Because the only thing hotter than sex with Edward Cullen is a horny, blind man with no hand-eye coordination wielding a frozen glass dildo.

While it was likely more than a year ago when I first heard of and picked up a book called Twilight, by Stephenie Meyers, it wasn't until the recent fervor of the upcoming movie that I bothered to think of reading the series. I noticed they seemed to cause strong feelings, especially about the protagonist's boyfriend, a vampire named Edward Cullen. Many seemed to think he warranted devoted love, if not outright panty-throwing. Others found the books worthy of shouts of outraged taste.

I didn't know why. I was innocent, then.

While I consider myself a woman of no uncertain bravery in literary matters, I think even I may have quavered in my resolve, had I known what I was about to face. I didn't, though, so with my usual brisk efficiency I decided to waste no valuable time reading the sort of novel that would be so beloved in popular culture, and would instead listen to the audiobooks instead. This worked until about five minutes into the first chapter, when the narrator Bella Swan -yes, that is her real name, I am not making it up- commented one too many times on clothing, and the miserable town of Forks to which she was moving, and how very self-sacrificial she was being in letting her mother have time with the new husband while Bella moved to small-town Washington to live with her reticent father. The reticence of Charlie Swan comes in very handy, to keep from forcing the author from writing any actual characterization of him or any other character but Bella.

Bella, and Edward Cullen. Beautiful Edward Cullen. Perfect Edward Cullen. Mysterious and aloof and downright rude Edward Cullen, who is the single real object of interest in Bella's life, and these are really the sort of repetitive adjectives used in the novel to the point where Oscar Wilde would feel the need to go on a murderous rampage. Then Bella finds out that his outright hostility isn't a reaction to her obnoxious self-absorption but a result of his violent desire to drink her blood and use her coccyx for an after-dinner mint.

Oh, yes, Edward Cullen is a vampire. A perfect, beautiful, god-like vampire who can come to school during the daytime because (1) he's been seventeen for eighty years, with all its accompanying issues, and (2) vampires in these books don't combust in daylight.

They sparkle.

Again, you read that correctly.

But everything is fine. Because, despite Bella's suicidal persistence in pursuing Edward even though he's announced his desperate desire to snarf her ass, the pair of them are Epic True Love, and proceed to sparkle all over the place. And then there is some plot forced in that allows Bella to pass out during the action like a Real Lady protecting her Most Precious Virtue, because having a bad vampire follow Bella around is obviously bad, but Edward's habitual stalking and sneaking into Bella's room is just fine.

Edward shows his love to Bella in many ways. He breaks into her room at night and watches her sleep. His Special Sparkly Vampire Powers lend themselves to mind reading, and he breathes (or doesn't) murderous threats against any male that thinks warm, fuzzy thoughts of Bella's pale skin. When Bella tries to snog him, he protects her maidenly virtue by throwing her to the ground and demanding she not undermine his self-control. In between such gentlemanly feats he reminds Bella how easily his Special Sparkly Vampire Strength could snap her skinny neck and how much he wants to eat her. The prospect is (understandably) so tempting that she keeps risking life and dignity to stay with him, and when, in the second book, he leaves her, she walks around in a fugue state and the book literally goes blank to emphasize that she is not a person without him.

Ladies, can you believe he was single for this long?! Over one hundred years of pure and spotless virginity on this one, plus the comforting constancy of seventeen-year-old male insecurities forever. There is a strong society of fangirls who gush over the florid descriptions of pasty-faced, golden-eyed, wild-haired Edward, resulting in flair decorations on that social networking Book Of Faces that says "Edward Cullen: Raising Standards for Future Boyfriends." I must admit to a certain degree of terror at the thought. If stalking, obsession, and hideous sexual issues are a step up from past boyfriends...

In a world full of young impressionable girls grasping their Twilight books to their undeveloped chests and thinking this is even halfway approaching acceptable and attractive behavior in young men and women, I must say I find it refreshing to spend time with those of higher literary standardswho also find such books an affront to good taste, among people who realize that a Lady of Quality has more choices than necrophilia, bestiality, and spinsterdom. These are not the outright claims of the books, but rather the options presented in the construction of the stories and characterization (pardon me, no, I didn't just cough up a hairball at that word there, why do you ask?) and they reflect a sensibility more fitting in a previous century than the current. One can almost imagine Stephenie Meyers and Samuel Richardson sitting down to tally up and compare how many times Bella and Pamela faint in self-defense.

The only problem with this scenario? Nobody told Meyers that they're not hiring for nineteenth-century morality authoresses anymore. Certainly not her editor, who may have been more occupied with whatever her real job is. I do have my doubts that job is actually editing, and often wonder if it is more based in the Waffle House hashbrown-flipping industries. And then I wake up clutching my clammy sheets in terror that one day, karma may catch up with me and deliver unto my manuscript a similar editor, and I promise the deities yet again any firstborn that comes my way yet, in the hopes that such a terrifying prospect might confuse them into leaving us all (vampire toddler) free.