Zero to Well-Read: TWILIGHT by Stephenie Meyer

Summary

Book Riot – The Podcast

Episode: Zero to Well-Read: TWILIGHT by Stephenie Meyer

Date: October 8, 2025

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Episode Overview

This special "Zero to Well-Read" episode explores the enduring phenomenon of Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, marking its 20th anniversary. The hosts—Jeff O’Neill and Rebecca Schinsky of Book Riot—are joined by Book Riot editors Kelly Jensen and Vanessa Diaz. Together they investigate Twilight’s cultural legacy, its impact on YA literature and adult fiction, the reading experience in 2025, and why the book retains such a powerful place in the literary world. The discussion balances critical perspectives with an understanding of its generational significance, tackling the hype, the critiques, the fan devotion, and its ripple effects across the industry.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Why Twilight?

• Phenomenon as Required Reading: Jeff frames being “well-read” as being conversant in cultural book phenomena, not just literary “quality.” Twilight is “one of the top five phenomenons” in his adult life, shaping not just YA but mainstream fiction and pop culture. (03:43)
• Its Cultural Lineage: Rebecca: “You can draw a straight line from Twilight to today's romantasy phenomenon.” It shaped both YA and adult fiction, directly influencing Fifty Shades of Grey and the entire romantasy boom. (03:43)

Historical & Industry Impact

• YA Publishing Transformation: Kelly tracks how Meyer's mega-sales injected “major money” into YA, driving investment and diversity in the field. It “helped shape the future of the midlist of YA literature” and expanded reading culture, especially as social media began to influence book discovery and fandom. (05:36–07:29)
• Women & Girls in Book Fandom: Kelly spotlights how Twilight “got a lot of women hating and hating on girls story,” as cultural critiques became about young women’s taste, not just the text. Meyer herself reinvested her success in adapting other women’s work, notably Lois Duncan’s Down a Dark Hall adaptation—a move often overlooked compared to the criticism of her own books. (08:46–10:44)

The Reading Experience: Past and Present

• Original Reception: Vanessa describes coming to Twilight at age 24 in the middle of a reading slump, tearing through it despite (or because of) its cheesiness: “What you needed was therapy. But at the time a sparkly vampire book filled whatever that little void was.” (18:59)
• Retail & Library Memories: Both Kelly and Rebecca recall the book’s unexpectedly explosive fandom—sold-out launches, swarms at bookstores, and passionate, communal moviegoing, often dominated by women and girls. (16:41–17:13)
• Generational Echo: Jeff points out that Twilight’s original audience (ages 14–17 in 2005) is now the “prime book buyer” demographic: “You had to reckon with Twilight when you were a tween, whether you liked it or not.” (18:13)

Twilight Plot and Themes (Rebecca’s “Shinsky’s Notes”)

• Main Story Beats: Bella Swan, clumsy, ordinary, moves to rainy Forks, WA, and meets impossibly gorgeous, aloof Edward Cullen. He is actually a vampire drawn to her “delectable scent.”
• Tropes Galore: Forbidden love, brooding dangerous hero, “not like other girls,” overt yearning instead of outright sex—the book is “short on spice but long on yearning.” (23:27–26:44)
• Classic Literary Nods: Meyer incorporates allusions to Wuthering Heights, Faulkner, and includes overt references to classic romance tropes.

What Made It Work—and the Critiques

• The Power of Yearning: The central draw, hosts agree, is “the forbidden romance…the yearning.” It’s “the exquisite pain of being so flipping horny and not being able to do anything about it, living right on that edge.” (29:00–32:14)
• Purity Culture: Rebecca highlights how the cultural moment—heavy on purity culture and abstinence—directly informs the story’s obsession with temptation, withholding, and sexual tension. Meyer's Mormon background amplifies this dynamic. (29:34–31:29)
• Critiques of Writing & Tropes: The prose is often critiqued as over-earnest, repetitive, and packed with physical description at the expense of characterization and “showing” rather than “telling.” (41:32–45:02)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Twilight’s Phenomenon:
  • “We want to burn our fingers on the stove of these white hot phenomenons.”
    — Jeff O’Neill, (02:18)
• On Cultural Impact:
  • “[Twilight] paves the way for Fifty Shades of Grey, which is Twilight fanfic...that opens the door to spicy romance being in the mainstream in a really serious way.”
    — Rebecca Schinsky, (59:14)
• On Female Fandom:
  • “I think this is something we should be celebrating, not criticizing. People are having a really great social experience over a book.”
    — Kelly Jensen, (08:46)
• On Gendered Dismissal:
  • “Do not be surprised when there’s another giant cultural phenomena that centers women’s feelings, especially teenage girls’ feelings. It’s part and parcel of [literary history].”
    — Jeff O’Neill, (13:52)
• Rebecca’s CliffsNotes:
  “It reads like one of those deodorant commercials where someone is like, oh my God, is it me?”
  — (24:20) “The book is short on spice, but it’s really, really long on yearning.”
  — (25:54)
• Fan Perspective:
  “Even then I think I knew what I was reading was cheesy, but…it was targeted to somebody who wanted to read a story about a girl in love and a guy that like wanted to protect her…a sparkly vampire book filled whatever that little void was.”
  — Vanessa Diaz, (19:06)
• On Social Media Absence:
  “Bella waits like four days after she makes the move from Phoenix to Forks before she even checks her email to see if her mom has written something. Imagine four days without your email.”
  — Rebecca Schinsky, (43:09)
• On the Core Fantasy:
  • “It's the fantasy of a teenage girl wanting to be wanted…That perfect way of wanting to be wanted. That person who is a paragon of control—even they cannot resist you…”
    — Jeff O’Neill, (53:10)
• Notorious Line Reading:
  “About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him…that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.”
  — Rebecca Schinsky, quoting Twilight, (64:23)
• Memorable Humor:
  “If you didn’t smell so appallingly luscious…”
  — Rebecca on cringe-worthy favorite lines, (69:16)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 01:00–05:25: Introduction, why Twilight matters to Book Riot’s well-read philosophy
• 05:25–10:44: Kelly Jensen’s YA publishing history & cultural context
• 13:52–20:19: Personal origin stories with the book
• 23:24–26:44: Rebecca’s plot summary, recursive tropes, and romantic setup
• 29:00–32:44: Discussion of yearning, purity culture, and sexual tension’s role
• 41:32–45:02: Firsthand reactions rereading the book in 2025
• 47:01–48:21: Kelly on class, secondary characters, and wishing for more depth
• 53:10–56:15: Core fantasy—being wanted, allure/fantasy for readers
• 59:48–62:08: “Big questions” posed by Twilight—good & evil, death, the “good life”
• 63:11–64:23: Best/worst lines, host dramatic readings
• 72:00–75:35: Adaptation trivia—Forks, film tourism, indigenous representation
• 78:43–82:38: Read-alike and “read-along” book recommendations
• 83:19–88:40: Zero to well-read scoring & discussion

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Additional Insights

The Twilight Legacy

• Still regularly checked out in libraries; sales remain steady.
• Its blockbuster status made YA a more varied and competitive landscape, funding diverse voices and expansion.
• Cultural tourism: Twilight fans still visit Forks, WA, and local businesses capitalize on book/movie nostalgia.

Critiques and Problematic Aspects

• Repetitive, sometimes amateurish prose; over-focus on physical beauty and longing.
• Sidelining of female friendship; narrow focus on romance.
• Quileute/Native representation criticized for appropriation.
• Trope of controlling, brooding male as fantasy romantic ideal.

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Read-Alike Recommendations

• Man Made Monsters by Andrea L. Rogers (Native-authored, intentionally subverts Twilight’s approach to vampires)
• Sunhead by Alex is Hahn (Queer graphic novel, interrogates gender/relationship norms through a Twilight lens)
• Midnight is the Darkest Hour by Ashley Winstead (Obsession, zealotry, and love influenced by Twilight’s shadow)
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Classic model of brooding hero, yearning, with a more robust meeting of minds and character)

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Zero to Well-Read Scores (Hosts’ Consensus)

| Category | Score | |--------------------------------------------|--------------| | Historical Importance | 7 | | Readability | 7 | | Relevance of Central Questions | 4 | | Book Nerd “Read Credit” | 4 | | “Oh, Damn” Factor (Transcendence) | 1–2 |

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Final Takeaways

• You do not have to enjoy Twilight, but knowing its context, history, and influence is essential to understanding 21st-century popular literature, YA, and romance.
• The reading experience today—especially for adults—is likely to be colored by critical awareness of its tropes, prose, and gender/purity politics.
• Its power resided in giving voice to female/teen longing, offering a sense of being singularly wanted and adored—even as it sparked divisive conversations about gender, agency, and literary value.
• Twilight’s status as a phenomenon has not yet been matched, and it remains foundational in the rise of YA and romance mega-hits.

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Memorable Closing Thoughts:

“I had more fun talking with you about the book than reading the book, but that's why we're doing this.”
— Jeff O’Neill

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Find more Zero to Well-Read episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Show notes at bookriot.com/listen.

Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

Today on the Book Riot podcast, we're dropping in our zero to wed. Today on the Book Riot Podcast, we're dropping in our Zero to well Read episode that just came out this week on Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. Because one of the things we think our definition of well read includes is knowing about the huge book phenomenons and what they might mean. This was a really fun episode. We had Kelly Jensen and Vanessa Diaz join us. We we got into the phenomenon, the reading experience and all about Twilight. So even if you're not super interested in Twilight for yourself, I think you'll have a good time listening to this. Here's the episode. We've got more coming throughout the fall. Have some in the tank that I'm really excited to get out in the world. You can find Zero to well read wherever you get your podcast. All right, let's get into it. Welcome to Zero to well Read, a podcast about everything you need to know about the books you wish you'd read. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky. Put in your fangs and roll on your body glitter, friends. Today we're throwing it back to 2005 with Stephenie Meyer's blockbuster Teen Vampire romance Twilight. Before we jump in though, if you're enjoying the show so far, we'd appreciate it if you would share it with friends and leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Helps us grow.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And that's the point here.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We're very lucky to have with us today Vanessa Diaz, our managing editor at Book Riot, and Kelly Jensen, Senior Editor at Book Riot, who both have perspectives On Twilight to bring Vanessa, I'd say is the closest to a fan. I'm doing air quotes here. In my mind, you can see those. And then Kelly knows more about YA than all the three of us put together. So here from historical, cultural context, when it comes to young adult literature, we're going to get into. You may be surprised to see this in your feed that we're going to talk about Twilight and I want to talk about that. That's the first thing we're going to do here at the beginning. Rebecca lets you and I talk for a minute, says as we conceive the show. And this really goes back to my initial thing I did 10 years ago, the zero to well read idea of one of the things I value. Your definition of well read may be different. Listener, just stay over there. You're fine. It's okay. I'm not attacking you. My own definition includes being aware, conversant with exposed to big books phenomenons. And there's no, no one can deny this was a phenomenon. And so this in the spirit of that idea that we want to have, we want to touch the heat, we want to, we want to burn our fingers on the stove of these white hot phenomenons. Rebecca. So that is why we're here talking about Twilight, right? I mean, this in our adult reading experience. It's like this is one of the top five phenomenons.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, yes. And it gives way to other phenomena that happened more recently, including, you know, 50 shades of gray. And I think you can draw a straight line from Twilight to today's romantasy phenomenon. So talk about being conversant in not just what's currently happening in books, but how we got to where we are today. It's been 20 years since twilight and this has shaped current young adult literature, but also some things that are happening in adult fiction more than any other series has. It's really incredible. And the book Riot philosophy has always been that we want to have an understanding of what's happening in the world of books and reading. And whether you're a fan like Vanessa or you have maybe a critical appreciation of what a book has done in culture, which is probably the perspective that the rest of us are coming more from. I think Vanessa's maybe coming along with us there too. That's why this made it onto the list. Also, the 20th anniversary is a really convenient hook to hang this on. The movies are going back into theaters this year in celebration of the book's 20th anniversary. So this would have been, I think, on our launch season, no matter what for zero to well read because it is one of the signal works of our bookish careers. But that's why we're doing it specifically right now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I will also say this. Spoiler alert. I did not enjoy my reading experience with Twilight. This is my first time reading it. But it's a lot of fun to think about. And I think that's maybe what we're going to. We're going to dive into a little bit here, I think. Kelly, I'd like to kick it to you just for a minute. I know you've got some other notes here, but as we do the Mia Culpas about why we're talking about us. Help us out with where Twilight sits a little bit in the sort of the modern history of young adult literature. Sort of what you understand about what it did and didn't do 20 years ago and into today.

[Kelly Jensen]

Sure. So as Jeff and Rebecca have said, this is the 20th anniversary of Twilight. It hit shelves in, I believe it was October of 2005.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That makes sense. A fall book.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was either end of September or early October. I can't remember the exact date, but it started out kind of like your average YA book at the time. So YA had had this real golden period in the late 1990s, early 2000s. We had authors like Walter Dean Myers, we had Stephen Chobsky, we had Lori Halse Anderson. They all published huge books in 1999. And these are books that are still classics today and books that fall out of like this first quarter of the century. So I think it's really important to note that because then it gives some context to why this book is so important because it came out several years later. It was far more commercial than a lot of the books that were being put out. And the thing is, the big takeaway for me, and I think for why this is such an important book is that it, it really helped shape the future of the mid list of YA literature. You know, the sales of this book, it brought in major money which allowed for a significant investment in YA literature in the mid 2000s and into the 2010s even, which really allowed the growth and expansion into so many other types of books that hadn't yet hit ya. And it brought a lot of marketing money for those books. In addition to that, we had like a huge spike in reading. Reading culture expanded and this was happening at the same time that social media was expanding. So people were sharing their love of books and reading. And this one really caught on in those early days. Certainly you know, if TikTok had been around then, we would have seen this. Yeah, yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Can you imagine, Jacob, Team Edward, all of the, like, there would have been weeping TikToks.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yeah. And there already was that with blogs and with early, like, Twitter. It was huge. Then it would have been just like. It's hard for me to imagine what it would have looked like in. If we had today's social media then, which is to say today's social media is a lot different, I think, in part because of how critical people have read Twilight and looked at Twilight and the way that we read and approach why literature is so different now than it was in 2005. And I don't think that's a bad thing. So I don't think that this is one of those books that could have taken off that way on social media today. But if we had taken social media back then, for sure. And the other thing I think that's really important to point out here is that Stephenie Meyer took so much heat for this book for so long. And, you know, there's. There's valid criticism. I know we're going to get to that. But, man, there's a lot of women hating and hating on girls story.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It went beyond just the. I didn't like the book. Right. It just goes beyond that stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It did launch like a thousand op EDS about, oh, yeah, the trouble with young adult fiction, but really like the trouble with teen girls.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Kelly Jensen]

And trouble with women who found love in reading this series or found that they loved fan fiction about this series or were showing up to the movie in droves. Like, I remember, I was working as a teen librarian right after this book came out and during the time that the movies started to come out and how many headlines were about, you know, you know, grown women showing up to the theaters and filling out all the seats and weeping throughout. And I'm like, I think this is something we should be celebrating and not criticizing. People are having a really great social experience over a book. We could talk about the issues with the book, but I think in general, like, getting people out and active and social in the context of books and reading is pretty great. But one of the big criticisms was, you know, women. And I always like to point out one of the things that people don't tend to talk about is how supportive Stephenie Meyer was of other women's work. There were a series of stories that came out, and this must have been, I don't know, 2013, 2014, 2015. In that era, Stephenie Meyer put a lot of money into trying to develop more adaptations of stories by Whitman, and she was successful in at least one of them, which was Lois Duncan's classic Down a Dark Call, which she made into a film Stephenie Meyer produced that she used her money to bring a YA classic by a female author to the big screen. And those sorts of things I think are really important for why this book is important. The book is itself as a text, not something I enjoyed reading, but for what it did, for what the author did, for the power it brought into pop culture and into reading culture and into the world of supporting more YA stories, supporting a mid list and supporting the development of more adaptations by women. I think you can't deny the importance.

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[Jeff O'Neill]

We talked about this in relation to Rebecca, both in relationship to Colleen Hoover and Rebecca Yarros. And then in thinking about those things, we read those for the pod didn't enjoy those either. But we're going to take them seriously. And part of that is thinking about they exist and you said it or I said it. One of us, we talked about this thing that always surprises literary culture whenever there's a huge phenomenon that books for women that feature a love story. Oh my, I can't believe they did so well. We've been doing this since 1713 with Jane Austen. Like that has just been a story over and over again. And so I think part of taking Twilight seriously is to put a data point on your scatter plot of like do not be surprised when this happens again. Do not be one of those idiots that's surprised when there's another giant cultural phenomena that starts as a book or starts at fan fiction that centers women's feelings, especially teenage girls. Women's feelings. Do not be shocked. Do not be surprised. Do not think this is a new thing under the sun because it's very much of a part and parcel of that. We were all different ages. I was, you know, I was in my late 20s, so I was looking at as I was exactly the wrong age to take Twilight seriously and I was in grad school and all the other things that go along.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It doesn't matter in a PhD.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that wasn't. It wasn't in My wheelhouse, let's put it that way. I do remember. Go ahead.

[Kelly Jensen]

I was gonna say, it's funny you say that because I. I was in library school to be a teen librarian when this was going on. So for me, it was like I had to know what it was about and I had to understand.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Coming down the mountain.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yes, exactly.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I was a bookseller. I worked at Barnes and Noble at the time and I was doing community events. I think I came on board, like during New Moon or Eclipse, one of those in that era. So Twilight, as Kelly was saying, it kind of started quietly. It was similar in my experience as a reader to like how kind of the first Harry Potter book that started quietly. And then people started catching on and it became the phenomenon that it became. And I was like, well, I guess I have to know what's happening in these so I can plan some events about them. And I did tear through them. I don't, I didn't love them at the time, but I remember getting it. Like, these are page turning. I totally understand why teenage girls are into them. And as we'll get to a little bit later in the show, they are also like very much relics of a specific moment in American culture and the way that we were thinking about teenage girls and sexuality as well. But just to like, really linger on the point about girls and women buying books and building a communal experience around them. The Twilight Saga, it's four books. They have sold more than 160 million copies in the last 20 years. And just to put that in perspective for you, that is more than twice the total number of books Colleen Hoover has sold in her lifetime with like 20 books to her name.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's hard to describe what the bookstores felt like in 2007. Right. We're in the middle of the series. Like there were whole things and the movies were coming out like it was a big deal. And the 20 year anniversary is interesting in this way too. And Vanessa, I'm getting ready to throw to you, so be ready. It's been 20 years. Kelly could probably tell me a little better. The person who was most excited, who was most in the middle of Twilight fandom in 2005, was what, 14? Is that sort of right? Would that be the right age or like, what age bracket are we talking about? This really being pitched to Kelly?

[Kelly Jensen]

Yeah, I would think, like that 14 to 16 year old demographic, you know, they're published, I believe, every year, 2005, six, seven.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

It's like every two years.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yeah, I was, I was going to say, I Think they were published for ages 12 and up. I'm looking in my copy real quick.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The later books are real spicy for age 12.

[Kelly Jensen]

Well, they may, they may have aged them up. I don't have a copy in front of me. But you know, one of the things that has always been true in when it comes to YA books is that people, young people, tend to read up. So if it's sold for 14 and up, you're going to see the 12 year olds, the 13 year olds excited to read it. And Bella is a junior in high school, so she's 17, but Jacob is like 15. 15, which is like. I'm going to dig into that later because. Because that was the thing that was.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That the most problematic age gap for.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You, Kelly, 15 to 17, not 100 to 17.

[Kelly Jensen]

No, it wasn't that. That's a different story. But the movie, right? Like you look at the casting of that movie, you what 15 year old looks like that?

[Jeff O'Neill]

He looks like a. I mean there are some people that look 30, like he's like, he's got the John Hamm gene. He's looked like he's 35 since he was about 14. But the point I was making there is like 20 years. Those people who are 14 to 17 are now 34 to 37. Now they're becoming the prime book buyer in America. Women 34 to 37 who read books as kids. I would imagine, and I don't want to tell anybody ages here, except my own, I'm 47. That if you're a book reader now as an adult, like, you know, books are part of your life, especially if you're a woman. You had to reckon with Twilight when you were a tween, whether you liked it or not. Vanessa, talk to us. I think you're as close to a fan. What was your first reading experience? What is your sense of it? Did we get any of this right in our long prologue? Oh yeah. For you.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I mean, I was absolutely not 14. I was a smooth 24. Clearly going through something because these were extremely my shit.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We don't know any 34 year olds. We're all too old. I mean, I'm sorry, we don't know any of those people.

[Vanessa Diaz]

No, I was 24 years old, was going through a major reading slump. I was in that part of my career where I was just like, you know, I used to be in a very different career. I was in sales and I was working like something stupid, you know, click, like 90 hours a week, not whatever issues with boys and a friend of mine literally did that thing where she slid this book to the side and was like, there's this movie coming out with a book and like you might like this because you like stuff like that because you knew I liked fantasy. So I read it and then just again, I'd be lying if I said I didn't suck everything.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Were they all out already? So it was like after the series was done. So you're.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I think, I don't know that they were all out, but I know they're at least New moon, possibly, possibly Eclipse. I know Breaking dawn had not been because I remember going to like buy Breaking dawn on my own. But like I, even then I think I knew what I was reading was cheesy, but I didn't. It was like it was targeted to somebody who wanted to read a story about a girl in love and a guy that like wanted to protect her and you know, in ways that again we will get into them. Like what you needed was therapy. But at the time a sparkly vampire book filled whatever that little void was. And I understood what the fascination was and it made a lot of sense to me in a way that again, we can interrogate the health of later. But it, I was, I was primed to devour that story and unapologetically it's fine.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And when something becomes a phenomenon of the side, it has to be bigger than 14 year old girls. Like it just has. There's just not enough of those people to make it. Where it sells 160 million copies worldwide. The five films together have made three and a half billion dollars. Stephanie Meyers can't seem to stop writing versions of this book from that perspective. And we're going to gender flip and whatever she, she, she remains committed to it. I don't think. Kelly, we got your first reading experience. When did you, did you first read it when you were in school?

[Kelly Jensen]

Yes, I think most of the books had been out at that point. And like here's, here's really the memory I have. I was sitting in a database class again. I was in library school so I was taking a database class over the summer. I was one of those people who they, they say, you know, in grad school you should only take one class over the summer. Like that's enough. I took three because I wanted to graduate early. So I was taking three totally scans for you.

[Vanessa Diaz]

My shocked face.

[Sponsor Announcer]

I know.

[Kelly Jensen]

Well, I was loving this database class and I was in it with one of my good friends in grad school and she's like, I've Been reading this series, it's so good I can't put it down. And she's telling me about it. I'm like, this is so not my jam. But she kept going on and on and on and I was like, all right, well, I'm going to read it because this will probably be relevant to the work I want to do. So I remember vividly reading whatever one, I don't know if it was Twilight or the second one, New Moon, on the bus to campus. And I had it with me in. She said something to me along the lines of, guess what I've got. And I was like, I don't know, what do you got? And she said, I have Midnight sun in my email and I'm going to send it to you now. For those who are like, what's Midnight Sun? It is the leaked copy. From Edward's perspective. It was a huge to do that this thing had gotten leaked at some point and to this day it's still in my inbox because I haven't been able to get rid of it. Like, I think about this moment all the time. I never finished the series, so I'll start with that. So I never read it and I never had interest in reading it. And yet like that moment of I'm getting something that excites somebody else that like also, what the heck is going on? Like, how did this get leaked? And it was, it was a big scandal at the time, but I haven't been able to get rid of it. So I've got it in my inbox. And I remember when Stephenie Meyer announced, it must have been five years ago at this point, that she was including the Edwards perspective in the anniversary edition, I was like, huh, I wonder how different it is from the one that sitting in my inbox.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's, well, I mean, incredible story. Well, I mean when something becomes a phenomenon, you start to get those weird tertiary stories like a leaked email or someone put the lay down date two weeks early or something. You know that there's so much sort of cultural pressure that cracks start to happen in the public.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You're going to get accused of plagiarism. Which she did at least one time. Someone was like, but I too thought of a teenage vampire romance. Even though I've never met Stephenie Meyer or communicated with her at all. She stole it from my brain.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's so many of those. Okay, before we get much further, for those who really don't know much about Twilight, I mean if anyone, the minimum cultural sort of awareness you might have Twilight is probably from seeing a clip of a movie or something, right? Sparkly vampires. Stewart and Pattinson and maybe big trees. Rebecca, would you like to do our very quick.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, I'd be so delighted.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Let's do Shinsky's notes here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So our main character here is Bella Swan. She is a terribly clumsy. Which we hear about.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Is she.

[Jeff O'Neill]

She's clumsy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's Chekhov's twisted ankle.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Jeff, just.

[Kelly Jensen]

But it's like she didn't get this clumsiness until she met Edward. Let's be real. There was no clumsiness until that point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She's 17, as we said. She moves from Phoenix, Arizona, to Forks, Washington, which is one of the wettest, cloudiest places in the United States to live with her dad because her mom's new boyfriend sucks. On the first day at her new school, the only open seat in her biology class is next to the hottest guy she's ever seen. His name is Edward Cullen. He is tall. His skin is like beautiful stone. His sweater perfectly hugs his sculpted pecs. And he wants nothing to do with her. Like, she doesn't know what the deal is. It's kind of. It reads like one of those deodorant commercials where someone is like, oh, my God, is it me?

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yep.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She's like. He's sitting as far away from her as he can get at their little table. And she's so offended, especially because this guy is so hot, he gets up and bolts out of the room. Room at the end of class, they have not spoken. She has no idea. But she gets the idea that he hates her. It turns out that Edward is a vampire and that he was so tempted by her delectable scent that he. I'm so sorry that I just said that, guys. I'm like, I'm so sorry.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's not a metaphor for anything, though.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Definitely not.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He's so tempted by her scent that he couldn't bear to be near her. In fact, he tried to get himself transferred out of class. We also come to find out that the thing about vampires not to go outside during the day is a myth. They can, but they can't be out in the sun because they sparkle. So they have chosen forks. This wet, cloudy place, because the climate is great. There's not much sun. You're not going to be at risk of being caught sparkling very often.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Don't ever let anyone dull your sparkling.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Caught sparkling. The Bella Swan story and danger. Now, at least calamity is maybe a better word, has a way of finding our girl Bella. Like she is not like other girls, as we find out so many times throughout the book. And Edward saves her from a couple perilous situations. They have maybe one halfway substantial conversation in the process. And then they conclude that they're in love with each other, which is a problem because he's immortal and he has superhuman strength and she is very fragile, which he repeatedly reminds her.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So fragile.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And this is a really dangerous combination, dare I call it the danger bone. They cannot have sex. It would be too dangerous because he's so strong and she is so fragile. And that's not really even on the table in this first book. Kissing is barely on the table here. So that's an important point. The book is short on spice, but it's really, really long on yearning.

[Kelly Jensen]

It's just really, really long. You could have stopped there.

[Vanessa Diaz]

They yearning.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It has a lot of nods to classic romance tropes. There's forbidden love. You have this like brooding, dangerous hero, an unremarkable but also like manic pixie, dream girl kind of heroine. This push pull tension between them. Their communities disapprove of it. And later in the series we do indeed get a multi species love triangle.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I was wikipediaing what happens in the rest of the series last night and I was like, okay, I did.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I did finish them when the books, as the books were coming out. And I remember being like, what kind of drugs did Stephenie Meyer get access to as she wrote the third and fourth ones?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, well, I mean this goes into the backstory money. Yeah, well, I mean, part of the mythology is Stephenie Meyer's mythology of this. Right. Of like it came to her in a dream. She was a stay at home mom, She's a Mormon and she had an English degree from byu. And like we get nods to classic literature here. Like in, you know, apparently she named Edward after, you know, Wuthering Heights and some other things. Classic literature. Bella's already read Faulkner. I don't know if everyone. Did anyone catch that? That she's already read all the books.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Bella's already done all the homework for all of the classes in her new school.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All the homework. None of the push ups has Bella Swan done.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Also. She's just not like other girls.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Not like other girls. And then she, you know, Meyer writes this quickly and you know, there gets normal rejection stuff, but gets a huge advance for all three books. $750,000, which is, you know, inflation being what is more than a million, a seven figure advance at the time. And there's the mythology of like this sort of spontaneous origin of this series sort of came from her brain. And I think that's one of the things. And people can do all sorts of stuff they want with it. Is it. And is it a metaphor for the Church of Latter Day Saints? Is it a critique of the. Is it. You know, it can do all that kind of stuff that you want. But I guess what I want to talk about first, before we get into our own reactions, is do the thing of one thing that reading these phenomenons that I don't particularly vibe with teaches me over and over again is usually there's a thing. The rest of the book can be a mess, it can be bad, it can be boring, it can be long. But if it has a special something that can pull everything through, whether it's the Da Vinci Code or Harry Potter, whatever. And the special thing here, Kelly, I think, is the yearning. Is that what it is? Is that the central thing, like one made. Why? Why, Kelly?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Why the faces that are.

[Vanessa Diaz]

This was a visual medium. Yeah. Kelly just like looked like that cat clock where the eyes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The people who were enthralled to this, what was it that they were reacting to?

[Kelly Jensen]

I mean, it had to be the forbidden love aspect, honestly, right? Yeah. I mean, not for me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Kelly Jensen]

But I'm also saying that as somebody who is much older than the target demographic, rereading it now, you know, this many years on, but yeah, my guess would be the forbidden romance is really.

[Sponsor Announcer]

What the hook was.

[Kelly Jensen]

It was something different. It was something at the time that was edgy in terms of like romance in ya. You know, you had a lot of romance in ya, but not so much this like paranormal romance element.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And the copycats came hot and heavy too.

[Kelly Jensen]

Oh yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

In the para world name, it's paranormal.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I also think this is really inseparable from the cultural moment that it's coming out in. The late 90s and the early 2000s are rife with purity. Culture in the mainstream that like talks about the expectation that teens would save themselves for marriage, had extended outside of churches and were just kind of all over the place. Like, you know, you can read Britney Spears memoir and get some of this. And Stephenie Meyer is writing in that moment and writing from a particular religious tradition that really emphasizes that and continues to emphasize it. So you've also got all these teenage girls who are filled with all the hormones and curiosities and desires that teenage girls are filled with. Pumped full of messages about like you will want about temptation. The book opens with a quote from Genesis about not eating from the Tree of knowledge or good. And, like, I spend more time than I would like to admit this reading being like, but who is this?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, there's an apple on the COVID There's no. Ain't an apple in the book, but there's an apple on the COVID The.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The danger of temptation, that temptation makes you willing to put yourself in harm's way and take major risks. And the real, like, glamorizing of waiting and of purity and of not giving into temptation becomes a thread throughout the rest of the series. Like, Edward refuses to sleep with Bella until they are married. And later on they do get married and they do have sex, and somehow she survives. But that. That they're talking about it and that there eventually is an overt conversation about waiting until marriage was one of the selling points when I was a bookseller. Moms would tell me, and it was always moms, because dads are not shopping with their teenage girls looking for books like this in the. In 2005, maybe they are today. But it was always moms saying that they really liked that they could give their kids a romance, but that it was clean, that they knew it wasn't going to have sex in it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think, too. And I'm picking up, like, sort of echoes of what I could imagine the reading experience is like. There's kind of an element of the desire, the withheld desire maybe kind of is too much of an equivocation. Almost. Like when you. When you. When you feel the fever blister in your mouth, like, why do you do that? It's sort of that pleasurable pain. And there's some of that here. It's like the exquisite pain of being so flipping horny and not being able to do anything about it, like, living right on that edge, like. Like putting. I don't know what part of a body. Edward didn't put his cheek on. A Bellas, like, almost every single party put his cheek on. And that. That being right in that moment for 300 pages, essentially in this book. I don't think that's a bug. I think that's a feature.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think that Exquisitely Horny would be such a great alternate title.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's just what it is like. And it's. It's almost painful how horny they are. And they can't. They won't. They can't. It's not allowed. Stephenie Meyer won't let them. Allowed. Vampire code. I'm still lost on the morals of vampire codes here a little bit, but that is where you spend most of the Book. And after a while I find it to be quite tedious. But I think that elongation of the withholding is the. That's the juice. That's the juice to a lot of this book. Let's talk about vampires.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

What a pivot.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Because vampires have long been symbols of all kinds of stuff. Sex, desire, you know, the occult, whatever else is going on here. These are versions of vampires, but they're sparkly vampires. And that was much derided. I think one of the first blog posts on book riot was YA is more than sparkly vampires. So even 10 years later, that was a trope that was invented that people were feeling like they needed to go against. The paranormal was new too. But this is pretty. This is pretty light and it's more mysterious. I actually kind of like if I had a favorite part of this book, I guess by definition you have to have a favorite part. I like these early chapters where I can imagine reading it for the first time. You really didn't know what was going on. Like, it's hard to remember. Like, did people, like, what the hell is going on with these people that are like, amazingly beautiful? Like, by the time you were reading it, Vanessa, did you know the deal were like, you kind of knew they were vampires or did you have like, I don't know what's going on here, Mom.

[Vanessa Diaz]

It was hard not to know because again, I had watched it basically because the film was about to come out and someone was like, hey, you like stuff like this, like vampires, occult, whatever. And I was like, okay, cool. So like I did, but I. Yeah, I don't know, maybe. Kelly, do you remember whether, like the vampire thing was super clear when the books were first coming out?

[Kelly Jensen]

I don't really remember, but I do know. You know, one of the things that often comes up when adults talk about YA more broadly is, you know, they find themselves bored with YA or frustrated because they know how the story is going to go. They see how this is gonna happen. They've seen this play out and it's like, okay, but a 12 year old doesn't. And the book's written for the 12 year old who hasn't read 5,000 other books like this. And so I can absolutely see even now, young people who pick this up being kind of like knowing that it's a vampire book but not knowing how that part plays into it because they haven't seen it play out over and over again. They haven't read the vampire classics, they haven't read the books that have come, you know, in the wake of this one. And like that is one of those things that is hard when I read to remember. Like, okay, you know I'm reading this as an adult who's well read and knows literature, but if I'm a 12 year old picking this up for the first time, my experience is totally different because maybe I don't. Maybe it is all new and surprising and fresh to me.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Colleen Hoover fans, Get ready her best selling novel Regretting youg is coming to the big screen from director Josh Boone, who brought us the Fault in Our Stars. This powerful story follows Morgan, played by Allison Williams and her daughter Clara, played by McKenna Grace, as they navigate love, loss and the secrets that can tear a family apart. With an all star cast including Dave Franco, Mason tames Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald, Regretting youg brings to life everything readers loved about the first love, second chances, heartbreak and the complicated, beautiful bond between mothers and daughters. It's the kind of film you want to see with your mom, your best friend, your book club, anyone who loves to laugh, cry and gasp together in a theater. Don't miss Regretting youg. Only in theaters October 24th. Colleen Hoover fans, get ready. Her best selling novel Regretting youg is coming to the big screen from director Josh Boone who brought us the Fault in Our stars. This powerful story follows Morgan, played by Allison Williams and her daughter Clara, played by McKenna Grace, as they navigate love, loss and the secrets that can tear a family apart. With an all star cast including Dave Franco, Mason tames Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald, Regretting youg brings to life everything readers loved about the first love, second chances, heartbreak and the complicated, beautiful bond between mothers and daughters. It's the kind of film you want to see with your mom, your best friend, your book club, anyone who loves to laugh, cry and gasp together in a theater. Don't miss Regretting youg Only in theaters October 24th.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Today's episode is brought to you by Poison Pin Press, publisher of the intruder. By Freda McFadden now, if you love suspense, horror, psychological thriller, all of those good skin prickling things, Frida McFadden is the moment. If you haven't already gotten into Frida, get into her now. In her latest it's late and there's someone outside your door. She needs help and she'll kill to get it. In the middle of a storm, a girl appears on Casey's doorstep, obviously in need of help. She's young, she's alone, she's desperate. The girl is clearly running from something, but she won't say What? When Casey tries to learn more, she gets hostile. When Casey discovers disturbing diary entries and drawings in her meager backpack, she gets violent. This will be the longest night of Casey's Life. From Frida McFadden, New York Times and USA Today best selling author of the Housemaid and the Co Worker comes another twisted thriller about a desperate woman who shows up in a storm looking for help. But she's not who she says she is. I'm already intrigued. Make sure to pick up the intruder by Frida McFadden. And thanks again to Poison Pin Press for sponsoring this episode.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I have a question.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Do we think Stephanie Meyer has read the vampire classics? Because to me this reads like someone who is writing an ode to what she says she's writing an ode to. Like there's some Shakespeare, there's some Jane Austen, there's some Wuthering Hydraulic Heights. The vampire parts read to me like she did a 2005 Google.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I think she did what Bella did where she chose her favorite search engine and then landed at vampires A to Z. And that is more or less how she came. Yeah, like if it doesn't feel like.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The history of vampire literature is smutty as hell.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah. Super.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I don't. This doesn't read like somebody who's into those components.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And yeah, I think that part is interesting. I mean, she's aware enough and maybe you don't. I mean, I don't know how much you really have need to know Dracula or the original, original stuff that even Dracula was based on in Balkan mythology. But I did find myself not knowing the, the general shape but not knowing the plot. I wasn't sure who, if any, in Cullen's little mini vamp vampire cult would any of them turn on him. Like there was some questions to me about how that piece was going to go because it's a little farther outside of, of the norm. Like I've done Interview with a Vampire and some of those kinds of things, but those questions were out there. I also don't know that and I don't know if this is, this is a marketing decision. So this is really going to be a Kelly question. Was it market as a where capital are romance readers picking this up at the time? Where did the adults get in on the romance thing earlier? I'm not sure how that would happen because I, I guess the question I guess has the answer in it, which I guess it can't be a capital R romance from the beginning because we don't know that they're going to be happy for now, I guess is where they end up at the end.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yes. And also I can't answer your question because I don't remember.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think that part is interesting to see as well, is that I don't want to. As much as we talked about ya, I don't want to ignore the romance piece of this. Like it's a, it's a romance. It's a love story that turns into a romance.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

How romance and how like ya with love stories were marketed in like in two. At least 2007, 2008 when I was a bookseller. We're pretty different. Like we're sitting here in, in 2025 in a moment where there's a lot of crossover between romance and fantasy. YA has really robust romance fantasy and YA subgenres that are part of mainstream reading and are marketed to mainstream YA readers. And that's new and relatively. And it's partially or really to a great extent a product of this like romance was pretty siloed still in 2005, like pre the blogging boom where romance readers found each other and created online communities. It was its own like little section of the bookstore.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Much more clinch covers and spinner racks.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

With the mass market paperbacks like we were. The idea that the. Some of the best selling books in the country in a given year were going to be mainstream trade paperback romances would not. Would have blown our mind in 2005. I feel pretty comfortable guessing that there weren't a lot of just like adult romance readers picking up Twilight because it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Was certainly like they would today. Certainly not like they would be doing today.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, today they'd be. It would be marketed right into that, into that market. But that market exists because those people were 14 at the time and they're 34 now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Is there anything else we'd like to cover before we do a round robin of what it was like to read it over the last. Whenever y' all read this. Anything else we want to. Any, any contextual cloth, throat clearing setup, backstory. We have, we have our normal things to do, but I think what we're ready for is what was it like to read this now? Anything else? No. All right, I'm seeing shaking heads. Rebecca, you're first in the document, so why don't you tell us what your experience was like of picking Twilight back up again.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I was really glad that it reads fast.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Fair, fair.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You know, it opens as I said, with this quote from Genesis and the purity culture stuff is all over it. And that's something that I had experience with in the late 90s and early 2000s and have a very critical personal reading of today. So it's impossible for me to, like, extricate that from my individual experience of this book. Also, this trope of, like, a domineering man who's controlling and protective, but it's for your own good and because he loves you is. Is so repetitive and also just not for me. This is not my flavor. And it's. It is just so repetitive. There's so much unnecessary description. Like Bella telling us about how she walked to the car and then she cranked it and then it was cold and she put her jacket on and she sat there shivering.

[Jeff O'Neill]

One of the great car logistics books, by the way. Whose car are we taking? How are we getting there? Who's driving, how fast we're going, which highways we're on? It's unbelievable. But.

[Kelly Jensen]

But you gotta remember this was a big deal in YA literature. It was a big deal to have a car. It was a big deal to drive. Like, that is what gave you your independence. We don't see it as much now, you know, for a lot of reasons. But like, in 2005, like, car culture and teen driving was a huge, like, that's true cool factor.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That was like the first big reveal, right, is that her dad had bought her a car like that. She was shocked. And that was. That was very cool to see.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And she is glad that she's not going to have to rely on him because he's the police chief in town and otherwise she's getting dropped off at school in the cruiser.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's amazing.

[Vanessa Diaz]

It is just.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There's a lot of, like, funny little details that I think are unintentionally funny in the book. The story structure moves a lot more slowly than the big YA hits that I've read from today, which admittedly are very limited. But I spent a lot of time in this reading thinking about what the, like, construction of a book for young adults reflects about the other kinds of media that young adults are consuming at the time. Like the dopamine addiction from today's social media. I think we can't separate from how quickly and how there are constant cliffhangers in a lot of the big YA books. And there's. It's just like, peril galore and something big is happening. And there are like, like three big things that happen in this book across 500 pages, and only one of them is really, like, heart pounding at all. Most of the book feels like Kind of low stakes and very everyday where in Bella's just ordinary experience. And some of that is also really pleasant. Like oh yeah, I remember what it was like to be a teen girl in the 90s and just to go dress shopping with your friends and it's refreshing that they don't have phones and they're not engaged in social media. Bella waits like four days after she makes the move from Phoenix to Forks before she even checks her email to see if her mom has written something to her. Like imagine four days without your email. And that, that's just normal. Like some of those time capsule things were really enjoyable to me but I landed really where Elizabeth Spires, who reviewed it for the New York Times in 2006 landed, where she said the book suffers at times from over earnest amateurish writing. A little more showing and a lot less telling would have been a good thing. Especially some pruning to eliminate the constant references to Edward's shattering beauty and Bella's undying love. Not the worst reading experience I've had in the last year though.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, that's a tease. Vanessa or no Kelly, you're up next on the document. We're going to be honest here, that's what people are listening for, so go for it.

[Kelly Jensen]

So I've got like four big things and the first is that I thought that reading this was like pulling teeth. There was one big thing worth addressing and it, it's how much we really do get a teenage girl here. That's something that Rebecca sort of talked about. Bella is a bit of a mess, to put it nicely. But the way that she begins falling for this dangerous boy and the one who is ultimately controlling and annoying, always there to keep an eye on her partner, isn't beyond what it is to be a teenager in a new environment, especially after your life's been totally pulled out from beneath you. He's terrible, but he's stable even if he's unpredictable. So there's some grounding, you know, that a 170 year old teenage vampire has when you're 17 and your parents are pretty much MIA, your husband or your mom's new husband is stealing her away from you and you've moved from one of the hottest and sunniest places in the US to the land of perpetual gloom.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So like in the TikTok lingo, Bella is very parentified. Like yes, no one's ever taken care of Bella. She is raising her parents totally.

[Kelly Jensen]

So the second thing, and I, I, I think I touched on this very briefly before class was really Interesting here, and I wish that Meyer had kept at it before letting the story fall into the romance. Bella comes from very little and does a lot of remarking on her new classmates, on the cars they drive, on the lives they live, and compares it to her situation. I wish it had gone further. I wish we'd had more, because it was interesting. And it was really interesting to think about those discussions in the 2005 context, because they weren't happening quite as much. You know, there was. There were stories about poor kids, there were stories about rich kids. But, like, what about those kids who are really actively, like, engaging with this difference in class and what it means?

[Sponsor Announcer]

I.

[Kelly Jensen]

It's a point three. I wanted to know more about the people that Bella basically wrote off immediately. Like, I wanted to know more about Mike, the first guy who spends time with her.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Mike?

[Sponsor Announcer]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yeah. I wanted to know more about the female friend she went shopping with. There was a lot of opportunity here, and I can't help but wonder is if Meyer, were she given the opportunity to rewrite the story now in 2025, we'd see more of that, particularly given her own experiences supporting other women in the arts.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Interesting, because. And then things go great for Bella at this high school. Like, people are super nice to her. Like, I have a son starting high school right away. Like, I. And everybody thinks she's where you're sitting at the table right away. She gets invited to sit with the people, and I don't if they're cool kids or not. I don't care. There's kids, and they want to talk to her. Everyone starts asking her out because apparently she's super hot.

[Sponsor Announcer]

I guess she got, like, four.

[Kelly Jensen]

She got, like, four invitations to the dance.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It was almost like a myth where you keep turning down the. The prince's hand in marriage until the vampire gets you. But, like, things were going great for Bella and Fork. She didn't need Edward. That's one of my hot takes, by the way. She didn't need Edward.

[Kelly Jensen]

My. My last point is. Is one. I know I brought up earlier, Ed, that I never realized Jacob was two years younger than Bella. And again, we're talking about this in the context of her and 170-year-old vampire, right? And, like. But I think it matters because there's a big difference for teens between the ages of 15 and 17.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, you won't socialize with them. Like, it's, like, completely different humans in that level. I agree with you. I didn't think about that. Right.

[Kelly Jensen]

And so, like, it's not Just age, but it's maturity. And I also don't think it was cast that way in the film at all. Which, like, like, as I'm reading it, you know, I can't help but continue to see, you know, the characters as the people who played them. And I, in my head, I'm like, but that's no 15 year old. That's no 15 year old. Yeah, that's where I'm going to end that. I'm, I'm more struck by the 15 to 17 year old age difference than the 17 to 170 year old age difference.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I just now want to subscribe to an entire podcast of Kelly that's called a Scorpio revisits Twilight.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Vanessa, we're go to you.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I'll.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'll hit clean up here. So why don't you go next, Vanessa?

[Vanessa Diaz]

Okay, great. Well, as I already said, 20 something me clearly needed therapy is my like, hot take because I was so interested.

[Jeff O'Neill]

When was the last time you didn't. When was the last time you read this?

[Vanessa Diaz]

Since I honestly hadn't read it Again, since I was a teen, I've watched the movies a ton because I, again, I'm a person who, like, unironically and unapologetically loves the Fast and the Furious franchise. If that tells you anything about me. Like, I don't need a thing to be good to enjoy it. It's. And that's, that's how I feel about a lot of Twilight. But I hadn't read the books in a really long time to the point where I even said to a. A coworker, I was like, did I actually read this? Because it doesn't feel like I would have because I found it such a slog. I will give you one to two pages of I'm a bad boy. I'm bad for you. And like, no, but I love him. But this I. We got that refrain, what, like every three pages it felt like. And over and over again like, I'm bad for you to stay away from me. I'm gonna hurt you.

[Kelly Jensen]

But.

[Vanessa Diaz]

But I can't because I love you. So I may as well. And they just. The fact that they say I love you to each other after saying maybe seven sentences to each other. How much repetitive talk. Talk about his cold lips and whatever, but his. She calls him a God and a Lord. I don't know how many times as an angel, I know I had to remind myself over and over again, as Kelly said. And that's when I came back around to, like, not being as harsh on it that we are talking about a teenage girl, and that that whole daddy, I love him energy is not only appropriate for that age, but a thing that I think I probably experienced in my own life. I've talked about the fact that I was raised in, like, a conservative Mexican Catholic household, and it felt like I went from a parent raising me that way of like, no, you can't do this. You can't do that. Give me the keys to your car. You can't go anywhere. So that when I went out and forward, you know, into the dating world, I found that kind of concept romantic in a way that makes me now, but at the time, I thought was cool. And when I read Bella, I do remember being like, oh, my gosh, she has so much more agency than I felt like I had as a teen, because she. Yeah, like, as Rebecca said, she was parentified. Like, she was. Was cooking for her dad the second she got in. She makes all the meals. She has her car. She goes and comes as she pleases. Her dad is off on fishing trips, and so she can go have, you know, vampire sojourns in the woods. And I. I can see why I liked it at the time. I'm trying not to judge young Vanessa for being as into it as I was, but adult me is like, why on earth would you sign up to be high school age forever? That sounds terrible. Have some.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Why. Why the. They couldn't have been junior editors at a newspaper for 10 years. Like. Like, high school's like the word. Like, every three years, you're gonna age out. That was the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. What about being around for 400 years? They're so dumb.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

One of my notes is that vampires would have a better cover than this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And when did the doctor vampire go to medical school? Right, because he's this medical school continuing ed germ theory didn't exist in 1917 during the Spanish flu. He doesn't know anything. He never went to medical school. He doesn't know anything.

[Kelly Jensen]

Look, Jeff, he's still doing better than a lot of people in charge of health right now, thank you very much.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Maybe I want. You could do a lot worse than your vampire doctor who got his medical education in the 17th century, I guess, at that point. So. Yeah. So finesse. I think that's interesting because I was trying to imagine, too, you know, not trying to put myself into anyone's shoes, but, like, I do remember when I guess we're just gonna get personal or at least I am. I've been with the same person since I was 17. And I remember at 17 being in a serious relationship or what I thought was a serious relations felt like being an adult. It felt like the most important thing in the world. And some of that for me was that my home life was not the most amazing thing it could have been at that moment. So it was a refuge for me and it has been for I think, as you hope it is to be refuge in the time. So that part I did get the. You're in this new place and you feel safe with someone. The thing that strikes me about that though is that she doesn't feel safe with them. From her initial attraction is. Is so physical because they don't say anything to. They don't know each other at all. The way that love, desire or whatever is formulated here is beyond primal. It's elemental, almost super. It is actually supernatural because it's some factor of whatever his vampire, whatever is combined with whatever pheromone she's shooting off whatever is in her blood. Like it's not even sort of about their personalities, right? Like there's almost like a DNA or genetic thing happening where she is so attracted to him as prey. I guess is what we're supposed to understand is that if he wasn't reformed, he would have just drank her blood. And like that's, that's the desire, like it's so mad.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We gotta talk about reformed vampires. We didn't even mention that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, that's what I think. I think that was super cool, this idea that reformed vampires, but like the reformed saints, reformed vampires, that's so strange to think about, like versions. Like the perfected version of this other thing is so wild. I. I do think there's an easy way of understanding most phenomenons, cultural phenomenons of being about a fantasy of some kind. Superheroes about a fantasy of power and agency for yourself, the ability to fix things. This one seems to be principally the fantasy of a teenage girl, let's say heterosexual, able bodied. All the stuff that goes into it here of a certain kind of wanting, wanting to be wanted. Like almost a perfect, that perfect way of wanting to be wanted. That person who is a paragon of control. Even they cannot resist you because you've just got it. Whatever it is, is so whatever. You're so valuable, so hot, you're so interesting, you're so desirable that it breaks down the defenses of someone who's trained themselves to defend against this very thing and they still are subject to it and they're in, you know, like, it's the Tom Haverford thing. He says, like, there's nothing sexier than a girl finding me sexy. Right. There's something to that here. There's nothing. There's nothing hotter than someone who's unattainable, who's so good looking, who should have a stock portfolio managing Warren Buffett's because they've been in the market so long, I hope they bought some index funds in the 70s. But, like, he represents kind of a pure, ideal, problematic form of male desire, and she's the object of it, no questions asked. Who doesn't want to do that for a living?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, there's a lot of, like, 90s teen movie in this as well. Like the 90s teen movie trope.

[Jeff O'Neill]

She's all that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, right. If she just took her glasses off, we could realize. Everyone would realize how hot she is. And here it's just, she needs to move somewhere else and be with new people who haven't known her her whole life, and they see her the way that she's always desired to be seen. Everybody thinks she's a total smoke show. As Kelly said, four guys ask her to the same dance. She's like, beating back.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They just didn't have those pheromones in the Northwest. She brought those Arizona pheromones at every turn.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She's already done all the homework for all of the classes. Like, she is flying by. And the hottest guy in school, who normally doesn't socialize with anybody, wants to be with her and is willing to fight his own nature. Like, this goes back to the purity culture stuff. There was integral to that was the idea that girls are temptations that boys constantly have to resist. And that the. The best thing you can do as a girl is not be a temptation to a boy. And the most caring, loving thing you could do as the boy would be to resist the constant temptation that just the presence of a woman brought into your life. And they enact that dynamic so repeatedly here, where he's like, I can't bear to be around you, but I will bear it. Like, at one point, they're very, very close to each other. And she's like, I'm sorry, I'll move away. And he goes, no, it's bearable. And it's like what every girl dreams of.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Vanessa, can we do Pacific Northwest corner for a second? Can we talk about.

[Vanessa Diaz]

This is where I break out into.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Because some of it was pretty cool. Like, like I said before the first 150 pages, when she's in this Place, you know, kind of navigating. As Rebecca said, it reads very quickly, and some of it is very easy to read. And I don't mean that as pejorative. Like her sense of Bella walk getting through the world. She's pretty good at locating us in space and time and how things are put together. Like, I kind of felt like I knew that world a little bit. What did you think of a representation of our rainy, cloudy Pacific Northwest here?

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yes. Because I was very much delayed. Sunny Southern California. And at the time that I read this, I remember I've always, I think, wanted to live eventually in a place with trees. So I found it alluring. Even if it was described as being super, you know, bleary and wet all the time. It seemed like it was. Yeah. Sort of cinematic and like. And this could also be colored by the fact that the film had just come out and I hadn't seen it, but I'd seen the promo for it, and, man, you give me, like a landscape of a bunch of trees with some fog, and I'm in like, it doesn't necessarily matter. So reading it really sunk me into that, and it made me want to come and visit. Like, it. It worked on me, and it definitely set the scene for all the things that we eventually get and was very convenient for.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, I do think it makes it stand out like a Pacific Northwest setting. Like, the iconography is pretty recognizable. I've got a couple of weather notes for Stephanie Meyer. I don't know if she did any research here. If all the trees and roads are covered in ice, School is canceled. No one's getting in a car and driving to school. They're not doing that. And another thing that happens is two months after there's black ice, there are no wildflowers in a meadow in the mountains. We're six months away from that. So that's just my Pacific Northwest. Northwest. No notes there. All right. Anything else about reading experiences that when you get out there. Is there a version of this that's 100 page shorter? That's 40% better?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

200 pages shorter? 200, maybe.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yes to that, yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. How do you know if it's for you, Rebecca?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think if you're curious about the origins of some of the biggest trends in publishing today, Twilight is a must read for all the reasons that we cited at the top of the show. It paves the way for 50 Shades of Gray, which is Twilight fanfic inspired by Bella and Edward's relationship. That opens the door to spicy romance. Being in the Mainstream in a really serious way. Those things combine and lead to what we have happening with Romantasy today. So if you really want to understand like what the building blocks were in not just a theoretical sense that we're giving you here, but in the. Having read the books, you should pick up Twilight. If you like the trope of the really normal girl and an extraordinary guy, that's a thing in romance. You're gonna get a lot of it here. And if you want the yearning, if that is what you're looking for, there is just so much yearning. So much yearning and so much longing. If you prefer that to having the sparks fly or you're leaning more towards like a closed door romance, this first book is for you. The door does not stay closed for the rest of the series.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think that's fair. So Vanessa and Kelly, one thing we do here is. Is we're talking about modern classics or classic classics. What questions that are asked and which of these are messed with here? I'm not actually sure. This should be an interesting segment. What is the good life? What do I owe my neighbor? How do I know what I know? Is this all there is? How to deal with a certainty of death? What else might there be? And what's the deal with good and evil? We could also, if there's a different question that it. That it's interested in, we could enter it here. Do any of these seem central to this?

[Kelly Jensen]

I think a couple of them do. I think your last one there. What's the deal with good and evil? Certainly plays a role here.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And what is the deal with good and evil here?

[Vanessa Diaz]

I think the vampire thing really gets. I'll let Kelly.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean agency is part of it, right? Like you can choose.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yeah, yeah. I mean that's a big part of it. I also just think good and evil when it comes to like what your desires are. I think to the other question you bring up here, how to deal with the certainty of death is a central theme.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Welcome it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Which is what? There's a way out. This fantasy of there being a way out.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yeah, I mean, I guess the immortality.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Of vampires is generally perceived by the vampires as like curse. Right. Like if you're mortal, you think, well, that's cool. And the vampire's like, I'm not so sure. And that's always an interesting one. I think that's an issue of dealing with that same question of like how do we wrestle with our own human mortality? And it's a. It's a contra example. It's A negative example, like what it would be like if you really weren't mortal. What would the consequence of that look like? I think there is a. What is the good life here, right? There is a. Is it love? Is it running away with the one true whatever and leaving my. My friends and my family and my education and my personal will and agency all for, you know, a God, a walking God amongst us? I think. What else might there be as interesting, right, because as soon as you enter in a world which are vampires, the whole world is different than what you thought. There is so much beyond this mortal coil to explore and experience. And I do wonder at some point, understanding her desire for Edward is a desire for the knowledge of the rest of the world, of seeing the big. Seeing everything that's out there and what might be there. Rebecca, you're smirking at me.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, I mean, Edward as knowledge of the rest of the world is really like, is Edward the snake in the Eden, you know, construction?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was gonna get to that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right, because is he the fruit of the tree?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do we think that the book thinks they are weak for desiring? Like, are we supposed to be pulling for them? We're supposed to be pulling for them to get together, right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, but we're supposed to be pulling for them to get together and then be strong enough to not have sex until they get married.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's what we're pulling for. Okay. That's really what it comes down to. That's so beyond my pale of caring that I forget that people care about that. Anything else about the immortal questions?

[Vanessa Diaz]

I was just gonna say that, though. What else might there be? And the certainty of death reminded me of the conversation that I had with Rebecca and Danica about another vampire book, which is Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. And the way we compared it to the boom and, you know, huge release of sinners. The concept of those books treating death as, like, freedom, and that is very much how. Like, as far as, you know, is that all there is? That, I think, is how Bella has viewed her entire life. She waxes on a lot about that over the course of four books, is her looking at her clumsiness and her state of being and how awkward she's been is all leading up to this moment of her being destined for some bigger purpose. And that bigger purpose is being undead, where she welcomes it with this, you know, romantic paint job. That obviously is interesting. But I don't know, I just love the way it meditates on the theme that we see a lot in vampire fiction.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This might be the easiest version of this question. Are we sure this isn't about art and writing? I'm pretty sure if we're ever going to do this, I don't think this is about art and writing. Am I wrong? I'm not even going to torture.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I think we're good there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. I don't know who put. Oh, actually, I do. Let's do best and worst lines.

[Narrator/Character in Audiobook]

Are.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Is there a good line? Do we put these? Any of these are in there for good reasons? No, no. That sounds terrible, but I don't have any good ones. No, I don't think we put any good lines.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

None of the ones I entered were because of the goodness.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Kelly, you put one in. Why don't you talk about the one you put in?

[Kelly Jensen]

Oh, yeah, the one I I. Every time she talked about smoldering in reference to Edward's eyes, I. My eye rolls were causing some smoldering.

[Vanessa Diaz]

On my end, but they were topaz. Kelly, never mind that topaz comes in like five, six different colors. Or topaz colors.

[Kelly Jensen]

Unless they were black back.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Unless they were hungry.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Are you gem tone? Are you gem tone shading her? Come on, let's be careful.

[Vanessa Diaz]

So I know of a quote that didn't make it in here, but because she just said it, which there's literally a quote where she says, I have noticed in my observance, and it's usually men, that when they're hungry, they're grumpier. Like that is an actual thing that gets said in this book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Did Stephanie Meyer invent hangry? Is that what you're saying?

[Vanessa Diaz]

That's hot. Take.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Anyway, she's the first one to spot that low blood sugar.

[Vanessa Diaz]

But, Kelly, we need the quote. Please give us the quote.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Please give us the quote.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Quote. What?

[Vanessa Diaz]

Read the quote. I have to. I have. Somebody has to read it on the podcast.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The top one.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, the top one is mine.

[Kelly Jensen]

I only. I only put one in there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Gather round, friends.

[Vanessa Diaz]

My bad. Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him, and I didn't know how potent that might be, that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Tough.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I have known him for two weeks. I am 17.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Today's episode is brought to you by Hachette Audio, publisher of the audiobook Vagabond by Tim Curry, read by Tim Curry. Let me just say I'm so excited to be getting another piece of Tim Curry's work after so long and in this memoir it's just celebrating his work, his life and it is a testament to his his profound impact on the entertainment industry as we know it today. There are a few people in Hollywood who can boast the same kind of resume as Tony Award nominated actor Tim Curry that he has built over five yes squirrel five decades. His breakout role was as Dr. Frank N. Furter in the Rocky Horror Picture show where his legs were iconic and then he was Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King's Itch. He also was the original King Arthur in Spamalot and he just redefined what it meant to be a character actor and we are all the better for it. Make sure to listen to Vagabond by Tim Curry read by Tim Curry and thanks again to Hachette Audio for sponsoring this episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Hachette Audio, publisher of the audiobook Sharp Force by Patricia Cornwell Read by January Lavoy From a New York Times bestselling author. A serial killer wreaks havoc on Northern Virginia, appearing as a ghostly apparition before striking and K. Scarpetta must avoid becoming their next victim. During the early hours of Christmas morning, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. K. Scarpetta receives a chilling call. The Phantom Slasher has struck again. Now the serial killer has terrorized Northern Virginia for months. Months. His pattern is to stalk with a sophisticated technology that enables him to invade his victims homes and watch their every move. They wake up to a ghost like hologram before being murdered in their beds. Scarpetta is summoned to Mercy island, the site of a notorious psychiatric hospital where two people have been brutalized and one of them from Scarpetta's past. It soon becomes apparent that she could be next. I need to know what happens next. Make sure to listen to Sharp Force by Patricia Cornwell read by January Lavoy and thanks again to Hachette Audio for sponsoring this episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Sourcebooks. Fire, publisher of the Crimson Throne By Sarah Rauch and Beth Revis Powerless meets Holly Black in a new historical YA romantasy set against the glittering intrigue of the Scottish and Elizabethan courts, but with a supernatural twist experience the dazzling thrill of magic fairies, royal intrigue and enemies to lovers. Romance. Romance. Perfect for fans of Outlander and Holly Black, this new series starter comes from New York Times best selling duo Sarah Raasch and Beth Revis, authors of the beloved Night of the Witch and Fate of Magic. The Crimson Throne follows in the same vein, full of lush landscapes, crackling Chemistry and powerful action. It follows a Fae guardian of the realm who falls in love with a charming Elizabethan spy who could also be the key to her world. Unknown doing. Make sure to check out the Crimson Throne by Sarah Rauch and Beth Revis. And thanks again to Sourcebooks Fire for sponsoring this episode.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I recited this to my husband the other night, and he just looked at.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Me like, have you had a stroke? Yeah. I don't know how many times perfect muscles were described. This is. It's almost to the point where an editor should have caught it. Like, can we do something else?

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Describing the muscles. Like, that happened a lot. There was estrogen rush. Vanessa. I. I guess I forgot. I maybe skipped over this as I was rushing through this one.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah, she's a really bad friend to her girlfriends. And, like, as Kelly said, I wish we would have spent more time talking about, like, her girlfriend shows, especially because they're all so receptive to her. Like, they're kind. They welcome her in. They're, like, trying to make her a part of things. And the minute Edward so much as glances in her direction, she's like, bye. But she does go on this girl's night out for a shopping trip, for dresses. And she says, it had been a while since I'd had girls night out and the estrogen rush was invigorating. And I am absolutely going to say that to any group of women that I hang out with. Like, do. Do we feel it? Is the estrogen rushing? Is it immune?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm telling you, pheromones. This is all pheromones and hormones.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Pheromones. The number one crime that was committed in this book is Bella or Edward saying to Bella, if you didn't smell so appallingly luscious.

[Vanessa Diaz]

And that's where we all leave.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm bringing one thing for you, everyone, today. The number one quote from Twilight on Goodreads, the most liked quote by a factor of ten.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Hit us.

[Kelly Jensen]

Wait, can I guess?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes, please do.

[Kelly Jensen]

Kelly, is it the line about the lamb?

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, that's second. Very good guess. Excellent.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Why didn't I put that in here? Oh, my God.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The first one is, I like the night without the dark. We'd never see the stars. Which is like that brand of faux poetry.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, everyone literally knows this, but I guess there is a tween somewhere that hasn't encountered that line before.

[Kelly Jensen]

We all put that kind of line.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I know.

[Kelly Jensen]

Aim away messages.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's right. Yeah. It's like they always say, someone's born every minute. That hasn't seen the Flintstones. Someone's born every minute. The second one is. And so the lion fell in love with the lamb, he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes. I thrilled to the word. What a stupid lamb. I sighed. What a sick, masochistic lion.

[Vanessa Diaz]

If you've not seen the synagogic version of this, I entreat you to do so immediately.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was going to ask you. We got to. We got to run through some of the rest of this. Vanessa has the best note of any of us here. Dicing double question mark enchiladas, triple question mark.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I. Okay. I always do this thing where I'm like, okay, you are from one part of Mexico. There are many parts of Mexico. There are many parts of Latin America.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Not all enchiladas. Hashtag not all enchiladas.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Is not from.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Any of the parts.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I spent an hour on the good YouTube trying to find somebody making enchiladas with diced chicken because she talks about how she's dicing chicken for enchiladas. What are you talking about? Enchiladas do not have to be with chicken, but if they're with chicken, it is shredded chicken.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Vanessa, I'm sorry to tell you that my white people have done things to enchiladas your people cannot imagine.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I was so angry. Like, unnaturally angry. What do we mean, dicing chicken for enchiladas? The part that I did laugh, that I did not put in here, is the part where she reheats lasagna for her and her dad and then does the most Vanessa thing there ever was, which is to pour each of them a glass of whole milk. I felt seen, but that's the kind of thing that generally gets me labeled a serial killer. So I just wanted to call that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Out for, like, lasagna and a glass of milk. What psychopaths are these?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't think Mormons are lactose intolerant. That's what I learned. So much that Gene doesn't.

[Vanessa Diaz]

That's so much dairy. That's my.

[Jeff O'Neill]

My night.

[Vanessa Diaz]

So much dairy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Above.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Re.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Appalling.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Luscious.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Also, Stephen Meyer, you can tell, is in her 30s, because the D here must be in his 40s. No. 40 year old dad, who's been working all day, is coming home to a hot, huge plate of lasagna, glass of whole milk. It's not happening. We're going to the hospital if that happens.

[Vanessa Diaz]

They ran out of fish. There was no fish.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They ran out of fish. I have a question for you here, Vanessa, that I want to add to our ongoing agenda. Rebecca. So we'll try it out here. Could you get most of the gist of this thing having watched the prime adaptation of it?

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yes, because I watched it immediately after to ask myself that question. It varies very little. There are some little key bits that they get rid of, but you. I could have just watched that instead of reading this. And I would like down to some of the uncomfortable quotes, like, she doesn't dice the enchiladas. I would have saved myself that part. But, like, almost of, like, the major quotes, the cringy stuff, like, the repetitive. I guess we don't maybe get as much of the monologue about her finding him gorgeous. But as far as the actual. Actual gist of what happens, even the.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Screenwriter couldn't handle saying that they were.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah. Again, the masochistic lion bit. If you could outrun me. Like, it's a whole thing. But, yeah, it's. It's. It's a thing. Rough. Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, we're on to trivia. Adaptations, rumored Mr. Quotes. Whatever. I don't know who put this in here. Let's popcorn it. No one. Want to take anything.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Oh, yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This top one is me. Twilight fans still flock to Forks, Washington. I was there a couple of years ago in the Olympic Peninsula. And you can go to a diner that sits on the line that marks the division between vampire territory and werewolf territory, which we learn about later in the books. There are also tons of stores that have, like, Twilight art and memorabilia. I have a picture of my face and a little cardboard cutout of Bella and Edward's wedding scene. And my favorite one is that you can go to the restaurant in Port Angeles, which is a slightly smaller town, where Bella and Edward go on their first date. And you can go to the restaurant or, like, something similar to where they go and reenact the first date, which, as recently as 2022, is a thing that people were still doing. Folks at our hotel told us about it, and the way the couple young couples would do this is go to this restaurant and the girl would order the mushroom ravioli or, like, whatever the closest thing on this menu is. And the poor guy would just sit there and not eat anything. Because Edward is a vampire, so he doesn't need food. So if you're reenacting, if you're cosplaying the first date, because if you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If you ordered something, you'd be like, well, maybe that guy isn't a vampire.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Fire.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You may not be.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Gotta commit to the bit.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What else do we want to Hit here.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Mine's related. I'm just gonna jump in real quick. Which. Is that the actual house? Like, that's. It's not in Forks, but the house, the Bella house, the Charlie house, is an actual.

[Jeff O'Neill]

From the movie.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yes, from the movie. Yeah. That you can actually stay in. It's not in Forks. It's actually in the same town that you can go to that is Halloween town. Like, the recreation of, like, that movie. So, like, if you're just wanting a.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Bunch of fall Kelly's Googling airline tickets.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Right now for Halloween, I have gone. It is absolutely ridiculous. But I. Yeah, the house is there. And of course, they've got it kind of cordoned off. So a bunch of looky loos don't bother you if you're staying there, but you can actually go stay at the house. It's an.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I did have this question while reading it. I don't put this in here, but the mythology of the local Native folks, I was like, I'm sure that wasn't handled super great. And it turns out that wasn't.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The way that Bella first starts to learn that Edward is a vampire is when she first meets Jacob Black and she and a bunch of kids are down at the beach. Jacob is a member of one of the local indigenous tribes, and he starts. Starts telling her that there is mythology going back generations in his community about how his people descended from werewolves, and they have this ongoing battle against the cold ones and that the cold ones are vampires and that many people believe the Cullens are indeed cold ones. Stephenie Meyer did get some criticism and some hot water from the actual Quileute people today for misappropriating their mythology. But also, I think that was much more common in fiction in 2005 than it is today. This would be like a cancel culture conversation. Like, end. Stephenie Meyer now is the thing that would happen if somebody really took a story like that to the extent that she did, but pretty common for 2005. And I think she discussed it and made repairs to the degree that you can when the books are already out the gate.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, it's time for Hot Takes. Rebecca, you're up first.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The 50 Shades fanfic that was inspired by this. It really did take a lot of heat, but the relationship dynamic of Fifty Shades of Gray are actually healthier than what happens in Twilight. That's my first hot take.

[Jeff O'Neill]

My only hot take I didn't write here is related, which I didn't really get why 50 Shades happened until I read this. Like, I get it. Now I get if you were a fan of this book, you're like, just flipping bone. Just come on, let's go. And I get it. I see you elgames understand it. Not my choices, not my body, but I get it. I understand. Kelly.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yeah. I don't know why I've got extra letters before my name on this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It was so hot. Your fingers were burning.

[Kelly Jensen]

I had a lot to say. I have two hot takes. So my first one is, you know, we have talked about all the reasons that this book is important, but I think you can get away with not reading it and still be web read as long as you know the context, history, and related outcomes of the book. And so that leads to my second hot take, which is that back when I was a teen librarian is when the graphic novel for Twilight came out. And I remember, I remember reading it and thinking it was really quite good.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know what? I believe that because there's less dialogue.

[Kelly Jensen]

There's less dialogue and you get the images right. So I would say if you're going to read it, to be well read, try the graphic novel and see how that goes for you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Diaz, you didn't have one here, Anything?

[Vanessa Diaz]

No, the one hot take that I have, which is not super hot take, but if you just want to laugh, is that obviously Stephanie Meyer has been asked whether or not her Mormon faith, like, informed the book. And she has gone on record as saying no. But I, you know, I. I think your experience just bleeds into the art you make, if we want to call it art. And if you just.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There's two shade.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Shade. I'm so sorry, but if you pay attention to the clothes that she describes and then go look at what Tumblr was doing to those characters.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I had a khaki skirt moment.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Moment khaki skirt with a blue top. And then she describes Edward as having, like a collared shirt on, but then he goes into the meadow and reveals himself to her and unbuttons it. But she talks about it being sleeveless. So there's some really great Tumblr mashups of what both of those outfits would look like. And I implore you to go look for them and have a nice cackle. So, yeah, and that's fine, girl. Like, that's. It was a product. That's your culture. Of course, you, like, wrote it into your books. But, like, let's be real, the purity culture alone is something to reckon with.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was thinking about, is there a version of this where could you remake the movie today? Would there be an appetite for this because we're getting remakes of stuff that's not that old right now. This launched a couple careers. We're not doing the movie here. But like, I think you could remake this now and again. I think it still works.

[Kelly Jensen]

I think, I think you can. Honestly, I think you can skip remaking it and just throw it back in the theaters. Just what's happening? Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, as we're recording this, Jaws hit theaters for the 50th anniversary and was like one of the top box office hits of the year. I think that we'll see the same. More Twilight.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah, Yeah, I think so.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Read alikes. Where should we go?

[Kelly Jensen]

I am happy to jump in on this one. I've got two here. I would call them less read alikes and more read alongs with this one. So I wrote a story for, for School Library Journal two months ago about the pop cultural like staying power of Twilight. And it talked to a bunch of librarians and authors as well as folks in the publishing industry about what they remember from when Twilight came out and how it impacted them and their art and their work to this day. And I talked to a couple of authors who were never fans of Twilight. And honestly, I thought that their answers were as interesting, if not more interesting than the folks who were like, like super into this. And so these two recommendations come from two of those authors that I talked to. The first being Man Made Monsters by Andrea L. Rogers. Rogers was inspired to write a vampire book. So this book that did everything exactly the opposite of how Twilight did it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

She costanzaed it.

[Kelly Jensen]

What if.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So this is the what if no book. And then the other one I wanted to recommend is Sunhead by Alex Hassan. This is a graphic novel that came out year.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Last.

[Kelly Jensen]

Last year. And it's not solely inspired by Twilight. The author is not a fan of the book. But it is this really interesting coming of queerness graphic novel that grapples with a lot of the same topics as the series, including relationship dynamics, society's expectations of gender, and then how queer folks interact with heterosexual texts, which is something that has a long history in the Twilight fandom. So that would be the other one. So Man Made Monsters by Andrea L. Rogers and Sunhead by Alex is Hahn.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I have one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes, go for it.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah. Midnight is the Darkest Hour by Ashley Winstead, which is kind of a murder mystery thriller, but it is also a meditation on feminism, on obsessive love, religious zealotry and class. But the book is both a little bit inspired by Twilight, but like one of the main characters. She is basically the 17 year old daughter of a pastor in a conservative small Louisiana town who reads as they're described as heretical text. One of them is Twilight. She looks to Twilight as a bit of like a love roadmap, which is obviously wrong for several reasons, but it is an interesting mix of. Inspired a little bit by Twilight, kind of digs into the problematic parts of Twilight and what it might be like if you took some. That kind of text as something to. To follow. It was a really interesting read.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I didn't write mine, but mine here is if you want to do the classic version of it. I couldn't help but think about Pride and Prejudice the whole time because the Bennett Darcy dynamic is I think much more interesting. But he is extremely wealthy. Right? He, he is the vampire of like these kind of. He's like he's got everything. He's almost all powerful. Like the whole town or revolves around just him being in town because he's got so much money. And he treats Bennett so coldly, like he's just a stone the whole time. And he falls in love with her so hard that he can't help but be like he says, he says, if I could, I would not love you so much. And like the famous Matthew McDonald hand clinch, 1990. Like that is there. And then Elizabeth Bennett herself is like charming. Like you kind of get it right. Like you're supposed to sort of fall in love with her as, as she falls in. The difference of course is like the reason she ultimately cares for him is because of something he does. Like he does an act of sort of quiet generosity versus just Edwards. I think the muscles were described as perfect. I have to check my notes on this if that's how they're described. But like it's physical of course, to some degree. But it's much more of a meeting of the mind kind of a situation. And the flirtation is the dialogue. The action in those books between them is the dialogue between those two characters. So if you love Twilight as a tween and never have made it back to Pride and Prejudice for whatever reason again, classics are classics and it's 300 years old. It's kind of all that stuff that goes with it. But the, the virtues and delights there are not, they're not, they're not different species of attraction.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Which I think is a compliment to Stephenie Meyer because she was so inspired by it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I mean he's like, is it a compliment that said you did the thing but Worse. I don't know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Maybe you executed on your influences, I.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Guess or I get, I didn't completely miss that like that. I'm saying it suggests that she sort of hit the target in some degree. All right. A zero to well read score. Each ones gets a score from 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest historical importance. Let's see. So it's not 2,000 years old. Like this is not a classic classic. So it can't be a 10 or an 8 or 9 really. But I think based on what Kelly says in my own cultures, I think this is like a five or six. I think it's, it's up there. Like it's, it's going to be hard to be a seven. But I'd say five or six for a modern reading.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And like for Yalls reference we gave Gatsby Like a seven or an eight.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Here.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Oh, interesting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like at 10 you have to be like the Bible. Like you have to be just sort of a pillars of the earth sort of a situation. Kelly, any thoughts about a five or six there?

[Kelly Jensen]

Yeah, I, I mean I was going to say seven only because it is so historically important to ya and what YA has been, but if we're looking at it from a broader perspective, I would give it a good five. Five and a half.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. Okay. I think that makes sense.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Go with a five.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Readability. I mean this one's interesting. It's. You can blow in a way. It could be a 10, Vanessa, because you just blow through it.

[Vanessa Diaz]

That doesn't sit well with.

[Kelly Jensen]

Not all of us blew through it.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Oh, you didn't.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, we, I, I mean I was flipping through. Now maybe some of that wasn't. I wasn't looking at everything.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Well, there's blow through it like can you do it quickly? And there's blow through it like was this, is it. Because it was just so readable. And what is. Yeah, I'm, I can't go 10. I'm.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, no, I, I, I know.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah, yeah, I'm, but you're not read.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And compelling read are not the same.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Those are, that's a better way to put that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So maybe a six somewhere in that.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Seven.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Six.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Seven. Let's go seven.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Current relevance of central questions. That's tough A, that's a tough one.

[Narrator/Character in Audiobook]

Four.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Four.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay, four.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Because it's about some stuff but also totally not.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Yeah.

[Vanessa Diaz]

And the regression of purity culture isn't.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Something I book nerd read credit. I have, I want to try something out on you guys for this and I don't know if this is fair. I don't know if this is centralizing whatever, but I think if you're a dude that has read this, you get more read cred than if you're a woman who's read this. And I don't know that that's fair.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yeah.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I'm trying to think if I know a single in my own and, like, whether I would have ascribed that.

[Sponsor Announcer]

I do.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think because, like, if someone said to you, like, I read this because I want to see what it was about, you're like, well, that's kind of interesting.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jensen]

Whether or not that I was gonna say we. We need to talk about that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Excellent note.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But putting that to the side, just straight up, you know, you're filling out a form. What books you've read said it can't be a one. Three, Four. Three.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I'm going with four.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Four for me could be good with four.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Four. Okay. The oh, damn factor. This one takes a little explanation. This is. Can you believe books can do this? I was blown away. Transcendent Kelly's laugh.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Can you believe that she.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Was that what you're waiting for? Kelly? So 10 for Kelly. Kelly gives it a 10 on OJ.

[Kelly Jensen]

10'S all the way down for this one. I'm gonna give it, like, if I'm being realistic, I don't know, one and a half, two.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think a one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

One. One or two. Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right. So that 12, 16, 21, 50. Our lowest score to date, but not a surprise. Not a surprise. But I think that does maybe argue for bumping historical importance changed over time. Because recency bias can be. No, it's not recency bias. Like things that are closer to us in time, especially when it comes to cultural phenomenon. I think I'm willing to bump that up to like a 7. Actually, when I think about it that way, just in terms of the. The ya. Ness of the romance, the romanticy paranormal romance, like all the things that happened after, I think it has to be higher than a 5.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is such an important domino. Like, if this domino doesn't fall, I really don't know that we get to 50 shades of gray. Well, we don't get to 50 shades of gray because it's directly inspired by this. But I don't know that we get to spicier romances going mainstream, and that that leads the way to romantasy.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Also, for all the work that Kelly laid out about the It's YA alone.

[Kelly Jensen]

I just feel like you have to go seven.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jensen]

I mean I, I think back and I think that this is important context too. If we had not gotten Twilight, would we have seen we need diverse books happen. Would we have seen a growth in diversity? You know, I think about a book like Ash by Melinda Lo, which came out in 2009, I believe, and I believe she's written or talked about. If it weren't for Twilight, publishers wouldn't have taken a chance on her books.

[Sponsor Announcer]

She was published.

[Kelly Jensen]

I think that book was published by the same publisher. So they had Twilight money to take chances on the kinds of titles that weren't really being picked up before because.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like there's gold in them there hills. Worthless. Scratch a lottery ticket. Maybe this will be the next Twilight one of these YA stories.

[Kelly Jensen]

Right, right. Well and, and like I said before, it really built up a true mid list. And if we look at YA right now, the mid list is shrinking because they have not had the kind of juggernaut that Twilight has been. You know, there's been big sellers. I don't want to say that there haven't been, but it's very different now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Different. It's a different landscape.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Sitting behind Colleen Hoover and Rebecca Yaros and Sarah J. Ma Mass now with.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Adult fiction and with science, I mean the science is, you know, eventually someone's gonna discover nuclear fusion. Right. Like, you know, they have. There's inexorableness to that. Whereas with art it's different. Like if Stephanie Meyer didn't write Twilight, it's not like someone's gonna write it two years later. This was not inevitable. This is gonna be a thing. Yeah, it's very place voice is so historically contingent.

[Kelly Jensen]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think it's very like Stephanie Meyer walked so that Rebecca Yaros and Sarah J. Maas could run.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think Stephenie Meyer ran with the bag for a while. I think she's doing okay. I don't think she was just walking on that particular.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Well, this is metaphorically. Yes, metaphorically, yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What a phenomenon. Again, if you weren't around in 2005, it's. It is very difficult to describe how much a phenomenon. We haven't seen anything like it in the last two decades. I don't think even the fourth wings onyx storms of the world haven't had the same sort of cultural weight that Twilight.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Comparing their book sales like of that 160 million copies that Meyer has sold in the last 20 years, 60 million of them were in two. In two years together. She was the best selling author in the US in 2008 and 2009. Like 28 and 29 million books per year in each of those years.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Wow.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Unparalleled.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was talking not even close to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like what fourth wing did. Her fourth wing didn't even come close to her.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Our middle school librarian. I was having conversation People are still picking up at the library. The tweens are still picking it off the shelf and it says it sort of comes in waves every few years and I don't know what that is, but. But it's going to be around for a while. Kelly, thank you so much. Kelly Jensen Vanessa Diaz thank you so much. I had more time talking with you about the book than reading the book, but that's why we're doing this to some degree. Thank you so much for joining us. Show notes book riot.com listen. You can email us at 02well read.com 0to well read is a proud member of the Airwave Podcast Network.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this audiobook Excerpt from Soul Searching by Lila Sage, provided by our sponsors at Penguin Random House Audio.

[Narrator/Character in Audiobook]

Did I just pepper spray Clark's boyfriend again or something? She hadn't said anything about a boyfriend. I grabbed a plastic water bottle out of the cup holder and scrambled out of the car. I kneeled on the other side of the man. Open your eyes, I said to him. We have to flush it out. No thanks, I'm good here, he said, and I almost laughed. Brady, clark said, I'm really sorry my sister pepper sprayed you, but believe it or not, this isn't the first time this has happened. We're pros.

I don't know if I can open.

My eyes, he said with a groan. Yes you can, you big baby, I said without thinking, and Clark shot me a withering look. The man Brady moved his hands off his eyes and looked up at me. His dark hair stuck to his forehead and water moved down his face. I couldn't see what color his eyes were in the dark light. Maybe green or blue, but I could see I'd done a number on them. Collins Cartwright, clark said. Meet Brady Cooper. Brady Cooper. That was familiar. Wait, was this the upholsterer? The one Clark got me a temporary gig with? The one who said I could stay in his extra room? I'd just maced the man that kept me from couch surfing at my sister's or sleeping in our childhood bedroom at my parents? Charmed, I said, and then poured the water into his eyes without warning.

My eyes felt like someone had poured molten glass into them. I did my best to keep them open. As Clark drove my truck back to Sweetwater Peak, she had called me in a tornado of worry a few hours ago when her sister, Collins, hadn't made it home yet. Yet she was worried she was broken down on the side of the road somewhere, and it turned out she was right. Normally I wouldn't really go out of my way to drive through a torrential downpour for someone I didn't know. But Clark and her family had been good to me since I moved to Sweetwater Peak, and honestly, I'd heard enough about Collins that my curiosity was peaked was being the key word there now that I was fighting the urge to dig my eyeballs out of their sockets, because that would be less painful. My curiosity was sufficiently squashed. I just wanted out of this truck. Clark was behind the wheel of my two door Chevy pickup and her sister was in the passenger seat, which meant that I was sandwiched between the two of them on the bench seat. It also meant that I was stuck in the middle of their argument. Seriously, Collins, clark said. People break down on that road all the time. You should have called before your service dropped. I forgot, collins said. Her voice was defensive. Clark scoffed. I can't believe you were just going to sleep in your car. Did you really think that none of us would be worried enough to come look for you?

[Sponsor Announcer]

You?

[Narrator/Character in Audiobook]

What else was I supposed to do? Walk 40 miles to Sweetwater in the rain?

No, clark huffed. You were supposed to know better in the first place.

I do know better, collins said. I just decided not to execute on that knowledge.

Grow up, Clark. Side Get a grip, collins shot back.