I thought long and hard about the topic for my very first blog. Something special. Relevant. A fascinating topic with mass appeal. So it had to be Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight.
The just-released blockbuster movie is raking in major bucks ($70.5 million in the first week alone). Meanwhile Robert Pattison (vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen) has been attacked by rabid female fans, crazed-Beatle-mania style. Not sure he realized what he got himself into when he decided to be the repository for all women’s dreams.
Stephenie Meyer’s phenomenally best-selling clean-teen books, Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn, are a cross between a romance and an action thriller. They tap into female’s deepest desires for the perfect man. So he’s a vampire. Who cares? Finally the homely, nobody girl wins the hottest, sweetest, smartest, most romantic boy in the whole school (ok, in the whole world). Ah, the joys of fiction, where dreams really do come true, and Cinderella really does meet and marry her handsome prince.
But what about the boys? I’ve heard of a few guys who read and even enjoyed Meyer’s books. I’ve even heard of a few more who dared to be seen at the movie. But not too many of these mavericks exist. Most guys I know and have talked to have a) zero interest in even opening one of Stephanie Meyers books; or b) tried them because their sister or girlfriend forced them to and universally agreed: “Twilight sucks.”
So what do teen-age boys read? “Do teen-age boys read?” I hear you ask. What book would make a teen-age boy stay up late into the night, sacrificing sleep (but not food, of course) to finish that page-turner?
Teen-age guys spend inordinate amounts of time shooting at virtual things on screens. And guess what? They’ll also spend inordinate amounts of time reading about fictional characters who shoot at things.
Star Wars novels teem with characters who’ve got tight weaponry, awesome firepower, and crazy-fast ships. To grasp the basic plot of these books, think about any Star Wars movie you’ve ever seen. Change the name of the character, the planet, the bad guy, a few details and voila! A new novel.
For example, in Star Wars: Ambush at Corellia (Book One of the Corellian Trilogy), Han Solo, Princess Leia, and their children return with Chewbacca to Han’s home planet of Corellia. Han finds his planet on the brink of civil war and it turns out that the bad guy happens to be Han Solo’s cousin. “As jammerships block all communication with Luke Skywalker and the outside universe, Han and Leia find themselves trapped on a world about to explode in violence unless the can meet a fanatical Rebel leader’s impossible demands . . .” You get the picture.
Well over a hundred Star Wars novels have been written by various authors, usually as series (The New Jedi Order series, the X-Wing series, Young Jedi Knights series, etc.) or trilogies (Jedi Academy trilogy, The Corellian trilogy, The Black Fleet Crisis, etc.). You might have a hard time finding them on your library’s catalog. Our library carries many of these mass media paperbacks, but doesn’t list them in their catalog. So you have to go to the library and hope they have one you haven’t read. Many guys just end up buying them. Twenty, thirty, forty of them.
So move over Edward Cullen. You may be the Mr. Darcy of Dracula. You may have killer looks and a personality girls would die for. But there’s one thing you don’t have. The Force.
Do you know guys that read Star Wars novels? And . . . did you think the Twilight movie was as good as the book?
My teenage and older boys (and husband) like every book by Robert Jordan. The books are a fantasy series. The series is called The Wheel of Time. They are also just starting to get into a relatively new series of books by Brandon Sanderson, called Mistborn. Star Wars books held their interest as young teens and “tweens” but they never got that into them.
This was a good comparison of what the different genders read. Putting Twilight in any category with Shakespeare or Pride and Prejudice is overrating it, but Twilight v. Star Wars made sense to me. I am female, and a male friend has asked me several times if the Twilight books are really that good. I replied they are interesting, easy to read, and a mix of romance, mystery, and danger. Sounds like Star Wars, doesn’t it? Now I understand better what young men like to read.
First i would like to reply to twilight, ive read some of twilight and it was probably one of the most boring things ive ever read next to probably Shakespeare and pride and prejudice. Its a book that appeals to hormonal girls with little to no self esteem who just want some perfect hunk of a guy. And secondly to Star Wars, first i do have to agree that some of the books are very similar to the movies but that definitely doesn’t include all of them. The movies are mainly concerned about the Jedi, while a number of the books are concerned about the Jedi at all and i particularly enjoy those. Also a number of books expand on many skipped parts in the movies. A very recent book called Death Star helps fill in the gap between the third and fourth movies about the construction of the death star and it tells the story of the fourth movie from the empire’s view which is very interesting. In conclusion with over 100 books its very difficult if not impossible to characterize the series as, “Change the name of the character, the planet, the bad guy, a few details and voila! A new novel.”
I do know many boys that read Star Wars. All of those boys have tons, about 20-40. I haven’t seen the Twilight movie so I can’t give you any feed back.