Alone on a Yacht, a Tycoon Discovered ... Twilight!

One lonely evening in a yacht in Turkey after a cancelled meeting, Tom Barrack, a no-nonsense businessman and one of the richest men in the world, came upon a book on which "were written the words that strike terror in the hearts of every macho, red-blooded male…TWILIGHT."

What happened next is probably the most insightful analysis of why Twilight captured the hearts of millions of girls (and their moms):

Alone, on a boat, with no wifi, no satellite, no magazines, no newspapers, just me and this book. This piece of chick lit, teeny bopper heartthrob stuff. Terror on the high seas! I wanted nothing to do with any of it. Not relevant, not interesting.

As I sat there with nothing to do the book kept taunting me. I began to think that there must be something I don’t understand. What could it be? What is it all about? Women don’t just read these books, they live them. They become each paragraph. I picked it up, but then immediately dropped it like a hot coal. What if someone saw me reading this? My macho reputation would be finished! I would be kicked out of the bench press section of the gym. My polo compadres would send me packing to the pony rides and my surfing buddies would exile me to the kiddie pool.

But it was a long night and there was absolutely nothing, and I mean NOTHING else to do. Long story short – not only did I read Twilight, I read the other two as well!! I was fascinated, captivated even. However, what intrigued me was not the same thing that hooked the millions of women whose lives and had been changed by this series, but something else entirely.

That "something else entirely" is the key to Twilight's popularity, which is no accident. Stephanie Meyer, the much maligned and pooh-poohed author, is actually a genius at her craft: Link - via metafilter