08 November 2009

Sunday Salon: Do Boys Read Twilight?

From Average Girl Reads

My 11-year-old son DJ started reading Twilight last week. In a way, I wasn't surprised that he picked it up. The book has been in and out of our house as each of his three older sisters made attempts to read it (C1 was the only one who found it captivating enough to finish and move on to the next book in the series). I was still a little worried when I saw him getting so engrossed in it, though. I wondered if other boys would pick at him for reading a "girly" book. After all, the jokes about the series always center around "sparkly vampires". To me, that sounds like the type of book that could get a kid beat up.

Turns out I needn't have worried. I decided to put my fears to rest and casually ask my kids if boys at their schools are reading Twilight. The consensus is that boys from 7th grade on up through high school think that the books and the movies are solid chick territory, but 6th-grade boys just view it as a painless way to rack up AR points. Even though it is rated as being on a 4th-grade reading level, the book is worth 18 points. An easy-to-read book with that many points is like the Holy Grail :-).

TBR List: I feel like I am treading water. Even though I finished three books last week, my list is still only down to 108 titles. That's only one title less than last week. Three books in a week is pretty good for me, so seeing the list barely budge is disappointing. However, I am reminding myself that part of my goal was to at least refresh the titles on the list if I couldn't reduce the number of titles. Also, I have several titles that are a continuation of the three series I'm reading. If I blaze through those, I should be able to make a dent in the list.

3 comments:

Alyce said...

That is so funny! I haven't read Twilight, so I can't give my opinion on it, but I would be surprised to find guys that like it (at least from what I've heard). :) Glad there are no worries for you about your son though.

Lisa said...

108 seems like such a reasonable number! How many books can you have out at once?

Dani In NC said...

Lisa, I'm not sure that our library has a limit on how many books we can have checked out. My kids don't have their own library cards; I check out books for the whole family. Each week I may return 5 books and check out 10-15 new ones, so there are times when I end up with 20 books on my bedside table. My local librarian doesn't even bat an eye.