Obsessed.

I have something of an obsessive personality. I latch onto things easily and with an iron grip. Until, inevitably, I tire of them and move on.

As previously mentioned, I was the crazy cat girl. Proof scenario one.

Proof scenario two: Harry Potter. Those of you that actually know me in real life know the gravity of those words. Those of you who don't, well, you'll just have to take my word for it. As some convincing evidence, here's a picture of me and a friend at the midnight release of book 7:



Dressed in HP shirts, with Gryffindor-colored scarves (conveniently also my college colors) (though the scarf on the right can't even masquerade as college-wear, because it has a tag that says Harry Potter. I bought it in York, for five pounds.) (Yes, that means BOTH of the scarves are mine.), holding my lovingly hand-crafted wand and a framed polaroid of friend and I with a cardboard cutout of Harry (I still have that framed polaroid. It sits on my bookshelf, propped up against my HP books. I'm not ashamed.) I think I read book 7 in a day or two. I know when book 5 came out, it was around my birthday and my friend made me a "Harry Potter Survival Kit" that included bottled water, a book light (in case my electricity were to go out), chocolate frogs and acid pops and the frappuccinos that you can buy at the store (to keep me awake), a jump rope (in case I got too slothy and needed some exercise), some cheese-and-crackers (for sustenance, obviously), and probably some other things. It was awesome and well-thought-out, but I didn't end up needing any of it because I read the book in something like fifteen hours. Whatever. Next.

Proof scenario three: The internets. In general. I live on them, and have for years and years and years. There's no way to even explain the enormity of this obsession, this addiction, so I'll stop and move on before you think I'm entirely crazy (though maybe you wouldn't be wrong).

There are many, many more proof scenarios I could throw at you, but, again, I'll stop and move on before you think I'm entirely crazy (though maybe.. well, you know), and I'll jump ahead to my most recent obsession: the Twilight saga.

Oh, my friends, please don't judge. Young adult fiction has always been my preferred genre (remember Harry Potter, from a couple of paragraphs ago? Add to that author Tamora Pierce, trilogy His Dark Materials, and really, half the other books on my shelves.), and will probably remain so for a very long time. So Twilight comes out, and some people notice and read it. And then more people read it, and then more, and suddenly there's all this hype.

I like to try to resist hype.

I don't know why.

I didn't start reading HP until book 4 was almost out, because there was hype, and I didn't want to get suckered in. But then I caved and read it and immediately understood the hype. But apparently that wasn't enough to teach me, because I am still always resistant to hype. I can't help it, it's like a defective gene I've got, or maybe it's just because I'm friends with so many judgmental elitist snob types (love you!), and we are above hype. But no, not me. Take me out of that "we." I'm so below hype it's crushing me. What? Anyway.

The point, I think, is that I finally caved and read Twilight. Devoured it, even. And then, since it was a borrowed copy, within hours of finishing it, I went to the store and bought all four books. And then I read them, within six days. It would have been fewer, but I was on a trip when I finished book 3, and I hadn't brought book 4 with me, so I had to quietly suffer through two Twlight-less days. I seriously considered buying book 4 at the airport and returning the other copy later. The only thing that stopped me was knowing I'd get zero sleep, and I had something like seven legs the next day.

Are you beginning to sense the scope of my obsession?

I'm looking forward to re-reading all the books, since I probably missed quite a bit, having read them so fast the first time around. I want to finish the other book I'm working on reading first, though (Three Dollars, by Elliot Perlman. It's a little beyond me at times, but some of the lines are just so.. so perfect. I'm enjoying it.) (I already finished the other book I was in the middle of when Twilight seized me, which was Christopher Moore's Fool, which I will no doubt discuss another day.). And I need my sister to finish the fourth book first, so that there's no chance she'll still be reading it when I, once again, so desperately need it.

I don't think the point of this post was "whoa that girl's crazy and you should probably stay away lest she get obsessed with YOU next," but I fear that's what you've gotten from it anyway.

Alas.

Maybe the point was, when there's hype, it's generally deserved, and I should stop stupidly trying to resist it.

Or maybe.. maybe there was no point.