It is with a fond farewell I say adieu to Vampire Books, for a spell. I began my love/fear relationship with Vampires with the Lost Boys in High school. I was so terrified after watching that movie, I had my mom come sleep with me and yes I was in High school, but my room was all the way down in the basement (it was a completed basement complete with a food storage room, game room and bathroom, but still the basement when the next Living creature's room was on the second floor because Brian was working out of town.. I digress) Since then I've tried to find out all I could to defeat a vampire, if I ever came in contact with them. It's hard to know what's real and what is just folklore. So I always have Garlic or Garlic Salt around, I don't beleive in Holy water, But I'm pretty sure I could stake a vampire with a wooden spoon, if called on. It's important that once you stake the vampire, you sever it's head. Staking it will only make it weak for a spell. Once the head is severed you burn the remains and the vampire won't rise again. Last Thanksgiving (2007) I started reading Stephenie Myers books. I admit now that her book is less about vampires and more about a love story between two star crossed "teens" She took a lot of liberties with what a real vampire is like and what he/she does. I still like the work, but it's not really a tome about vampires. So then I read Nora Robert cirlce trilogy which starts with Morrigans Cross. Like all good Nora Roberts book there is an underlying love story. Every character gets paired up and she usually writes three books. This one starts out in medieval time with one brother being turned into a vampire. It ends in a fantasy world but she stays true to the vampire lore I beleive in. Also in the third book at one point it was so terrifying I had to skip to the end, I simply couldn't read it anymore and sleep!!! It all ends good and Nora Roberts was h appy with the books because she said her brothers were finally able to enjoy a book she wrote. I also read the House of Night series about a Vampire finishing school. IN this series you don't become a vampire by being drained of your blood and then drinking the blood of a vampire, it's simply a metabolic change that happens around puberty. You become Marked as a vampire and need to go to a finishing type boarding school at night. It was an easy very easy read and fun too. Then enter the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Series by Charlaine Harris. This is a hillarious acount of Vampires being able to be "out of the coffin." In the book,the Japanese have created a synthetic blood that has all the nutrients of human blood. While it was originally intended to replace donated blood for humans it turns out vampires can survive on it, so they literally came out of their coffins and let the world know they are real. Sookie is a small town Louisianna waitress who happens to be telepathic and comes into all kinds of misadventures because of her association with the vampires and other magical creatures. I read five or six of those. So I thought I was ready for the grandmother of them all, Anne Rice. I had Robert buy me the Vampire Chronicles for Christmas. I just read Interview with the Vampire and I'm still horrified. I simply can't read anything by Anne Rice. You get the feeling that she really did sit down with a vampire and find out all these things. It was so scary that I would be afraid while driving home from work thinking that my precious Honda Odyseey could be overcome by vampire or coven of vampires. So because of that I'm "closing the coffin," I think I'll go back to reading things less supernatural/evil and more uplifting. I chose an Amy Tan Novel, called Saving Fish from Drowning, of course though it involves a ghost but I'm sure it won't frighten me in the middle of the night.
I'll still maintain my knowledge of how to thwart a vampire.....just in case.
