Breaking Dawn - What Teenage Girls are Reading.

I wanted to send this article which shows what teenage girls are reading. The article sumarizes one of the bestsellers by describing it as a book with morality, but also with occultic creatures like vampires and werewolves.
If you want to know more of this teenage culture, read this article about Goths and Emos here http://www.verticalthought.org/issues/vt19/goths.htm
and definititely subscribe to this blog here!

True Love Waits
By DONNA FREITAS
August 8, 2008; Page W9
Last Friday at midnight, thousands of teenage girls lined up at bookstores all over the country to get a copy of "Breaking Dawn," the much anticipated fourth and last novel in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. In the months leading up to the midnight festivities, Ms. Meyer was dubbed the new J.K. Rowling by Time magazine and USA Today and made countless appearances to feed the frenzy among her adoring public. The book's publisher, Little, Brown, did a startling first print run of 3.2 million copies. A four-city "Breaking Dawn" concert tour starring Ms. Meyer and Justin Furstenfeld of the band Blue October -- whose music inspired some of Ms. Meyer's storytelling -- launched in New York on Friday at 7 p.m. (and was simulcast by Entertainment Weekly). And the first Twilight movie will come out in December.
Christopher Serra
But what exactly does Stephenie Meyer, a young, Mormon mother of three, offer that has girls everywhere swooning? And their moms, too?
For the uninitiated, the four Meyer novels -- "Twilight," "New Moon," "Eclipse" and now "Breaking Dawn" -- tell the story of a regular girl, Isabella Swan, who falls in love with a not-so- regular boy, Edward Cullen. Edward is a vampire. New to the perpetually rainy town of Forks, Wash., Bella immediately falls for the pale and shockingly beautiful Edward -- who does everything in his power to resist his attraction to Bella. Edward has long fed only on animals, not humans, but his thirst for Bella's blood is beyond intense. Neither, it turns out, can stay away from the other, and what follows is a page-turning saga, a portrait of adolescent desire and first love at its most powerful and tender.
Bella and Edward find themselves "unconditionally and irrevocably in love," as Ms. Meyer writes. Despite this, there are barely more than a few passionate kisses in the series' first 1,700-or-so pages, and almost no kissing at all in its first 500. Rather, Bella and Edward are satisfied by nearness. An innocent touch of the hand feels "as if an electric current had passed through us," Bella explains at one point. Saying her beloved's name, Edward, is "a thrill" in and of itself. Edward's breath on Bella's face is a heady, intoxicating experience, and Edward is knocked nearly senseless by Bella's smell, which he describes as floral, "like lavender . . . or freesia." They are restless unless they are together. But when together, they create more sparks than either knows how to handle.
Oh, and then there's Jacob, Bella's best friend, also supernaturally beautiful (he's a werewolf) and in love with Bella -- creating a triangle that has fans declaring allegiances to one or the other of Bella's suitors. (Though Edward clearly wins the day.)
MORE

• See a video of Stephenie Meyer discussing her new book 'Breaking Dawn.'
• Read Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg's Author Q&A with Ms. Meyer.
• Listen to Ms. Meyer read an excerpt from 'Breaking Dawn.'
And here lies Ms. Meyer's secret. She knows that romantic tension is often better built with anticipation than action. That there is enough excitement in gazes, conversation, proximity and maybe a few stolen kisses to keep young lovers busy for years -- if they allow themselves to indulge in this slow kind of seduction.
Ms. Meyer's fans agree. This vampire love story has captured more than their hearts -- it has them demanding that young men behave like gentlemen. And it also has them waxing poetic about what sounds a lot like abstinence.
At the New York "Breaking Dawn" concert event, amid girls alternately chanting "Ed-ward! Ed-ward!" and "Steph-en-ie!" and screaming with excitement, one girl, Jordana, explained why she thought the relationship between Bella and Edward was so compelling and sexy, even though they never go further than kissing. "They are so perfect together and so into talking to each other and just being together, you don't even notice they don't kiss." Her friend Sarah added that "they show that you can have a perfect relationship without being physical."
Another pair of girls, Donna and Meghan, said they loved "the forbidden passion" laced throughout the series. (And, indeed, many girls wore T-shirts that said: "The forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest." This may be a reference to the cover art of the first book, which shows two hands holding an apple.) "Bella and Edward connect in ways other than with sex. They connect spiritually," Donna explained. "They just look at each other and sparks fly."
"It's not all physical," Meghan chimed in, saying once again a line I heard over and over from girls I interviewed. "I mean, Edward has been alive since 1901," Meghan continued. They both then stopped to do the math. "That's over 100 years and he's been waiting for Bella the whole time! He's never been with anyone else. That's the most romantic thing ever."
Teenage girls were not the only ones with a strong presence at the Twilight Party. Mom-fans from the online group TwilightMoms.com were out in full force, wearing T-shirts boasting their allegiance and excitedly talking about why the series is good for their daughters. "Edward is everything every high-school boy isn't," one said with conviction. This mother of a teenage girl went on to explain how boys "are only interested in booty calls, not romance," while the rest of the TwilightMoms nodded their heads in agreement. "Twilight shows girls that you can have the most intimate, romantic relationship of your life without any sex."
Another mother nearby had a litany of reasons why the series was good for girls. "Twilight helps girls realize they don't need to settle for anything less than what they really want," she began. "It teaches them to keep high standards. That there are guys that will treat them with respect. Girls today need to learn this, and they can learn it from this series."
When asked about the fact that there were almost no boys present at the event, this group of women said that they knew boys who had started to read the series because they realized that "to get the girls, they need to figure out Edward."
As clergy and parents and even a few teachers struggle to make a case for abstinence among the young, it may seem strange and unexpected that Ms. Meyer has served up one of the most compelling and effective arguments for abstinence in mainstream American culture -- through a teen vampire romance. It may also be that she is trying to stay true to her faith's teachings on sex even within her fiction. Regardless, Ms. Meyer has somehow made not having sex seem like the sexiest decision two people can make and has conveyed this effectively to her teenage audience.
Some of her young fans are hoping for a sex scene in "Breaking Dawn," however. As one girl told me: "I'm looking forward to Bella and Edward getting married so they can have sex." What a novel idea.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121815501342422553.html?mod=taste_primary_hs