Confessions of a Book Lover: Vampires

I have a confession. Again. Tomorrow night I'm going to go see the latest Twilight movie Eclipse. Now, before you start Team Edward and Team Jacob-ing and telling me how much you wish someone would love you like Edward loves Bella then, please, don't. No one (especially Mike) wants me to hop up on my soap box about how the Twilight vampires are more like fairies and how the series is like a how-to book on horribly unhealthy relationships. I can go on forever and bore you all to death, if I haven't already done so. However, I can appreciate the entertainment value of the Twilight series and I really think that with a good editor and no fourth book (a baby? seriously? seriously?), they could have been really good. But if you go back to my Good Trash post, I consider Twilight Bad Trash which isn't all bad in limited quantities. Kinda like McDonald's or, say, cheesecake.

So, all that to say, I like Twilight the way some of the guys I train with love horrible martial arts movies. It's like a train wreck--fascinating and terrible and you can't look away. From the movie or the fans.

BUT I've always loved vampire books. Long before the craze and long before all these books that I haven't read like the Vampire Diaries and all the other such books that are raging in popularity. Loving vampire books is why I gave in and read Twilight in the first place even though my literary snobbiness tried to prevent me. Anyway, my all-time favorite vampire book ever? Well:


The cover quote is Neil Gaiman for you Gaiman fans, "pretty much perfect." Seriously, it is. Every time I reread this book, it lands me right into Sunshine's alternative current times and when I get to the end and it's all over, I don't want it to be. People keep asking Robin McKinley to write a sequel (this might be her only adult book, she mostly writes for young adults so current fans be warned that this is not a book for kids/young teens). I don't want her to because I think the ending is just crazy perfect but I get why people want more. They just want to be immersed a little bit longer.

Next up is Carmilla:


Carmilla is interesting because it is a novella that predates Dracula by a quarter century. It's been a while since I read it but I remember it being creepy. Like, thrilling, read-with-the-side-lamp-on-during-a-thunderstorm creepy. If you like HP Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson, try this one out.

There are 2 or 3 other books I could go into but I guess I'll save those for another vampire post. Either next week or before the next movie, ha! Also, people who are going to see it or have seen the others, if you've never noticed it before, check out how much Bella blinks. It's like she has a tic based on how emotional she's supposed to be. Tamara and I like to blink at each other for fun. I'm sure everyone else thinks we're insane. And they are likely right.

In the meantime, have some Autumn helping her P'd fix the floors in the new house. Kali people, check out her island baby squat. haha.


And her book of choice this week is:
Only in Dreams