LIGHT BLOGGING

My father's been in the hospital with pancreatitis since Saturday so I haven't had time for blogging. In the meantime, here's a link to an interesting blogpost about a popular book series.

EXCERPT:

Stephenie Meyer has taken the book world by storm. The first two novels in her Twilight series – 2005's Twilight and last year's New Moon – have over 1.6 million copies in print. Her highly anticipated third novel, Eclipse, was released on August 7 with a 1 million copy first printing and first day sales of 150,000 copies. Though billed as young adult, Meyer's books are a hit with teens and adults alike, evoking the inevitable comparisons to J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter. But what is it that makes Meyer's books so successful? The answer may surprise you.
Revolving around the relationship between human Bella and her vampire love Edward, Meyer's books have many elements of a successful YA novel: passion, danger, romance, rebellion (not to mention vampires and werewolves). But, despite the company they keep on the shelves, the Twilight novels mark a departure from the typical YA novels that have helped the category to explode in recent years, stirring up quite a bit of controversy in their wake. And understandably so, as many YA novels have strong sexual content even though they are targeted to teens and are of course being read by even younger readers. The popular Gossip Girls books, for example, have been described as "sex-saturated" by New York Times columnist Naomi Wolf, and recent YA titles such as Doing It, The Anatomy of a Boyfriend, and Restless Virgins make it clear what kind of content the books contain. Their age ranges? Fourteen and up.
But the overwhelming success of Meyer's books shows that both teens and adults may be growing tired of the constant stream of sex being sent their way, as the Twilight books contain no sex scenes or explicit content. In fact, they have strong abstinence themes, as well as quite a bit of chivalry and romance, with a twist of morality. And, to their readers, that makes them extremely sexy.