Rebecca Ballhaus is one of the smartest, wittiest, prettiest, and-or so I'd always thought-one of the most perceptive seventeen-year-old girls you could find on the planet. The daughter of my good friends Pam and Florian, Rebecca is a senior at The Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn, New York, and on her way to Brown next year.

She's nobody's fool.

And, as I discovered, she's one of those young women who adored the TWILIGHT book franchise as created by Stephanie Meyer.

As a "treat" to myself I decided to read TWILIGHT during my recovery from the operation. My expectations were high. Rebecca wasn't the only one to be a fan of Meyer's work: the books fly off the shelves (no bat wings necessary), some of my best undergraduate and even graduate students at UConn (smart babes all) are also wildly enthusiastic readers of these books, and the movie adaptation did incredibly well at the box office.

Besides, I love vampires (witness the fact that I teach Bram Stoker whenever possible, am devoted to HBO's TRUE BLOOD, and once wrote a play titled "Dracula's Wives" which-any Jung fans here?-was produced in Brooklyn about three blocks from where Rebecca goes to school) and of course I am a cheap date for all thoroughly readable books.