My daughter began devouring, and then re-devouring, the Twilight novels back when she was 12. Stephenie Meyer had yet to finish the series and, at that point, the only people who had heard of the books were a million obsessive fans, plus a nation’s worth of grateful bookstore owners. (Entertainment Weekly actually began covering the Twilight phenom so early because my daughter’s enthusiasm suggested there was a big audience out there that the national media was ignoring. By the way, she thinks the movies are lame, so please don’t blame her for EW’s admittedly thorough coverage.) Anyway, my daughter — I’ll refer to her here as Llama, because she thinks llamas are hilarious for some reason — waited for each successive Twilight book in the same ecstatic agony that Bella waited for Edward. Like the Harry Potter books, Meyer’s novels became comfort objects as much as anything else: There was always one in her possession.
Because Meyer loves Wuthering Heights, she made it Bella’s favorite book. My daughter, Llama, tried reading Emily Brontë’s novel when she was 13 or so, but couldn’t get into it. (Judging from Charlotte Brontë’s preface to her sister’s novel, Charlotte Brontë couldn’t even get into it.) For Christmas, I bought Llama one of the cool new editions of Wuthering Heights specifically marketed to the Twilight generation. I went for the cool, sort of Edward Gorey-ish cover, not the one with just the hokey red rose. Long story sped up: She loves it and has already decoded all Stephenie Meyer’s allusions and literary debts to Bronte. Wuthering Heights, in all its weird, gothic glory, has always been my favorite of the “great books,” and seeing Llama insist on carrying a copy around is something I can’t thank Meyer enough for. In reading, as in addiction, there are gateway drugs, and Meyer’s Edward Cullen has introduced my daughter to Heathcliffe.
Any of this ring any bells for you? What are the books you love to see your friends, or kids, fall in love with? Has one novel ever sent you on a mission to devour another?
Nightlight — the Harvard Lampoon’s first novel parody in since 1969′s Bored of the Rings — features the “pallid” Belle Goose, who falls for Edwart Mullen on the first day of school in her new hometown, Switchblade: “Looking into his eyes I felt waves of electricity, currents of electrons charging towards me … Caught in his ionized hypnosis, the old adage came to mind: Beautiful enough to kill, gut, stuff, and frame above your fireplace.
For the first time in 40 years, The Harvard Lampoon will publish a parody novel, this time putting a tongue-in-cheek spin on Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling Twilight series. Random House’s Vintage Books plans to release Nightlight as a paperback original on Nov. 3, just in time for the Nov. 20 opening of the Twilight movie sequel New Moon. “‘Funny’ might get you a blog post these days, but it’s the Lampoon-level of satire that makes Nightlight worth every pseudo-bloodsucking, angst-ridden page,” says a Vintage press release. “Nightlight stakes at the heart of what makes Twilight tick…or, really, cuts to the core of it…. Brooding and hilarious, let Nightlight be your guide through the Twilight fandom that has eclipsed the mind of every teenager you have ever met.” The last Harvard Lampoon satirical novel, a J.R.R. Tolkien send-up titled Bored of the Rings, was published in 1969.
![twilight-manga_l[1]](http://ewshelflife.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/twilight-manga_l11.jpg?w=580&h=230 "twilight-manga_l[1]")
For those of you who can’t get enough Edward and Bella, EW can announce — exclusively — that Yen Press will be publishing Twilight in graphic-novel form, publication date still to be determined. Though Korean artist Young Kim is creating the art, Meyer herself is deeply immersed in the project, reviewing every panel.![sea-monsters_l[1]](http://ewshelflife.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/sea-monsters_l1.jpg?w=210&h=320 "sea-monsters_l[1]")
At midnight, the folks at Quirk — who brought you the best-selling Jane Austen mashup Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — announced that they’re back with the next book in the series, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, which goes on sale Sept. 15 (complete with 15 illustrations — we’ve brought you two of them — and a readers’ discussion guide). Quirk editor Jason Rekulak, the creator of the series (“I just thought it would be really funny to desecrate a classic work of literature”) recently said that he didn’t want to go out there “with the one-millionth vampire novel that’s going to be published this year.” P&P&Z’s Seth Grahame Smith did not write this sequel, since he recently left the franchise and signed a hefty contract with Grand Central for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I talked to the series’ new author, Ben H. Winters, last week.
