I am an English student which means I can blaze through a book like nobody's business. Therefore when it takes me three whole months to slog through a 'chick-lit' book, you know things are bad. That book is "Beautiful Darkness" by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. First I want to comment on the fact that this book has two authors and it is still the most boring book ever written. How did this happen? Did one of them say 'hey,how's this scene' and the other was all "yup! sufficiently boring!'. I would like to review the plot but, honestly, there's not much to review. Half of the time I was sleeping while reading this and the other half I was laughing hysterically. There is actually a character who controls people by sucking on a lollipop. Bwahaha. I think I am just going to leave that one alone. Otherwise, the plot is "Twilight" except even more boring and less sexy. The only difference is that the girl is the one with the super powers. However, even so, she still is the one who needs rescuing. Sigh. I mean, I consider myself a moderate feminist but between the 'legitimate rape' comments and the 'Bic for her' pens, it's been an agitating past few weeks. Like virtually ever other teen read spawned by the Twilight craze, Beautiful Darkness (oh gosh, the title) is full of bad messages for girl, namely, that girls are impressionable (the main character get's lead astray by a dark stranger), need to be rescued and that we can't control our sexuality. It's a scary time for women when men and women alike are trotting out such crazy ideas about women and brushing them off as 'no big deal'. Perhaps most offensive,for me, about a book like this is the fact that this is what people are writing for teenagers. When I was a teenager I read a lot of teen books (that were certainly better than this) but I also read Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare. I'm not bragging, I'm saying that teenagers are smart, and teenage girls are smart so it's a shame that this is passable literature for them. How can we expect teenage girls to grow up to be the feminists of the future when the books and entertainment geared towards them reminds them that they are always going to be need to be rescued and that they shouldn't trust their own instincts?
Wednesday, 5 September 2012
Beautiful Darkness Rant
I am an English student which means I can blaze through a book like nobody's business. Therefore when it takes me three whole months to slog through a 'chick-lit' book, you know things are bad. That book is "Beautiful Darkness" by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. First I want to comment on the fact that this book has two authors and it is still the most boring book ever written. How did this happen? Did one of them say 'hey,how's this scene' and the other was all "yup! sufficiently boring!'. I would like to review the plot but, honestly, there's not much to review. Half of the time I was sleeping while reading this and the other half I was laughing hysterically. There is actually a character who controls people by sucking on a lollipop. Bwahaha. I think I am just going to leave that one alone. Otherwise, the plot is "Twilight" except even more boring and less sexy. The only difference is that the girl is the one with the super powers. However, even so, she still is the one who needs rescuing. Sigh. I mean, I consider myself a moderate feminist but between the 'legitimate rape' comments and the 'Bic for her' pens, it's been an agitating past few weeks. Like virtually ever other teen read spawned by the Twilight craze, Beautiful Darkness (oh gosh, the title) is full of bad messages for girl, namely, that girls are impressionable (the main character get's lead astray by a dark stranger), need to be rescued and that we can't control our sexuality. It's a scary time for women when men and women alike are trotting out such crazy ideas about women and brushing them off as 'no big deal'. Perhaps most offensive,for me, about a book like this is the fact that this is what people are writing for teenagers. When I was a teenager I read a lot of teen books (that were certainly better than this) but I also read Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare. I'm not bragging, I'm saying that teenagers are smart, and teenage girls are smart so it's a shame that this is passable literature for them. How can we expect teenage girls to grow up to be the feminists of the future when the books and entertainment geared towards them reminds them that they are always going to be need to be rescued and that they shouldn't trust their own instincts?
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