Got a new lunchbox ✨💊

going to CVS is like a monthly field trip now, where I leave the house and browse the magazines, cane accessories, and massage rollers.

Oh, and I forget to wear real shoes instead of slippers.

It was one of those early years where my older brother went to the same elementary school and could check out the "good stuff" that little kids like me weren't allowed to read yet. I was tired of the "Mr. Men" and "Little Miss" books. The only books kindergartners could check out were For Babies. I wanted to be a big kid. I wanted to read a Big Kid Book.

So my brother brought home this thing and it gave me nightmares about itchy houses made out of rat fur and fingernails. Witches and spiders were a cake walk. Whatever. But itchy houses? That's where I draw the line. It made me think about all those little poky hairs you get all over your clothes when you get a haircut and they don't put a drape over you. So it went back to the school library, where it evaporated, never to be seen again.

That itchy hair house haunted my drams for years, getting worse and worse every time i remembered it. My brother told me I made the whole thing up, that maybe the book didn't exist anywhere but in my nightmares.

And then twenty years or so later, I found it!

Found at the thrift store today: old books! There's a 1975 copy of Frank Herbert's "Dune Messiah" (Children of Dune would be printed the following Spring) and a set of Ursula K LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy, all printed in November 1977. There's some light flaking on the covers and mild wear on the spines, but the pages are all in wonderful condition.

My copy of Twilight is the version with the actors from the movie on the cover. In the back, it includes these discussion questions. I'm already writing an essay on the book (for personal entertainment) but Question 10 in particular piques my interest specifically.

If I didn't have this version of the book, I don't think I'd even know that Meyer was trying to call a direct comparison between her work and Jane Austen's beyond listing impressive-sounding books to let people know she's read things before. I'm curious to know if Meyer had a specific age group in mind while she was writing, and if she just assumed a large swath of that demographic would know offhand what she was referencing. It doesn't feel like the title-drops were used in a meaningful way within the book.

(For example, when she says Bella is reading Wuthering Heights and later has a pop quiz on it, but we don't get any insight on what Bella thinks of the story or characters within. It might've been helpful to reference that Isabella within the book is blind to the warnings other people give her about Heathcliff and his intentions for her, while our parallel Bella willfully ignores Edward's dangerous nature)

Also, I feel like it's kinda shooting yourself in the foot to try to call up beloved works/authors in such a way. If the comparison makes your work look weaker, don't use it.

If you are a Twilight fan, this post is not for you and I am not here to fight. I am reading for the first time, as an adult, and looking at this as if I were a beta reader, for my own personal study.

I'm going over it line by line as if I were editing, highlighting things I might change (some passive language and awkward phrasing). Like I would do if a friend had passed me something they wanted feedback on. I've never really analyzed a book line by line before, but it's fun in its own way.