I’m sort of an occasional reader, that is, I read a few books every few years. I dunno, I’ve never been a particular fan of any one genre. When I was in elementary school, I read a lot of mystery books out of our school library, but after reading most of the good ones, there wasn’t much else to read, plus you have to remember all these books were <1985, so your thrill is limited.

Over the years, beyond what I've read in class, I read a lot of Star Trek and Star Wars novels (The Way of the Warrior from DS9 was especially good in book format, as well as the Thrawn Trilogy in SW) I also read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, and liked it enough to read Angels and Demons and Digital Fortress, all excellent books. I was also especially a fan of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Good Omens, as well as Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christoper Moore. All of these of course came as recommendations from an old IRC friend when he worked at a Waldenbooks many years ago, and I haven’t bought and read much since then beyond Grand Theft Childhood. Hindsight says I should probably read more books from those authors, but even with UNLIMITED TIME WORKS I tend to read other crap, play games, or lurk the internet.

I find it kinda odd that vampires are the new craze these days, and it isn’t even really vampires so much as it’s just another romance story with the addition of vampires. When I think of vampires I always think of old stuff, Dracula movies, Bela Lugosi, or on the animu side of things, Vampire Hunter D, Hellsing, and Shingetsutan Tsukihime. Sadly the only vampire animu series I liked was Tsukihime and it had less to do with vampires and more to do with LINES LINES LINES and supernatural elements. So when a book/movie series like Twilight comes along, and brings with it an endless horde of teenage girls, ugh.

Twilight is to teenage girls what Underworld is to teenage boys and liberal arts majors. Except where Underworld has some sort of story and plot, and something good to look at slightly, Twilight is vampire sex fanfiction in print and on the screen. I suppose I should be jealous that someone came up with this and will make a fortune off it, because it’s pretty easy to make a fortune off of a lot of brainless wonders these days, but having seen some of the movie through Rifftrax commentary eyes, even I can tell this is like watching “Generic Teen ABC Family Show Drama A” with LOL DARK VAMPIRE. Wow. I was especially amused at how Stephen King, one of my mother’s favorite authors and also a couple of books I read, was quoted saying Meyer was a terrible author. I don’t know if I’d say terrible, she hit her demographic on the head and she’ll profit from it, where his influence has waned over the years, but he also writes srsbins fiction to srsbins people, not teenage girls who need their romance simplified into “omg he won’t stick it in me? wth??!?!?!111” which will then turn into her next book about the chick getting pregnant with his vampire baby. Bet all the girls dream about that, amirite?

Case in point, I believe I will now enjoy trolling “Twi-tards” a little more, if I actually remember to.