eating disorders. Bella's mind, however, took a different path:

"... their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces that you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful - maybe the perfect blond [sic] girl, or the bronze-haired boy." ¹

Upon asking another student who they are, Bella is told that they're the semi-incestuous group of adoptive-siblings that live with the wacky, young doctor down the street (from Alaska). Also, they're all dating each other, except for Edward. Edward apparently hasn't dated anyone; he was waiting for the right middle-aged Mormon author's highschool-aged, literary self-personification to come along.
After lunch, Bella headed to Biology, where they were again going over something she'd already learned back in Arizona (c'mon, Forks, what's with the lax education?). That's alright, though, because not only is Edward in the class, but she gets seated right next to him, so she has something else besides cellular biology to study. And study him, she does; there's a lengthy description of Edward's posture and expression during the class, which both denote a man who's getting a prostate exam from a pirate an trying to pretend like it doesn't bother him. Also, he glares at Bella a lot and seems to hate her.
Despite the fact that Edward was being kind of a douche and "so mean," Bella managed to look deeper him and notice that "his forearm was surprisingly hard and muscular," and he had a "deep, attractive voice." ¹ She knows what's important.
Bella seems to fall snugly into the stereotype that women always fall for good-looking jerks rather than nice, sincere guys. I've heard that, later on, Edward is supposed to be this ridiculously nice gentleman, but Bella doesn't know that yet. He's being a jerk to her and she's falling for him, sometimes in the same sentence:

"He turned slowly to glare at me - his face absurdly handsome - with hateful, piercing eyes. For an instant, I felt the thrill of genuine fear, raising hair on my arms." ¹

Anyways, her last class was P.E. Some friendly guy gave her some consolation about Edward being a douche, and paid her a nice compliment, too. Something tells me there will be no Bella-snogs for him, though; his eyes aren't piercing and black enough. Bella makes some comment about volleyball bringing back lots of bad memories of causing injuries in others. Did she have to move away from her old school because she went into a Carrie-like rage in response to a blocked spike? or was this an allusion to her being really un-coordinated? Probably the latter.
Bella narrates the Forks was "literally my personal hell on Earth." ¹ No it's not. Don't say "literally," when you don't actually mean "literally." You only say "literally" when you mean something for it's literal meaning, not as an expression or a metaphor. Forks is not actually hell, or is it personally yours. It is a real town, with real people living in it, and not hell. I suppose that the fictionalized version of Forks in this book is personally yours (in that you specifically wrote it for your characters). It's still not hell, though, it was written out in every way to make Bella succeed as a romantic heroine... unless it's like that episode of the Twilight Zone where the criminal dies, and thinks he's sent to heaven because everything he wants is given to him, but soon realizes how boring existence is with no challenges and realizes that he's actually in hell³. Forks could be that kind of ironic hell, but even then it still wouldn't be literal. Also, I'm probably reading too much into it.
After P.E., Bella is done with classes and heads back to the office to return the random slip that they gave her at the beginning of the day. She finds Edward there, trying to convince the secretary to let him move his Biology class to a different time, just in case the audience hasn't yet grasped that he doesn't want to be near Bella for some reason. After discovering that he can't change it, he blows out of there and Bella turns in the slip, and drives home to get some more crying done.

Stay tuned for Chapter 2.

¹Meyer, Stephanie Twilight. “Chapter 1” Little, Brown and Co., 2005

² Oh that reminds me; before the start of the book, there's a quote from Genesis, regarding the "tree of knowledge." Also, on the cover you see two hands holding an apple. I guess there's going to be some kind of forbidden fruit metaphor later or something.

³ “The Twilight Zone” Season 1, Episode 28 “A Nice Place to Visit”

New Feature: I Read Twilight and Hate it

I have decided to read Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer. I've already done some reading about Twilight, which leads me to dislike the series, but I've never read the actual books. This makes is somewhat difficult to impress on people that have read it that it is a bad book, as all the Twilight fans would just accuse me of criticizing something I didn't even know or understand (and they would be right)¹. I've decided to read Twilight partially to give it a fair chance, but mostly so that I can criticize it better. Also, because I usually try to avoid any book or TV series which becomes suddenly and intensely popular, but sometimes (after it's been out for awhile) my curiosity gets the best of me, much like it did with the Harry Potter series.
Actually, Harry Potter became somewhat of a guilty pleasure, where I enjoyed reading it but was still able to recognize that it wasn't actually good² (sort of like when I would watch "Jackie Chan Adventures"). Really, though, my prediction about Twilight is that I will neither think that it is good nor enjoy it, at least not how it was meant to be enjoyed. Still, I'd like to give the series a fair shake before judging it further (well, maybe not fair, but a shake at any rate). What I do believe I will enjoy is tearing it a new literary hole here, on my blog. You see, I'm introducing a new feature today on Dotted Pomegranates; it's called "I Read Twilight and Hate It." It's meant to be a chapter-by-chapter criticism of the book, as well as a synopsis and substitute to actually reading it, for those in the same situation as me. Look forward to installments, soon.
¹: And if you have read it but say that you hated it, then they just ask "Well, why did you read it then?" It's a bit of a Catch-22
²: I still maintain that Harry Potter is not a good series. I will explain why I think this in a separate post, if necessary.