I am extremely happy that Paranormal Romance has it’s own shelf now. It keeps the stuff out of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy and horror sections where it doesn’t really fit in, and out of YA where it does nothing but make it difficult for male teens to find reading material. In fact I’ve always wished that bookstores would divide shelves into more genres and sub-genres. The fact that I have to wade through hundreds of mystery and thriller novels to find something I want to read in fiction is extremely annoying, and I imagine equally annoying for the other side too.
That is a good point. I haven’t read the books but I’ve heard the basic plot outline, and it definitely sounds like an unhealthy relationship, and he is not a romantic hero that girls should desire their boyfriend to be like. But that is also true of so many pieces of fiction. I haven’t read a whole lot of Young Adult books, but I know from the movies that there are countless heroes that do “romantic” things in the movies that would be creepy or stalkerish or abusive if they did it in real life.
It’s true that no girl is going to completely change what she wants in a guy just from reading Twilight. No one bases all their life decisions on any one piece of fiction. But books, movies, TV, and other entertainment does affect us to some extent, in influencing us in what we think is cool, exciting, realistic, and in other ways, and in often ways we don’t fully realize.
And if it was just Twilight that had a controlling romantic hero, that would be one thing. But it’s in a lot of stories where the hero is semi-abusive but the heroine knows it’s just because he loves her so much.
I know. What do they think Harry Potter was?
You’ve mixed up cause and effect. Teen girls already liked guys like Edward. The real question is how these girls feel when they grow up.
Keyboard’s broken, or I’d elaborate on this and everything else in this thread.
Yup. If you had tried to force ‘literature’ on me as a teen I would have rebelled hard and just stopped reading anything.
Newsflash to dopers: That 14 year old that loves Twilight? At 16 they’ll move on to Anne Rice, at 18 to Wuthering Heights, at 20 to some sort of classic lit y’all worship that I don’t know because I never finished university. 
:dubious: I question this diagnosis. Yeah, HP is about magic, but the books don’t in any way encourage realistic irrationality (except perhaps in their assumption of the existence of an afterlife for “Muggle” and “magical” dead alike, but a vague assumption of the existence of an afterlife is so common in popular culture and literature that I’m not going to nitpick it).
On the contrary, within the framework of the HP universe where some supernatural things can happen, the books actively discourage superstitious or antirational thinking like believing in the power of divination practices based on confirmation bias or assuming that everything must turn out all right just because you’re a good person or that sort of thing. On a deeper level below all the surface froth about magic, the HP books are pretty committed to rationalism. Especially in the character of Hermione, which is the one your average girl reader is going to identify with most anyway.
Oh no, I loved* House of Stairs*!
Granted, I was in seventh grade when I first read it, and when I read it now I see it doesn’t hold up as quality writing. However, it did scare the crap out of me and I’ve always treasured that.
Now, The Chocolate War sucked ass.
So many YA and Children’s award winners I’ve hated. (and I think The Golden Compass = pretentious bullcrap).
Twilight ‘saga’ is no better than the ‘Flowers in the Attic’ trash of a few decades ago.
it hardly matters. judging from what I see at the high school and middle school libraries where I work, kids don’t read anyway. seriously. 1 or 2 out of a 100 or more I see during a day read for pleasure.
I agree. It’s like saying all those housewives reading 50 Shades of Grey are going to abandon their families for a little BDSM fun with random strangers. Really?
It’s a damn good thing we have all these guys who are man enough to tell the little ladies what they should be reading! God only knows what the world will come to if the kids are allowed to read Flowers in the Attic, er, Twilight.
:rolleyes:
Yeah, I think if I first read it when I was 13 I would have thought it was the best book ever. Instead I just noticed all the plot holes and couldn’t believe that this trash was being held up as a classic of YA literature.
I hope not. Wuthering Heights is crap!
The craze for the end of the world would be a whole 'nother thread . . .