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Yeah, we're all feeling it. Especially regarding faeries.

Can you believe Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer has been out less than a week, and I've already finished reading it? Big book, too.

Okay, so I rushed to read this book because of talk about disappointed fans. I checked out some of the 1,800+ customer reviews at Amazon this afternoon and stopped by a Twilight Moms forum. While there certainly are plenty of unhappy readers, there are plenty of happy ones, too. Plus, some of the negative responses at Amazon seem to come from readers who weren't hardcore fans to begin with.

I think one thing to keep in mind with the Twilight series is that it's what might be called a paranormal romance with a big, big emphasis on romance. Laura Miller in Salon said the Twilight books are "romance novels, and despite their gothic trappings represent a resurrection of the most old-fashioned incarnation of the genre." Many of the negative comments I've seen about Breaking Dawn object to its ending. (I'm trying not to give anything away.) Two other recent series, Harry Potter and The Underland Chronicles, ended with bloodbaths. The Twilight Saga ended differently because it is a romance. I think some readers may have been confused by the vampires and werewolves.

Some readers also objected because they felt that some characters, in particular Bella, behaved out of character in Breaking Dawn. I think Bella remained Bella pretty much right to the end of the book. She is a female who is defined totally by her relationships to others. She has no real "self." When she appears to behave differently in Breaking Dawn, she does so because of her relationship to someone else. For instance, she appears to grow a backbone in this last book, both literally and figuratively. But when she does so, it's because of her relationships with two other characters. She becomes powerful, even, but only because of her love for others. And in the final sentences of the book, the power she's developed she gives away as an act of love.

Love--romantic, familial, maternal, and even sexual--is treated pretty much as a cult here. Some readers objected to a character who had never shown any interest in children suddenly being willing to die for one. But that makes sense if you're into the cult of maternal love. I found an extended section regarding a pregnancy and childbirth sadistic, and it appears that a number of other readers were turned off by its "ick" factor. But, again, when you're talking the cult of maternal love, a woman becomes noble through such suffering. Is this a storyline that's going to be compelling to YA readers, though? I wonder if the whole maternal love thing is an adult interest, not YA.

In fact, The Twilight Saga may have moved out of YA in this final book, which could explain the response from some of its readers. Bella and Edward are no longer in high school. They're dealing with grown-up, family problems, not teen problems. When young readers were reading about people they could relate to in the earlier books, they were willing to ignore the way so many characters roll their eyes, chuckle, and snore, the improbabilities regarding plot, and the scenes that went on way too long. But Bella becomes matronly in Breaking Dawn, and Edward seems as if he ought to be out playing golf.

These characters may have outgrown their readers.

I just saw a letter at one of my listservs that suggested that reader had a negative response to Stephanie Meyer's new book, Breaking Dawn. I didn't read more than the first couple of sentences because I was afraid there'd be spoilers. Then this is just in from Justine Larbalestier's blog. Some disappointed readers among the 439!!! reviewers at Amazon.

Even though I've gone on record as not being crazy about the Twilight series, I don't take any pleasure in seeing Meyer hammered by her fans. I enjoyed her first book, and I definitely respect that, according to press accounts, she comes from outside the literary establishment and made a success of herself.

I wasn't all that enthused about reading this last book, but now I can't wait to see what she did to tick off those people! I'm in your corner now, Steph!

Laura Miller's article, Touched by a Vampire, in Salon is by far the best analysis of the Twilight phenomena that I've ever read.

By the way, there's going to be at least four late-night bookstore or library events here in Connecticut to celebrate Breaking Dawn's publication day. Some of them are going to be in the form of proms.

I was recently looking for a vampire book for early readers. My Sister the Vampire No. 1, Switched by Sienna Mercer (a total mystery woman as far as the Internet is concerned) was not what I needed. (Yes, I should have checked the reading age on the back of the book.) But it was a light, entertaining read that would make a great car/vacation book for those 8- to 12-year-old kids whose moms expect them to read in the car and on vacation.

Switched deals with that most cliched of middle school situations, the new girl at school. But super pink cheerleader Olivia Abbott soon discovers that there's a very pale Goth girl at Franklin Grove Middle School who looks exactly like her, has the same birthday as she does, and was adopted as she was. Holy Hayley and Lindsey! They're twinners!

What Olivia doesn't realize, though, is that they aren't quite identical. Ivy plays for another team. When the head of the local teen bitch posse refers to Ivy and her Goth friends as "the walking dead," she only thinks she's speaking metaphorically.

Switched will be fun for readers who already know something about vampire lore and can enjoy the vampiric word play used to describe stereotypical school and teen situations. They'll also enjoy knowing something that one of the main characters doesn't know and the other doesn't reveal until late in the story. This is the first book in a series, so I don't know how well later books will go over once the secret is out.

This one, though, could make good recreational reading for a young one seeking relief from improving books assigned at school.

Is there anybody out there? Heeeeellllllllloooooo?

Who a I kidding? Nobody reads on the Internets at the end of the year. Including myself. The litblogosphere is a graveyard dotted with sign-offs and holiday wishes.

Before my own sign-off until January, I have two posts to spotlight. First, Maud blogged about the STUNNING New Yorker article/short-story combo about one of my favorite short story writers. Follow her links and see if you can answer her question:

"Why is the New Yorker article about Gordon Lish’s shaping of Raymond Carver’s early fiction unsigned?"

Secondly, Steve Bryant and Jeffrey Yamaguchi have passed along a funny link to two brothers who decided they would only communicate via web video. For a year. It's a lesson in good web video writing, and I think Steve nailed it with his post:

"Poor Ze Frank. Judging from the sheer number of imitators out there, his unique voice has metastasized throughout the Net, which has adopted his cadence into the Internet's own newscaster tone. Y'know that tone. The same one every TV newscaster uses to emote appropriately. Everyone's a talking head now."

When will people start treating the most talented bloggers like real literary figures?

The journal n+1 has a smart look at the rise of the website Gawker, giving each of the founding authors a critique that would make any literature professor proud. It's a valuable lesson on the evolution of webby style of bloggers like Choire Sicha:

"Like a Method gossip, Sicha had a natural fluency in spin and slipped almost lyrically into the voices of the subjects he intended to critique. When he felt that these subjects, out of restraint or lack of imagination, hadn’t pushed their blurbs far enough, Sicha obligingly did it for them ... At times his insults and his humor, in the language he imitated, were so subtly placed that they could be missed completely."

Still, not everybody can be as mean as they are. Myself included. Dan Blank has an interesting article about a kinder, gentler model for web writing, the enthusiasm-driven approach.

He uses stereo equipment writers as his model, showing how amateurs and experts share the stage in this bustling web community. Check it out: 

"Never lose site of the key elements that the audience is passionate about. To build community, start small and focus on the one item that gets people excited. For all the time I spend with my stereo “hobby,” it is still all about the music." (Thanks, Chris Webb)

Everybody is so worried that the Internet will wreck book publishing, but ultimately, the web is our best chance to keep our writing world alive.

Yesterday Wired Magazine profiled the good folks at The Emerging Writers Network, a site with a well-deserved spot on my RSS reader. They took a community of fledgling writers and launched an entire publishing company, a beautiful story.

Even better, the article features tons of commentary about how other small presses are adapting to new media--this goldmine of links in particular caught my attention.

Let's stop whining and start writing:

"McSweeney's, one of the most successful new small presses, took a financial hit when AMS collapsed. To raise funds, it held an eBay auction of first editions and signed illustrations. Now it features pictures and bios of Subscriber of the Week on its site. To promote Matthew Sharpe's Jamestown, Soft Skull Press put up a MySpace page for Pocahontas, one of the novel's main characters. Unbridled Books produces regular YouTube videos and podcasts."

For all you webby writers who aren't quite ready for large-scale projects, Jakob Nielsen has some shocking news--writing in the famously-hated-by-writing-teachers passive voice can actually  grab more readers in the topsy-turvy world of the Internets.