The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

The Strain Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, 2009 The short of it: I really liked this book.  It's extremely fitting for this to be the final book in my vampire survey, because it is a modern mash-up/reinterpretation of the best bits of many of the books I've read earlier.  One of the quotes on the back even calls it “an unholy spawn of I Am Legend [and] Salem's Lot .”  It was scary and gross and awesome. And now, a story.  In September of 2009, Erin entered a contest, in which first prize was tickets to the Fellowship of the Ring live concert at Radio City Music Hall.  He didn't win that.  He did win second place, in which the prize was supposed to be a copy of the book The Music of the Lord of the Rings , a copy of The Hobbit audiobook, and a bookmark.  You can read the short piece that he won with here.   However, the Music... book got tied up in copyright problems, and as of this date has still not been released.  So inst...

Twilight Stephanie Meyer, 2005 Spoilers abound, but you probably expected that. About half-way through reading this book, I began to wish that I had read it when it came out.  Because if I hadn't basically known what was to come in the later books, I could have mustered both a little hope that the book would dig itself out of its hole, and more hate on where the book ends up.  As it is, my overall response is a relatively apathetic "Meh."  On the plus side it reads really fast, except for when supremely awkward turns of phrase threw me.  On the minus side, it was so lacking in substance as to be lighter than I like even for popcorn reading, maybe call it cotton candy prose. As of about half-way through, Twilight, while written in a simplistic style with very poor description, didn't completely suck.  Even with what I knew about the series, I could almost convince myself that the whole thing had a pretty smart unreliable narrator thing going on....

Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Book 1) Laurell K. Hamilton, 1993 I opened this book with a bit of trepidation, because even though I've read it before, I was a bit concerned how it would hold up. But you know what? I kinda love this stupid book. This series eventually winds its way into increasingly ridiculous, and what I like to call porn-tastic, situations, but this first one, while slapdash and odd, has some real charm. One big thing you have to be able to just go with to enjoy this book is the seemingly commonplace male strippers. The vampires seem to be easy to accept by comparison, according to various people I've spoken to. In re-reading it, I realized specifically why I like it. It's an unapologetic modern pulp novel. It's a first-person, flamboyantly described, sex and violence pulp novel. With paranormal stuff and a female protagonist. In my book, that spells super fun. I had gotten to see the sun rise as I drove home that morning. I hate sunris...

Interview with the Vampire Anne Rice, 1976 I come to this book from a weird position.  I've read plenty of stuff inspired by this series, ( Hello World of Darkness ,) but never anything actually from it before.  I don't think I was missing much.  As far as I know, Anne Rice is the source of the angsty vampire tradition.  This is definitely the first (and as far as I know only) book I'm going to read in this theme in which the protagonists are all vampires.