Countdown to Twilight

"Twilight" opens Friday night and I'm pretty excited about it.

I got into the series purely by accident.

The ladies in our front office are huge fans and have all read, or are reading, the four books. One of them even went to Seattle to meet Stephenie Meyer and to have "Braking Dawn" signed a few weeks ago.

Because women can't spend any amount of time together without talking, and since each one of them have read the books, the spent a good amount of time talking about the books and the upcoming movie.

I saw a preview for the movie sometime last week and realized, "oh.... that's what everyone's been talking about..., perhaps I should see it too."

I'm not sure why I made this decision, it is totally uncharacteristic of my reading and movie watching habits.

I read mostly true-crime novels or stories like John Grisham writes that could be true. I've never been a fan of sci-fi or anything like that. I guess I'm not big on make-believe.

I haven't read, or seen, any of the book series that have become major motion pictures, such as the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy or the Harry Potter series. I trend to stay away from mainstream movie series for some reason, I haven't seen any of the Star Wars, James Bond or Indiana Jones movies either.

However, when I mentioned to the ladies up front I was interested in seeing the movie, they were more than willing to let me tag along on their late night movie-viewing plans.

They were also just as eager to let me read the series. I had the first book in my hands the next morning and when I revealed the next day I was halfway though it, I had books two and three in my hands that afternoon.

I wanted to finish the first book before I saw the movie because if I see a movie before I read the book, it ruins the book for me. When I read, I like to imagine the story being played out in my head with the way I imagine the characters and setting look based off of the author's description. If I see a movie first, the images in my head aren't mine but those of the film director's and that ruins it for me.

I like to read a lot but it's not something I've done a lot of lately as I've been working on my master's degree and the moment I start a book, I put everything off until I'm finished with it. All my free time is spent reading and I normally stay up early into the morning reading.

"Twilight" was no exception, especially driven by my goal to finish it before the movie premier Friday night. I started the book late Thursday night and had it finished even later Saturday night, at which point I started immediately into the sequel "New Moon." I spent most of yesterday reading the book and will most likely finish the last eight pages tonight.

Because I have a ten-page research paper, a five-page project and another three-page paper due by Saturday, I think I'm going to take a break after I finish this book and complete my homework until I start book three.

It seems everybody I've talked to since Thursday has read the series or is in the middle of reading one of the books.

As I laid in bed reading Friday night, I started to think reading was a lame way to be spending a Friday night so I texted one of my best friends in town to see what he was up to.

He told me he was laying in bed reading, when I asked what he was reading, he said book four of the series. I'm on the first one I replied.

I would recommend the series to just about anyone. The books were written by a BYU alumni, so they are pretty family-friendly, despite being about vampires.

The first two hundred pages of book one are pretty slow, but after that it picks up really quick and the story moves pretty fast. The second book moves even faster and I hope the same is true of the third and fourth ones, though I won't know for sure until I read them.

The books are extremely readable thanks to the larger-style print and the author's writing abilities that makes them easy to read and to keep turning the pages.