No book series has ever confused me as much as Twilight has. I could compare it to Harry Potter, but it’s different. It’s a fantasy book series about vampires whose target audience is high school age girls. How does that even work? And the Twilight fan base is huge. And, it should be said, it’s almost entirely female.

Every fan I talk to tells me I NEED to read it. I kind of scoffed and assumed it was a girl book, until I recently saw several guys reading it. So I decided I needed to figure out what on earth the fuss was about. I asked one of my Twilight type friends to borrow her copy of the first book.

Never in my life have I witnessed such a reaction to a book I was carrying.

People consistently asked about it. Girls eyes lit up. ‘You read Twilight?!’ ‘No, I’m borrowing this…’ ‘You need to read it. It’s the best book ever.’ I had no less than three guys tell me that I was disqualified from manhood if I read it. I promised one of them I’d read Blood Meridian just to cancel out the apparent femininity caused by reading Twilight.

And I am going to read it. I’m already 30 pages in. Only 470 to go. So far it’s pretty poorly written, but there HAS to be a reason it’s so popular. Besides, I don’t need society’s permission to read a book. Maybe I’ll really like it. Maybe I’ll hate it. It seems so strange that a book has to be so divisive.

So wish me luck. I’m breaking social boundaries.