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Post by Fairweather on Apr 28, 2009 20:59:31 GMT -5
Okay, I like a good vampire story as well as the next person who loves the paranormal. I first read DRACULA at the age of ten, and I've read Stephen King's SALEM'S LOT, and the whole of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels so far.
This evening I began Elizabeth Kostova's THE HISTORIAN (2005), a somewhat different take on the Vlad Tepes/Dracula legends. Will have more to say as I get farther into the book. Prose dark and foreboding; story full of twists and turns, strange maps, disappearances, exotic locales.
Will say this: MUCH better writing than Dan Brown's thrillers. I found some critiques of Kostova's work online shrilly claiming she was trying to cash in on THE DA VINCI CODE's phenomenal success--but she had been working on the novel for ten years prior to its publication. Won't work.
She grew up in Knoxville, about 50 miles NE of my wee hometown. Interesting.
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thecrimsonarcher
New Member
"Don't tell me what I can't do." ~John Locke, Lost~
Posts: 5
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Post by thecrimsonarcher on Apr 29, 2009 8:10:23 GMT -5
Okay, I like a good vampire story as well as the next person who loves the paranormal. I first read DRACULA at the age of ten, and I've read Stephen King's SALEM'S LOT, and the whole of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels so far. This evening I began Elizabeth Kostova's THE HISTORIAN (2005), a somewhat different take on the Vlad Tepes/Dracula legends. Will have more to say as I get farther into the book. Prose dark and foreboding; story full of twists and turns, strange maps, disappearances, exotic locales. Will say this: MUCH better writing than Dan Brown's thrillers. I found some critiques of Kostova's work online shrilly claiming she was trying to cash in on THE DA VINCI CODE's phenomenal success--but she had been working on the novel for ten years prior to its publication. Won't work. She grew up in Knoxville, about 50 miles NE of my wee hometown. Interesting. I can't get into vamp books, but I'm going to admit: Salem's Lot is one of the greatest books King himself has ever written. He's never been able to top the over-the-top humor, a la the infamous schoolyard bully scene. Never. FYI: You didn't hear this from me, Aunt Katie, but everytime someone mentions Twilight, my soul dies. It's an absolutely atrocious book. I attempted to read it once, but couldn't even get past the awful writing(comprised of 4 word sentences) to enjoy it. Why must such bad works become so popular? |
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Post by Fairweather on Apr 29, 2009 15:00:32 GMT -5
Okay, I like a good vampire story as well as the next person who loves the paranormal. I first read DRACULA at the age of ten, and I've read Stephen King's SALEM'S LOT, and the whole of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels so far. This evening I began Elizabeth Kostova's THE HISTORIAN (2005), a somewhat different take on the Vlad Tepes/Dracula legends. Will have more to say as I get farther into the book. Prose dark and foreboding; story full of twists and turns, strange maps, disappearances, exotic locales. Will say this: MUCH better writing than Dan Brown's thrillers. I found some critiques of Kostova's work online shrilly claiming she was trying to cash in on THE DA VINCI CODE's phenomenal success--but she had been working on the novel for ten years prior to its publication. Won't work. She grew up in Knoxville, about 50 miles NE of my wee hometown. Interesting. I can't get into vamp books, but I'm going to admit: Salem's Lot is one of the greatest books King himself has ever written. He's never been able to top the over-the-top humor, a la the infamous schoolyard bully scene. Never. FYI: You didn't hear this from me, Aunt Katie, but everytime someone mentions Twilight, my soul dies. It's an absolutely atrocious book. I attempted to read it once, but couldn't even get past the awful writing(comprised of 4 word sentences) to enjoy it. Why must such bad works become so popular? You're not the only one, baby. Just ask Auntie what she thinks of the TWILIGHT saga. It ain't purty. And as for why they're so popular? Short sentences, maybe?  PS Agree about Stephen King. SALEM'S LOT, BAG OF BONES and FIRESTARTER are my faves. |
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Post by Fairweather on Apr 30, 2009 12:18:46 GMT -5
Update on THE HISTORIAN: the opening chapters are slow going; parts are stories told of a time twenty-odd years before the novel's present (it's set in 1972) with parts, mostly told in letter form, of other experiences, other characters, dating to the 1920s. Somewhat like the way Bram Stoker told his story in DRACULA, but the whole premise seems to be that the Prince, that Wallachian prince of such darkness that he still broods over the history of deviance like a shadow not even the Marquis de Sade can shift, is in fact still alive in undead form--unlike Stoker, who has him killed by his pursuers in 1893.
There are certain parallels with THE DA VINCI CODE--mostly murders and disappearances but lacking the chase scenes and the religious fanatics with whom Brown peopled his fictional tale. What strikes me is that the writing is so much better. THE DA VINCI CODE, despite its controversial premise, was nothing more than a mediocre thriller because, frankly, the writing was so bad; not the case with THE HISTORIAN. My major fault with the latter is simply that it moves at a fairly glacial pace in the early chapters.
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Post by puhlease on May 1, 2009 19:48:43 GMT -5
Okay, I like a good vampire story as well as the next person who loves the paranormal. I first read DRACULA at the age of ten, and I've read Stephen King's SALEM'S LOT, and the whole of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels so far. This evening I began Elizabeth Kostova's THE HISTORIAN (2005), a somewhat different take on the Vlad Tepes/Dracula legends. Will have more to say as I get farther into the book. Prose dark and foreboding; story full of twists and turns, strange maps, disappearances, exotic locales. Will say this: MUCH better writing than Dan Brown's thrillers. I found some critiques of Kostova's work online shrilly claiming she was trying to cash in on THE DA VINCI CODE's phenomenal success--but she had been working on the novel for ten years prior to its publication. Won't work. She grew up in Knoxville, about 50 miles NE of my wee hometown. Interesting. Not a fan of the genre. I used to read King until It scared the crap out of me. I even watched the miniseries and then never picked up a King book again. sheesh, I was already creeped out by clowns before that! I don't think I ever read Salem's Lot, though. I have to say, though, that I do like Dan Brown. I liked Angels and Demons, and Digital Fortess is good, too. I go through paperbacks or airplane books, beach books, whatever you want to call them, like most people go through oxygen. It seems like every other book published in the last few years is trying to cash in on The DaVinci Code. Some of them are good, some are "eh." Lots of things with "Templar" in the title. I read one of Anne Rice's vampire books and saw the movie, but vampires just really scare me. I LOVE her books on the "missing years" of Jesus, though. They are fantastic. |
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Post by Fairweather on May 7, 2009 16:09:53 GMT -5
Guess who's BBBBAAAACCCKKKKKK--
Yep, issues, for the moment, taken care of. And today at Wal-Mart picked up a copy of Charlaine Harris's newest Sookie Stackhouse novel, DEAD AND GONE. So far, as mentioned above, I've read the entire series, which began with DEAD UNTIL DARK and introduced Sookie, a telepathic barmaid from Bon Temps, Louisiana, and her vampire boyfriend, Bill Compton. The adventures get wilder with each book in the series, and this one looks like it will be no exception. According to the dust jacket, another bunch of "supes"--i.e. supernatural creatures--the shapeshifters,are "coming out" and announcing their existence to the world at large--one such being Sookie's boss Sam Merlotte. All seems to be going well until a dead werepanther (not all shifters are wolves) is found in the bar's parking lot. HEL-LO!! Lookin' for trouble? In Sookie's world, yep. Bigtime.
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Post by puhlease on May 10, 2009 19:42:16 GMT -5
You know, Fairweather....while I was browsing the bookstore the other day I decided that now is a good time for vampire books. It looks like anyone who has written one in the past 20 years and had it rejected only has to resubmit it to get it published now. If I ever do dive into this genre, I will have to trust your word on what is worth reading or not.
I stuck with the tried and true. I got a Vonnegut I didn't have and a new Joan Hess....not Maggody, but Claire Malloy and Farberville. I like both series, anyway.
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Post by Fairweather on May 13, 2009 21:00:52 GMT -5
Just finished the Charlaine Harris, DEAD AND GONE. In the previous book in the series, Sookie had just found out that her great-grandfather is a fairy prince, a man of the fae--and he is about to go to war with rivals in the fairy world, although he didn't tell her at the time. Now the war comes, beginning with a truly shocking murder. This book is much darker in tone that the others in the series, and way more violent. Does have a good--ahem--sex scene with Sookie and Eric, the Viking vampire to liven and leaven things up, but otherwise it's horrifying and sad, and several characters I've come to love in the series don't make it to the end of the book. However, good read.
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Post by Fairweather on May 21, 2009 14:22:39 GMT -5
Update on THE HISTORIAN: The action, in the middle of the book, is finally picking up a bit. We have no fewer than three missing persons, two stalking vampires, and a schoolgirl hunting Daddy in the mix now. (I'm just being snarky; it's a bit less cute than that parody would suggest.) The action shifts from continent to continent, and country to country quite easily, with flashbacks to 1950s Istanbul, Budapest, and France while the searchers try to track down the exact site of Dracula's tomb--in which, as we know from real-life excavations in the 1930s, he is not buried. . .
The writing is good, too. For a book that began at a leisurely storytelling pace, it picks up in the middle and violence, when it comes, is shocking but mercifully brief.
There is also a good deal of information about the old communist regimes in Eastern Europe and how they functioned (like leftwing Nazis, actually) and even more about the Muslim world against which Dracula, in life, fought.
More as I get closer to resolutions of all the mysteries.
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Post by Fairweather on May 22, 2009 15:36:49 GMT -5
A piece from the NY TIMES Book Review about Charlaine Harris, the author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels: www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/books/20sook.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bub2I didn't realize the series was nine years old, although, now that I think about it, it HAS been that many years, or close to it, since I bought the first two in the series, DEAD UNTIL DARK and LIVING DEAD IN DALLAS, in a now-defunct Bookland at the mall in Maryville. I should say here that what caught my eye more than anything, from those first books onward, was some wonderfully quirky cover art by Lisa Desimini. I wonder if Ms. Harris realizes that the cover art is too important to muck with; the most recent reprints of those early books feature not Desimini's work but standard romantic schlock. |
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Post by Fairweather on Jul 31, 2009 13:19:31 GMT -5
No joking, it really IS a good time to write about vampires. The following NY TIMES piece, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, the authors of the new vamp bestseller THE STRAIN, examines the phenomenon: www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/opinion/31deltoro.html?_r=1&th&emc=thI LOVE the ending of the article: *************************************************************************** In the vampire we find Eros and Thanatos fused together in archetypal embrace, spiraling through the ages, undying. Forever. *************************************************************************** I'm pretty sure Freud and Jung would approve. |
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Post by Harriet Vane on Aug 1, 2009 11:42:32 GMT -5
No joking, it really IS a good time to write about vampires. The following NY TIMES piece, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, the authors of the new vamp bestseller THE STRAIN, examines the phenomenon: www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/opinion/31deltoro.html?_r=1&th&emc=thI LOVE the ending of the article: *************************************************************************** In the vampire we find Eros and Thanatos fused together in archetypal embrace, spiraling through the ages, undying. Forever. *************************************************************************** I'm pretty sure Freud and Jung would approve. Not to mention Harriet Vane and Lord Peter, too, I'm sure, if you asked him. |
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