15 September 2008

Vampire books, a not so secret guilty pleasure

Last weekend (no not the one that just happened), my sister was reading a romance novel, and was talking about how since she's in nursing school her brain can only handle fluff right now. I'm not in any school, but for some reason my brain can only handle fluff too. My favorite kind of fluff is the young adult novel, and we were reminiscing about some of our favorites. I love the Jessica Darling series, although there's something unsatisfying about the fact that it's a series, because the love story never manages to be tied up at the end. I'm hoping that with the fifth (and I believe final) book, I'll finally get to see the Happily Ever After that is a fluff requirement for me. Then we moved on to all of the young adult vampire/werewolf books I love. Two of my favorites:

Companions of the Night

Those are mindless vampire romance books that are written well enough that you're not totally ashamed to buy them and read them. In case you're interested. So you know what my sister got me for my birthday right? Oh cmon, can't you guess?
Yeah that's right, she got me Twilight, the first of the series of incredibly best-selling how is it possible that I've gone months and months and months and even years without any awareness whatsoever of these books? And I read it over the weekend, and I'm going to give it a review without any plot spoilage, ne'er you fear. First of all, it's a total page turner, and it's compelling, and in that sense it's good. But you should not be fooled: It's a silly book. I'm okay with that. And I do have one premise issue. I'm not going to give anything away, but I will say that the premise of the book is that these vampires don't prey on humans, only animals, because they're good like that. But they WANT to prey on humans, and the smell of blood drives them totally crazy. There are a couple of scenes in the book where the young heroine gets a paper cut or whatever and the vampire contingent sort of flips right the fuck out even though, honestly, they don't want to eat HER. The smell just drives them crazy. So I want to know: What about menstruating women? Wouldn't that make life in human society a little bit, well, difficult?
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8 comments:

  1. I've always had a thing for vampires. Especially Anne Rice. But. I'm totally obsessed with the whole Twilight series. Like completely fucked up kind of obsessed. I'm way too old for that kind of crap, but here I am. And I admit - it is 100% fluff. But I have the same fluff requirement - it must have a happy ending. I've read all 4 books (each in approx. 2 days, while working and dealing with 'home' stuff - I just didn't sleep much).

    I'm so obsessed that I've even read an interview with the author about how he handles her period. No shit. The obsession is that bad.

    Doesn't make it any easier on me that the MOVIE is coming out 11/21. And I've already taken the day off so I can go in the middle of the day while the teenagers are at school.

    The later books only get better (to me, anyway).
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  2. Okay then Miss Know It All, how does he handle her period? Inquiring minds want to know.
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  3. My wife LOVES the Twilight series.

    If I could get her to do the dishes as quickly as she read those books, our dishes would be clean before they were dirty in the first place.
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  4. Ok - this is how the author explains it...she explains that she has her own version of vampires - she didn't read up on them before she started so this is probably unique to her vampire world. The menstrual blood is 'dead blood' and doesn't have the lure that 'live blood' has. Simple.

    I got Glamour Girl reading these - she's getting a sitter and going to the movie with me!
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  5. Oh my God, I totally read The Silver Kiss in like fifth grade or something. I remember I ordered it through a book order when we lived in Mexico. I never imagined anyone else read it. I guess I liked it well enough to remember having read it.
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  6. I'm really a boy so when I was a kid I read CYOA (if you don't know what that stands for, you SUCK!) and now I only read depressing books about death and plagues and what not. I wanna start a book exchange. You in?
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  7. OK, I had that same question about her period - that "dead blood" explanation works for me! LOL...I re-read the series every few months for 'fluff' sake. FYI the last book kind of blows - the next two are awesome though. Especially the second one...you know you wanna!

    Have you read City of Bones and City of Ashes? Kind of weird...but good as well. Young adult as well if I'm not mistaken.

    It's wrong to want to be accosted by a vampire on a dark street right? Sigh.
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  8. i loved all those books they were so great i couldnt put them down.....
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