Giant Squids of Anger: The book that defeated me

I should really start off by saying explaining what a Giant Squid of Anger is. If you don't know, that also highly likely means you haven't heard of the Vlogbrothers, in which case... why?!?!?!?! Go check them out! John and Hank Green are in equal measures intelligent, informative, amusing, and downright silly (in the best possible way). They coined the term Giant Squid of Anger to describe that peculiar internet phenomenon, whereby thoughtful, considered and all-around good members of society seem to completely lose it in the comments section of sites like Youtube when someone disagrees with them and process to launch into an increasingly unintelligible tirade of expletives. It has now expanded to mean anything that causes a normally sane and balanced person to become irrationally anger, therefore rendering them unable to communicate clearly. So... now that we got that out of the way...

Art by racheytonk at Deviantart

As I said before, I've read hundreds of books in my life. I pride myself on having finished all of them. Every. Single. One.


That is, I used to pride myself on the above... Until about two years ago. What happened then? I met my match. The one book I could not finish, try as I might. So which was it? War and Peace? In search of Lost Time? Finnegan's Wake? No dear reader, no. It was.... Twilight (from here on in referred to as The Sparkly Nemesis). 

Pictured: the sparkliest of all nemeses...

Some of my pupils with older sisters had been mentioning it, but I didn't give it much thought. However, when on a dress-up day a student walked it and proudly informed me that her older sister had dressed her up as Bella Swan, I had to know what all the fuss was about. 

I've met some people that think reading children's fiction and YA novels is a co pout. I am not one of these people. I am a firm believer that a good book is a good book, regardless of what age it is being marketed to. Some of these books are brilliant, so that's not the reason I hate Twilight The Sparkly Nemesis. Criticism of this novel has been done countless times before, much better than I could do it, so I'll just summarise and say that:

• the relationship is creepy, bordering on abuse, and it troubles me that young girls think this is romantic/desirable in any way.
• Bella has barely any agency.
• the writing itself is very poor indeed (and no, maybe I couldn't do it better, but then again I'm not the one being paid millions to write a book, am I?). I thing teens and young adults deserve better writing.

It was one of the first and few books to make me turn into a Giant Squid of Anger. I loathe it with a passion, but (and it's a big but) because I only got 3/4 of the way through it, I've never really felt entitled to all my righteous literary rage.

Freakishly accurate depiction of my literary rage.

Why do I mention this? Because on Goodreads I spotted a link to a trailer to something called The Host. Which is when I realised that Stephanie Mayer had written something other than The Sparkly Nemesis.

And so it is dear readers (um... is anyone actually reading this?) that I have set myself a challenge for 2013. Yes, I might need the whole year. Stephanie Mayer shall not defeat me again! This year I shall read The Host in it's entirety, so help me God! (And the blessed Virgin Mary. And the Holy Spirit. And all the Catholic Saint. Hey, I need all the help I can get!) If I enjoy it, I will be pleasantly surprised, but if I despise it, at least I shall do so with some authority! Why am I doing this? Pride. And because clearly Anastasia Steele is not the only one with a penchant for masochism...