Twilight - Chapter Seven

Edward, Edward, where for art thou, Edward?

I can hardly believe that I'm still reading this. I am WAY past the point where I would normally close this book and toss it into the nearest recycling bin (give back some of the paper that was wasted to print this crap). Okay, so that doesn't really apply to me since I'm reading a digital copy, but the sentiment remains.

The chapter opens with Bella avoiding Charlie, skipping out on dinner with the excuse that she has a lot of homework. Charlie has a basketball game that he wants to watch, so he probably wouldn't have bugged Bella anyway, but she STILL finds cause to bitch about that. There is just no way to win with her, is there? (+1 Bitch)

The homework was a lie. Bella lies quite a bit, doesn't she? Even when it would have been simpler just to give a straightforward answer. Maybe telling Charlie "I'm feeling tired and would like to go to sleep now" would have worked just as well without the need to lie to his face. Hell, since Charlie already had his mind set on watching basketball she didn't really have to say anything at all.

Bella immediately fishes for a CD Phil had given her. I admit that I had forgotten who Phil was and had to backtrack to refresh my memory. You can't really blame me, though, since his name is only mentioned 4 times previously in the book, and is only mentioned 13 times throughout the entire novel (thank you Kindle word search). Bella listens to the CD, but the kind of music that's on it isn't really described. Only that it contains bass beats, drums, and shrieking. So, is it a heavy metal CD or what? At least saying what genre the music was would have been helpful, Meyer.

It turns out that she listened to the music so that she didn't have to think and falls asleep listening to it. You guessed it, this means that we once again get to sit through a dream sequence. Oh goodie, the last dream that featured a shiny Edward was so thrilling that I can hardly wait to see what she'll dream of now (gag). She recognized the green light of the forest, and now I am rolling my eyes. She hears the ocean and walks towards it, but suddenly Jacob appears and pulls her deeper into the woods.

My, my. Only met the guy once and already dreaming about him. She gets attached to guys quickly, doesn't she? Mike is there too and urges her to obey Jacob. Being the stupid bitch that she is, Bella doesn't listen.

Jacob turns into a werewolf. Well, not so much "turned into" as "instantly is replaced by a wolf," as there is no description of the metamorphosis outside of him twitching a little. Mike cries out for her to run, but she still doesn't. Apparently she is such a stupid bitch that not even being suddenly confronted by a snarling, growling werewolf is enough to make her take Mike's advice. I REALLY hope she gets eaten. (+1 Stupidity)

She sees a light approaching her from the beach. Hmm, a moving light. That seems interesting. I wonder what that could be.

And then Edward stepped out from the trees, his skin faintly glowing, his eyes black and dangerous.

*sigh*

Of course, it could only be sparkledouche. This time he is all EVIL and wants to do terrible things to Bella, not that the stupid bitch cares. She instantly obeys Edward and moves toward him, despite that she herself had noticed that he looked dangerous. Does this girl have a death wish or is she just clinically stupid? Jacob leaps forward to protect Bella, and this upsets her so much that she wakes up screaming "no!"

This dream says a lot about Bella's relationship with Edward. If we take it at face value it shows that she will not listen to those trying to help her and Edward could basically say "I'm going to kill you now," and Bella would helpfully present her neck for him to snap. There are even parallels already set up in the story. She ignores her friends and disrespects her father and will listen to none of them. Also, Edward has already gotten away with some pretty outrageous behavior that no self-respecting girl would stand for. This is beyond unhealthy, Bella needs psychiatric help. Such intensely dependant behavior is not good.

Bella can't go back to sleep, so now we get to see her take her clothes off. Yeah, there is absolutely nothing Freudian about having Bella dream of Edward and then immediately start taking off her clothes. As if that wasn't enough, now we get to see her taking a shower. I just hope she doesn't do anything funny with the shower head. Now she dries her hair and--

Alright, do we really need to see all of this? Writers tend to skip or gloss over personal hygiene in their books for a reason. That reason is because IT'S BORING! Is there really nothing else for Meyer to write except "I woke up, took a shower, and blow-dried my hair?" Who finds this stuff interesting? Go back to the vampires and the werewolves. That, at least, had some semblance of actual dramatic tension.

But that would actually make this book interesting, so instead we get to see Bella get dressed and make her bed. The saying "as interesting as watching paint dry" comes to mind. I'd almost rather be doing that right now. For goodness' sake, somebody throw a pie! Now Bella decides to use her computer. She complains about dial-up being slow and decides to get some cereal as it connects. She chews her cereal slowly and carefully. Yes, Meyer actually chose to describe the method and speed at which Bella eats her cereal.

Shoot me now!

I ate slowly, chewing each bite with care. When I was done, I washed the bowl and spoon, dried them, and put them away. My feet dragged as I climbed the stairs. I went to my CD player first, picking it up and placing it precisely in the center of the table. I pulled out the headphones, and put them away in the desk drawer.

I quoted that just so you can have a taste of the excruciating detail Meyer is subjecting us to. We don't need to see every little thing that Bella does! Where was Meyer's editor? Why wasn't he doing his job?

Bella goes to her computer and it seems that our special snowflake who is supposedly so intelligent has never heard of a pop-up blocker. They're free, you know. Also, since Bella had only just connected to her ISP, with no mention of her opening her web browser, how are there pop-up ads already? Her computer must be infected with some pretty nasty adware, which I'd suggest she have her computer scanned for. She goes to a search engine, and gets more pop-ups. Yeah, definitely adware, unless Bella is so stupid that she actually visits some crappy search engine that has pop-ups on its main page.

She types in the word "vampire" and describes that she got a lot of junk results with no real information on vampires. If the bitch had used google one of the first results would have been the wikipedia entry on vampires. Problem solved. She constantly complains about her connection speed. I get it, dial-up is slow! I'm assuming her computer is an antique, using a 28.8 modem or something. 56k isn't terribly slow for simple web browsing assuming you avoid sites heavy with graphics or flash animations. This brings back memories of my old days in the mid-90's when I was stuck with a 14.4 modem. Now THAT was slow!

*Fondly pets his new 20 mbps fios modem*

She reaches a promising page, and after describing what it looks like finally gets to actually reading it.

Throughout the vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both.

I did a search on this quote to see if it was made by a real person or if Meyer was just making it up. It turns out that it comes from a classic book called The Vampire: His Kith and Kin by Montague Summers. I'm not sure whether Meyer actually read this book as a form of research or if she just stumbled on it while looking for a good quote.

the Romanian Varacolaci, a powerful undead being who could appear as a beautiful, pale-skinned human ...

That word is misspelled. It's vârcolac (vârcolaci for plural form). Also, that is not its only definition. In Romanian folklore they're known as wolf demons so powerful that they can occasionally swallow the sun and moon, creating an eclipse. Some other legends also describe them as vampires. Appearance-wise they are often described as wolves, other animals and even dragons, but I couldn't find a reference to them being described as beautiful pale humans. She omits this detail, since she's only interested in the parts of these myths that pertain to her vampires.

the Slovak Nelapsi, a creature so strong and fast it could massacre an entire village in the single hour after midnight.

Her description of the Nelapsi is incomplete and glossed over. This may have something to do with the fact that Nelapsi are incredibly evil, soulless, vicious, bloodthirsty monsters. Not only do they savagely slaughter the living to satisfy their insatiable bloodlust, but they actively revel in destruction, death, and desecration. I suppose something like this would clash with Meyer's vision of the romanticized sparkly vampire, so she makes her description of these creatures intentionally vague.

The last one is Stregoni benefici. I had never heard of this creature before, so I did some digging and could find no credible information about it. Turns out that's because this is something Meyer has made up herself. Bella comments that it's such a relief that there exists a myth that validates the existence of good vampires.

A myth that Meyer had to make up ...

Unbelievable! She just selectively picked one or two traits from the myths she encountered and twisted them to make them fit her vision of the beautiful, pale, good vampire. When the established mythos wasn't good enough she proceeded to just make stuff up!

Just look at the above quotes to see what I mean. Vârcolac are pale and beautiful, Nelapsi are fast and strong, and the bullshit vamp Meyer made up is "on the side of good." Meyer is really out to rape the vampire mythos. This isn't so much a case of Meyer getting her facts wrong as it is a case of her covering her ears and screaming "LA LA LA, I AM NOT LISTENING, LA LA LA!" until the myths she read fit her vision of perfect, sparkly, beautiful vampires. (+1 Stupidity)

Bella now says that there is very few vampire myths that match what she's seen in Edward or heard from Jacob's story.

Speed, strength, beauty, pale skin, eyes that shift color; and then Jacob's criteria: blood drinkers, enemies of the werewolf, cold-skinned, and immortal. There were very few myths that matched even one factor.

Really, Meyer? There are "very few" vampire myths that would describe them as drinking blood? There aren't many that describe them as being immortal, even though all myths say they're undead? The book from which Meyer quoted has a whole section on the traits and practices of vampirism. Did she even read that, or just take that one quote (the first words of the book) because it sounded cool? (+1 Stupidity)

I think we've pretty much proven that Meyer has tried to give the illusion that she has done some actual research but is in fact, once again, just making stuff up.

Not liking what she found, Bella starts bitching again, and somehow this situation is everyone else's fault.

Through my irritation, I felt overwhelming embarrassment. It was all so stupid. I was sitting in my room, researching vampires. What was wrong with me?

For someone who is supposed to be so smart, she has a lot of contempt for the seeking of knowledge. Is there something wrong with researching a popular mythological creature? ZOMG I actually had to LEARN something! What kind of FREAK am I? (+1 Stupidity)

I decided that most of the blame belonged on the doorstep of the town of Forks--and the entire sodden Olympic Peninsula, for that matter.

Calm down, bitch! Researching on the internet is not such a horrible thing. Students do it all the time. Now, because Bella feels embarrassed, it is somehow the fault of everyone on the entire peninsula? What kind of crazy, backwards logic is that? This is the person the Twilight fans are in love with? This whiny, angst-ridden bitch who complains about everything, treats others like crap, blatantly uses people when it's convenient for her, and casts blame on everyone and everything for her bad mood.

What ... a ... bitch! (+1 Bitch)

Bella decides to go for a walk, stomping out the door as she leaves. I guess Bella just really hates having to do research, a trait she and Meyer have in common. She describes some of the plants, noting that what she knew of the local plant life was due to Charlie teaching her. She is still angry, and I am still wondering what the bitch's problem is. She notes that this is probably the worst place she could be, given the dream she just had, but she just sits there anyway and makes no attempt to go somewhere less creepy.

Here in the trees it was much easier to believe the absurdities that embarrassed me indoors.

She was embarrassed because the myths she read were absurd? Of course they're absurd, that's why they're myths! In this case Bella should never take a class on mythology or she'd be too embarrassed by the men with heads of animals. For that matter, she shouldn't read the bible either. Why should the mere act of reading those myths be embarrassing? There are college classes on mythology, should that be an embarrassment? While the stories themselves may be absurd, they are part of the history and culture of the civilizations that birthed them. They are important in their own way, because they paint a picture of how people in ages past viewed the world.

And another thing. How is Forks, and the entire peninsula, responsible for the myths of vampires? They didn't write them, so why is she blaming them?

Bella starts thinking about Edward, trying to make sense of everything she's seen and heard so far. She notes the incredible strength and speed which he used to save her life that day in the parking lot, forgetting to mention his ability to make crowds of onlookers conveniently not see him doing those things. Oh, I forgot, he didn't do that, the idiot plot did. She notes his changing eye color, which I'm surprised nobody else noticed. She also mentions his inhuman beauty, which I'm dismissing right now because that's more about Bella's overblown perception of Edward than actual beauty.

She wonders about his pale, frigid skin, which is also bullshit. Skin cannot always be frigid on a vampire, which is essentially a walking corpse. A dead body does get cold since it's no longer generating body heat, but unless Edward is routinely locking himself in a meat freezer and wearing ice packs under his clothes, his skin should be absorbing the ambient heat of his surroundings. At most his body would be room temperature, warmer or colder depending on the temperature of his environment.

She goes on about other things, like his manner of speaking. She describes it as "unfamiliar cadences and phrases that better fit the style of a turn-of-the-century novel than that of a twenty-first-century classroom." Exactly when has he spoken like this at all? Edward could be considered articulate, but he hasn't said a single thing I would consider old fashioned. Once again, Meyer is just making stuff up whenever it suits her.

He had told me he was the villain, dangerous. ...

And yet the stupid bitch doesn't listen. If this had taken place in the real world ... well, a fantasy world with vampires that sticks closely to the conventions of the real world, at least, Bella might as well be wearing a sign saying "all you can eat buffet," because any remotely realistic vampire would eventually end up chowing down on her.

This seems to just get Bella even more horny for Edward, because as we all know, all girls want bad boys. I feel another video clip coming on.

Something outside the possibility of rational justification was taking place in front of my incredulous eyes.

I've spent some time in writers' forums and workshops, and I can tell you that awkward sentences like this get critiqued all the time. It is unnecessarily wordy and takes away from the immediacy of the scene. It simply doesn't flow well with the rest of the paragraph. People write like this to sound sophisticated, but it seldom turns out well. Common advice would be to either cut it or rewrite it so that it fits better within the rest of the paragraph.

To illustrate my point, here is the paragraph proper.

Well, they were something. Something outside the possibility of rational justification was taking place in front of my incredulous eyes. Whether it be Jacob's cold ones or my own superhero theory, Edward Cullen was not ... human. He was something more.

Now here is that paragraph again, with the offending sentence removed.

Well, they were something. Whether it be Jacob's cold ones or my own superhero theory, Edward Cullen was not ... human. He was something more.

Notice how the two sentences flow better with the overwritten part cut out? Those two sentences fit very well with each other, the latter directly referencing and expanding upon the former. That bit in the middle disrupted the flow of thought, distracting the reader from the point Meyer was trying to make. Not only is it poorly worded, it is in the wrong place to begin with.

Here is that paragraph one more time, with the bad sentenced reworded and moved to the end of the paragraph.

Well, they were something. Whether it be Jacob's cold ones or my own superhero theory, Edward Cullen was not ... human. He was something more, something that defied all rational thought.

There you have it. The same thought expressed in fewer words. There wasn't even a need for another sentence. You see what I did there? That is called EDITING! This is something Meyer should have done. I won't bore you with this anymore. I just wanted to point out at least one example of why Meyer's writing is sloppy. The book is littered with instances like this; do I even need to remind you of the bouquets of brilliant anemones undulating ceaselessly?

Now Bella wonders what she should do if it turns out that Edward actually is a vampire. You know, all of this deliberation might have been convincing if the fact that Edward is a vampire weren't advertised on the dust jacket of the book. Also, this revelation is coming much too soon. Any chance at dramatic tension has been wasted by having Jacob flat-out tell Bella that the Cullens are vampires. Even if the audience has this foreknowledge, HOW Bella finds out can still make it an awesome moment in the book. Perhaps Bella could catch Edward in the process of feeding, or he might lose control and try to feed on Bella, stopping just short of doing so.

Having this important element of the story just dropped in our laps, then picked apart and analyzed by Bella, sucks all of the suspense out of it. Meyer has turned what could have been a major turning point in the story and reduced it to a purely intellectual exercise. You might as well be reading Wikipedia. It almost feels as if Meyer simply wanted to give Bella more excuses to daydream about Edward.

Bella considers doing the smart thing and avoid Edward, taking his advice and warnings to heart, listening to Jacob, and taking her recent nightmare seriously. Stupid bitch that she is, though, she immediately rejects that idea.

I was gripped in a sudden agony of despair as I considered that alternative. My mind rejected the pain, quickly skipping over to the next option.

A sudden agony of despair? That's the kind of thing you find in bad emo poetry, for crying out loud! (+1 Wangst)

Also, words cannot describe how monumentally stupid and incredibly weak this girl is. For every fangirl who claims that Bella is strong and intelligent, this pretty much disproves that. How long has she known Edward? How many times have they even spoken to each other? They've done far too little of ... well, ANYTHING together for Bella to be gripped by a "sudden agony of despair" at the thought of avoiding him. Also, what does it say about Bella that she gets this obsessed over a guy she doesn't even know? Not "hardly knows," DOESN'T know. Edward hasn't exactly been very helpful on that score, only letting slip that he likes some of the same music as her. (+1 Stupidity)

Here is my theory about why Bella is the way she is.

Bella is overly-dependent and needs counseling. Maybe it's pent-up daddy issues from the divorce that causes her to seek personal validation in the arms of potentially dangerous men. Bella seems to have a narrow but intense cone of dependent behavior, in which she not only needs another person to validate her, but she needs to feel needed.

Think about it. First she latched onto her mother, being utterly dependent in her relationship with her. In the first chapter, one of Bella's chief concerns was that, without her, Renee might not be able to pay the bills, do the groceries, etc. This tells us that Bella assumed a large role in her relationship with her mother before Phil came around. Bella was the "adult," as she put it in chapter five. She felt needed. She had a role to play that defined her as a person and gave her a sense of personal worth. Then along comes Phil, who intrudes upon that role. Suddenly Bella is not so needed anymore.

Unable to get the validation she needs at home, she makes a desperate move and goes away to Forks to live with her father. She is utterly miserable not because Forks is such a terrible place, but because she feels lost without someone to depend on her. She tries to establish a new bond by insisting on cooking for Charlie, trying to make him need her, but it doesn't seem to work out. Charlie had been living as a single, independent man for 17 years. It was too tough of a nut for her to crack.

Then along comes Edward. The beauty is what attracted her at first, then his bad boy attitude reeled her in. Now she can't stop thinking about him, because here is someone obviously brooding and seemingly in some emotional pain, a pain Bella hopes she can heal. As time passes, she becomes increasingly convinced that Edward NEEDS her, and now she needs him to need her, which is even worse. She pushes everyone else away because she needs only one dependency. Everyone else is too well-adjusted, or they remind her too much of the kids she knew back home.

That is what I came up with after observing Bella's behavior. at least.

Bella thinks more about the subject and rationalizes staying with Edward. She even explains away the dream, saying that the "dark Edward" of her dream wasn't a bad person, and that she only screamed "no" because she was afraid that Jacob would hurt him. Meyer really overuses italics in this paragraph as well. She decides that she is powerless, that she has no choice and there is nothing she can do. Never mind that she herself had already pointed out the option of staying away from Edward and simply rejected it out of hand. Dismissing a choice because it displeases you doesn't negate the fact that the choice was there to begin with.

She goes back home and starts working on a school paper for Macbeth. She makes an interesting mention of how making choices is painful for her and how ridiculously easy the end result would be for her to live with. Really, the choice had been being independent or being dependant on Edward. She chose dependency. We get some more mundane details about how Charlie came home with fish he'd caught and now she wants to learn some fish recipes.

She goes to sleep, and the sun is shining the next day. Charlie made breakfast. He smiles at her, which prompt Bella to make a rather strange observation.

When Charlie smiled, it was easier to see why he and my mother had jumped too quickly into an early marriage. Most of the young romantic he'd been in those days had faded before I'd known him, as the curly brown hair--the same color, if not the same texture, as mine--had dwindled, slowly revealing more and more of the shiny skin on his forehead.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but did Bella just make a comparison between Charlie's capacity for romance and his receding hairline? I hope she was just making a poetic comparison and was not being serious. Again, I find myself interested to learn more about Charlie and Renee as people, and how their relationship ended up affecting Bella.

Bella goes to school and is, for once, happy. I'm glad she's happy, because it means I'll have to put up with less whining.

My homework was done--the product of a slow social life--but there were a few Trig problems I wasn't sure I had right. I took out my book industriously ...

So ... getting your homework done can only be because of a slow social life? Is it somehow impossible to have friends and do your homework? One of Bella's homework assignments must have been English, because I see that Meyer has been dipping into the thesaurus yet again. Industriously? That is just the wrong word for this sentence. Would it have been so hard to just say "I took out my book" without the unnecessary modifier? (+1 Thesaurus Rape)

Bella can't concentrate on double-checking her math, though, and ends up drawing five pairs of Edward's eyes on her homework.

That is not creepy at all. (+1 Eye Sex )

It's like Meyer's thinking "if I show how utterly obsessed they are, everyone will know how perfect their twu wuv is!" All I'm wondering is when the men in the white suits will come to take Bella to a comfy, padded cell.

Mike greets Bella, and she is in too good of a mood to bitch about him. In fact, she even feels gratified when he smiles at her and she notices how delighted he is to see her. She almost seems like a real friend, now doesn't she? Mike gets a bit touchy-feely with her hair, which makes Bella reasonably uncomfortable. They talk about the due essay, which shocks Mike when he realizes his isn't done and its due a day earlier than he thought. he asks Bella what she wrote about.

"Whether Shakespeare's treatment of the female characters is misogynistic."
He stared at me like I'd just spoken in pig Latin.

This comes off as Meyer attempting to make it look like everyone else, besides Bella, is an idiot. Also, I just love how Bella can write an essay on that subject and completely miss how Edward's treatment of her may fall into that same category. (+1 Stupidity)

Mike asks Bella out on a date, which is enough to irritate her. She gets out of it by blatantly telling Mike that Jessica is interested in him. It turns out that Mike had been so moonstruck over Bella that he hadn't even noticed the signals Jessica had been sending. Her asking him to the dance and crowding him during their trip to La Push might have given the guy a clue.

Next she meets Jessica. It turns out that her, Angela, and Lauren are going to Port Angeles to go dress shopping for the dance. Jessica invites her to come along. She tells them maybe, deciding to ask Charlie first.

She's going to ask the guy she didn't want to ask about going to Seattle.

She's going to ask the guy she didn't tell about Edward.

She's going to ask the guy whom she generally doesn't want to ask permission from because it, in her words, "sets a bad precedent." Why do I somehow think that she is not being sincere?

They go to lunch, and Bella is excited to see the Cullens at their table. As we learned from last chapter, the sun only shines in Forks when it is convenient for the plot, and now we see what that convenience is. The Cullens are not at school today, and this makes Bella a saaad panda.

Desolation hit me with crippling strength.
I shambled along behind Jessica, not bothering to pretend to listen anymore.

Gee, I wonder why Lauren could possibly be upset about Bella's obsession with the Cullens. (+1 Wangst)

I get it, Bella is sad. Why must Meyer always choose the most melodramatic words she can find to describe her self-insert's mood swings? (+1 Thesaurus Rape)

They sit at their table, and Mike shows the first sign of reciprocating Jessica's feelings by holding out her chair for her. I really hope this sticks, because Mike is a nice guy and doesn't deserve to be hurt by Bella Megabitch.

Bella is, to quote her, "spiraling downward into misery" as Angela asks her some questions about the Macbeth paper. She also invites Bella to go shopping, and this time she agrees. So much for asking Charlie, huh?

I realized I'd been holding on to a last shred of hope when I entered Biology, saw his empty seat, and felt a new wave of disappointment.

Why is Bella so surprised that Edward isn't there? This isn't the first time that he ditched school, after all. Also, Bella is such a stupid bitch that she fails to put two and two together, remember the research she just did, realize that it's a sunny day, and deduce that they might actually be vampires. Sorry, that would require some actual thought on Bella's part, wouldn't it? (+1 Stupidity)

The rest of the day passed slowly, dismally. In Gym, we had a lecture on the rules of badminton, the next torture they had lined up for me.

Why would they need a lecture on how to play badminton? It's a fairly simple game. A few practice runs is all they really need to pick it up. Also, you'd think she'd like that sport. It's fairly low impact and requires only two people to play rather than a whole team. In school I loved badminton because it wasn't as demanding as basketball. If you can drive a car, you have sufficient hand-eye coordination to play badminton, so Bella-sue's clumsiness is no excuse. Heaven forbid she may have to INTERACT with some of her classmates in any way.

Has Meyer ever even played that game?

Never mind that the day after they would arm me with a racket before unleashing me on the rest of the class.

A melodramatic choice of words does not convince me that Bella is clumsy. Also, she would be "unleashed" on only one other classmate, with the span of the court separating them. There may be a few other people playing depending on the size of the gym. Most of the time she'd simply be sitting around waiting her turn. You'd think she'd like that.

I was glad to leave campus, so I would be free to pout and mope before I went out with Jessica and company

Get a hobby, Bella. Get a god damn hobby! (+1 Wangst)

Does this girl have nothing in her life except Sparkledouche? A normal girl would have been disappointed if someone she had a crush on weren't there, but she'd quickly get over it because there are other things in her life as well. Also, she'd have the sense to know that there's always tomorrow. To look at Bella you'd think it were the End Days. Life comes to a crashing halt if Edward is not at lunch. Her life is over if Edward doesn't show up for Biology. This is NOT HEALTHY! Bella is in desperate need of therapy. She needs to learn that there is more to life than just one boy.

Jessica reschedules their shopping trip to the next day because Mike asked her out on a date. I'm happy he, at least is moving on. Bella is a self-absorbed bitch who is not worthy of breathing the same air as Mike. She marinates some fish, which is funny considering she'd said earlier that she needed to buy a book of fish recipes.

She answers some e-mails from her mother and gets bitchy about that too. Never mind that it's her fault if her mother e-mails her because Bella couldn't be bothered to spend a few minutes out of her day to write to her.

In another shallow attempt to make Bella look intelligent, Meyer has her self-insert read a Jane Austen book. She doesn't get too far, because it reminds her too much of Edward. Now Bella just lies down, with an excruciatingly long paragraph describing just how she decides to lie down. Why are we spending so much time describing Bella lying down?

The bitch falls asleep and wakes up to the sound of Charlie returning home. She also has a sense that someone is watching her. That would be Edward stalking you, dear. She goes inside and tells her fath--I forgot, Charlie, that dinner will be late. He tells her not to worry about it. After all, Charlie never asked Bella to cook for him and he's not a baby. The guy can take care of himself, and has been for most of Bella's life.

After dinner they watch TV, and Bella notes that Charlie seems happy to be spending time with her.

He seemed to be happy, though, to be doing something together. And it felt good, despite my depression, to make him happy.

Depression? Jesus, this girl needs to get a life! The guy didn't show up for school for one day and she's depressed? This is beyond ridiculous. The bitch needs professional help. Why do people find this romantic? So far this book seems to be preaching complete and utter dependence on a man. Nothing matters, so long as you have your man. Your life, your dreams, your ambition, can only be to have a man. If you're not with your man for even one day you should feel like scum.

This is the kind of messages that people are claiming to be romantic? IT ISN'T! It is delusional, unhealthy, and a sign of a mental disorder. Reading this book makes me wonder sometimes if I'm the only sane person on Earth who sees this for the garbage that it is. Thank goodness I have the internet, so confirmation that there are other people with actual literary taste really do exist is just a mouse click away

Now here a very interesting exchange happens.

Bella asks Charlie if he can go with Jessica to buy dresses (yeah, I'm shocked too!). Charlie questions the logic of Bella going dress shopping for a dance she's not attending, and Bella bitches about that.

... Really?

She claims it's because Charlie is a guy and doesn't understand "girlie stuff." All guys should now be insulted. Just because you have a penis doesn't mean you can't understand the concept of helping other people pick out clothes. This book, it seems, is sexist towards men as well as women. Maybe Meyer simply led a sheltered life or something, I don't know, but I somehow get the impression that she doesn't know that much about the world. Rather, the world of people. Immediately afterward, the two have this exchange.

"We'll leave right after school, so we can get back early. You'll be okay for dinner, right?"
"Bells, I fed myself for seventeen years before you got here," he reminded me.
"I don't know how you survived," I muttered, then added more clearly, "I'll leave some things for cold-cut sandwiches in the fridge, okay? Right on top."

Yeah, because the guy who's been taking care of himself, earning his own money, paying his own bills, and feeding himself since Bella was in diapers is suddenly lost without Bella there to feed him as if he were a child. It's funny how Meyer insists on enforcing these narrow gender roles, even when it makes no sense. It's also funny how Bella is so oblivious that she completely fails to realize that he is right. I considered giving this a stupidity mark, but I think Bella's condescending attitude makes her more bitchy than stupid. (+1 Bitch)

This is yet another sign of Bella's dependant behavior. It may be that she's so used to taking care of her mother that she doesn't know what to do with a responsible, self-reliant adult like Charlie. I also resent how Bella insists on treating the man like he's some helpless kid, even though SHE is the one living under HIS roof rent-free, with Charlie handling all of the expenses. Give the guy some credit! He's not going to starve just because Bella is gone for a day.

It's sunny the next day, so we all know that the Cullens are not going to be there. Bella, stupid bitch that she is, still fails to make the sunlight/vampire connection and hopes that they'll be there. Of course they're not, and this makes Bella a saaad panda. She is a touch less melodramatic about it than before (at least the word "desolation" isn't used), but still more than enough to get on my nerves.

Jessica follows Bella home so they only have to use one vehicle to go on their trip. She leaves a note to Charlie explaining where dinner is, because the man who has been feeding himself for 17 years is suddenly so incompetent that he can neither remember Bella telling him where the food would be, nor understand the proper usage of a refrigerator. I wonder if Bella did this on purpose, because she's in denial that Charlie can be just fine without her.

Finally they go off the Port Angeles, and here the chapter ends.

Reading this book is slow, painful torture. I am fairly convinced that reading passages of these books to POWs would be an effective form of interrogation. They'd be begging for the pain to stop long before we get to this point in the story. Again, WHY are these books so popular? I simply cannot wrap my mind around that. I'm reading it, I'm paying attention, and I cannot find anything redeeming about this crap. When Bella isn't being a bitch she's acting like a moron. When she isn't being a moron she's fantasizing about Edward. I would have been a lot more sympathetic towards the "romance" (and I use the word very loosely) aspect of the book if there were any actual character development.

This book sucks. It's dull, packed with filler, unnecessary adjectives, moves at a glacial pace, and has no plot to speak of. I only use the word "plot" in these summaries out of convenience, because it's certainly not in reference to any significant events in this book. Meyer didn't do research, and what few facts she gives she gets wrong. The only thing this book has, in spades, is a lot of flowery-overwrought descriptions of Edward's perfection, one of the most whiny and bitchy female leads I've ever seen, AND ONE CRIMINALLY ABUSED THESAURUS!

I need a drink.

Final Tally:

+7 Stupidity
+3 Wangst
+3 Bitch
+2 Thesaurus Rape
+1 Eye Sex