"Eclipse" by Stephenie Meyer

Took me a while to slog through all of it, but I just finished "Eclipse" by Stephenie Meyer.



After really liking "Twilight" (the first book in the Twilight series), pretty much liking "New Moon" and now a little bit liking "Eclipse", I think I'll take a Stephenie Meyer break before reading the conclusion to the series... "Breaking Dawn".

I shouldn't be too critical, though, as the book really isn't written for me, but rather primarily for teenage girls (and as such is very heavy on relationship melodrama). That said, I enjoyed quite a bit the first half of the original book as the anticipation and suspense building was solid. I'm sure I will finish off the series at some point, just not soon.

"New Moon" by Stephenie Meyer

Just finished reading "New Moon"... the second book from Stephenie Meyer's four-part "Twilight" series.



The book picks up where "Twilight" left off with Bella (human) dating Edward (vampire). From Stephenie Meyer's official website, here's a key passage from the first chapter...

-----
"Shoot," I muttered when the paper sliced my finger; I pulled it out to examine the damage. A single drop of blood oozed from the tiny cut.

It all happened very quickly then.

Edward threw himself at me, flinging me back across the table...

I tumbled down to the floor by the piano, with my arms thrown out instinctively to catch my fall, into the jagged shards of glass. I felt the searing, stinging pain that ran from my wrist to the crease inside my elbow.

Dazed and disoriented, I looked up from the bright red blood pulsing out of my arm—into the fevered eyes of the six suddenly ravenous vampires.
-----

So... an intriguing beginning to the book for all who enjoyed part one of the series (myself included), but as a whole it seemed like the story fell short.

There was definitely some interesting development of characters (notably Jacob Black, Bella's friend) and storylines, but sometimes things seemed to get a bit muddled. The consequence of this for me was either hard to follow action or abrupt drops in story threads.

The other criticism I would have is that the writing got weepy (lots of "can't live if living is without you") and felt like it should be set to a Taylor Swift high-school ballad. That said, the books aren't really written for my demographic so I shouldn't quibble here.

All of this said, I did really enjoy book one of the series (particularly the first half) and am terribly impressed by a writer who came out of nowhere with a great first book (story of that here) as well as someone who gets a lot of people reading (i.e. J.K. Rowling). "New Moon" as a book probably isn't the greatest piece of writing ever done (or even the greatest Stephenie Meyer writing), but does have some interesting development to Bella's story as part of the series.

If someone liked "Twilight" and wants to continue the saga, it's certainly not a bad use of time to read "New Moon" as a prelude to "Eclipse" and then the conclusion book... "Breaking Dawn".

Marketing of "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer

I previously wrote about Stephenie Meyer as now being one of the "blockbuster writers" and have now come across an interesting article titled titled "Harry Potter with Fangs- and a Social Network". Featured in the Aug 11, 2008 issue of BusinessWeek, it chronicles some of the online efforts that have helped her entire "Twilight" series achieve blockbuster status.



Some of these sites include: Twilighters, TwilightMoms, Twilight Guy and Meyer's personal website.

One particularly interesting thing from the article was mention of how other best-sellers such as "Freakonomics", "The Last Lecture" and "The 4-Hour Workweek" have attempted to replicate this type of online community. This illustrates that true impact status is often achieved not just by singular success, but by the impact that success has on the world around it.

"Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer, "The Innocent Man" by John Grisham and... J.K. Rowling

Whereas the last post was about a process of writing (specifically writing while holding a different job), I thought it would be interesting to pull together some different stories about... "the big guns", those writers who certainly may have had held down day jobs while writing, but certainly don't have to now. Additionally, these are all authors I've had the chance to read and form an opinion on.

Starting off at the very top is of course, J.K. Rowling who was featured as a "Person of the Year Runner-Up" in the Dec 31, 2007-Jan 7, 2008 issue of Time Magazine. Having been a devoted reader of the entire Harry Potter series, I completely agree with the accolades received by Rowling... and shared her view of the last book (below) as being the best.

Following on the heels of Rowling is Stephenie Meyer. In an Apr 2008 piece titled "Stephenie Meyer: A New J.K. Rowling?" Time profiled the author of the Twilight series. Being curious to see what all the hulabaloo was about, I read Meyer's first book "Twilight" (which became so popular that it became the first in a series) and can attest that it's very entertaining writing and that yep... I'm looking forward to the movie.

Moving on from the teen fantasy genre, Time in Oct 2006 gave a profile of John Grisham which went into detail about his non-fiction book "The Innocent Man". A fascinating read that made me never want to grow up in small-town Oklahoma.

And finally... having gone through the progression of authors I find brilliant (Rowling) to very good with potential for brillance (Meyer & Grisham), there's James Patterson. In March of 2006 Time had "The Man Who Can't Miss" on the gazillion copy selling writer, but having read one of his books... I just don't get it, but with 100 million readers (even better for Patterson, 100 million copy purchasers), he's doing something right.