Twilight?

How many times have you read Twilight?                   

If you think young people don’t read any more, you are mistaking. They are actually reading so much that some of them are becoming addicted to it. See for yourself, go to google and type “How to be”. The first google suggestion that appears is “How to become a vampire”.  “What does that mean?” you are asking yourself. Google suggestion works this way - As you type, Google's algorithm predicts and displays search queries based on other users' search activities and the contents of web pages indexed by Google. Simply said, people were googleing it.

“But why would people want to know how to become vampires?” will be your next question. Have you heard of The Twilight Saga? I will be surprised if you have not. It is a book about a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire. It is not a brand new idea, yet it captures the attention of thousands of teenagers all around the world. Yes, it gets them to read, but not only. Girls of different ages, different countries and different religions become obsessed with the book up to a point in which they want to turn their boyfriends into vampires. You can google this one too!

In 2006, a year after the book came out I decided to read it, because all my friends were talking about it. It was a nice romantic story which I really liked, but I could not picture myself rereading it again and again as some of my friends did. My sister admitted she was obsessed with it:

“Teenagers all over the world are obsessed with it, including me. I have a lot of friends who are actually addicted to Twilight. They reread their favorite parts every day.”

The romance in the book is attractive to the girls and through reading they relive one different reality and secretly imagine that it is happening to them. Books have always been a way to escape from reality, but as every other habit if consumed in big doses they might have a reflection on the life of the person. Obsession to books is not something unfamiliar. De Cervantes knew about it 400 years ago. Remember Don Quixote? We see something similar today. Don Quixote in the famous novel was fighting the windmills and trying to find justice. Well, nowadays readers don’t set such big goals in front of them. Their only wish is to be vampires.