Hello, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and I'm here with a Slate's spoiler special podcast on Twilight, the new Teen Vampire movie.

Be warned that we will be spoiling as advertised in the title.

So if you haven't seen the movie, you haven't read the book, and you're dying to know what happens in Twilight, but don't want us to tell you, then tune in later.

I'm here with Julia Turner, Slate's deputy editor.

Hi, Julia.

Hi, Dana. So I'm actually

going to pitch the plot summary over to you because you, unlike me, have read, have you read all

the Twilight books or only the first one? No, there are four books, and I've read only the first

one, and I should admit here, I only read the first one because it was all I could stomach.

The books are compelling, but terribly, terribly. And you were interested just because it's a huge bestseller and you wanted to see what it was all about?

Yeah, I wanted to see what it was all about.

And I'm generally interested in young adult fantasy success.

I mean, I really liked the Philip Pullman books and I really liked the Harry Potter books.

I tend to like and read those books.

But I read this one and did not like it. So the plot of Twilight is that a

girl named Bella Swan, who is sort of clumsy and has no particular characteristics, moves to her

father's home in the small town of Forks, Washington, where she meets a clan of vampires, although they

merely appear to be very handsome, rich high school students at first and falls in love with one of them.

And then they moon around for a while, loving each other, but not me.

They moon around for about 600 pages, it looks like, from the size of the book.

Yeah, it's a very hefty book.

So they admire each other and fall in love protractedly.

...