Even Vampires Get the Blues

(Mom don’t read this review because the book is on its way to you)

Even Vampires Get the Blues by Katie MacAlister

So sue me, I know this isn’t exactly high fiction, but I absolutely refuse to apologize for my love of the paranormal. If I didn’t think it was cheating I would have written every Women’s History Month entry on the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries (Southern Vampires) which I read this month, and then where would you be? Besides, I like to think of it as having a varied interest in all genres.  Anyway, on with the show, since nobody comes here to listen to me assume you’re all judging me.

Even Vampires Get the Blues is set around the idea that Samantha, half-elf/half-human, has just begun her career as a Private Detective.  Meanwhile,  Paen (pronounced Pain), Scottish vampire extraordinaire, is wallowing in thinly disguised self pity since he doesn’t have a soul. It seems that in this vampire lore, in order to produce souled vampires the parents must have been “Joined” (mystically) before they pop out the little ones and sadly for Paen, they were not. So he’s a soulless vampire, forced to … well, be soulless. There isn’t a lot of description about what it’s like to be soulless until the last few chapters and so we just have to go with the idea that it’s bad and undesirable.  Luckily, there’s a way to get his soul back! He has to find the one woman who “completes” him a la Jerry Maguire. Termed in vampire lingo as his “Beloved.” After completing the 7 steps to Beloved-ness, Paen will get his soul and the girl gets immortality (assuming she isn’t already immortal).

After establishing all this, Paen is approached by a messenger demon calling on an ancient agreement between Paen’s father and the Head Honcho Demon to finally be fulfilled. What the Head Honcho Demon wants: a little monkey statue that was lost. What he gets if the agreement isn’t fulfilled: Paen’s mother’s soul.  Unfair, I know. Now unfortunately, Paen’s parents are trapped in some jungle on some kind of vague safari mission and completely unreachable, so to save his mother, Paen must locate the statue on his own. This is of course where Samantha (Sam) comes into play.

Now, there’s a lot to be said for this book. I’ve heard that usually this author is pretty good, and based on this book I’d be willing to give her one other shot… but only one.  The book is charming, upbeat and funny. I smiled or giggled a few times and there was one laugh-out-loud moment that for whatever reason is probably the funniest thing I’ve ever read in a book, but that might just be me. There’s nothing wrong with this book really.  I didn’t want my 2 hours back after reading it, but it’s kind of hectic.  There was constant movement, constant action, and while that’s not always bad, I didn’t really care about the characters enough to feel like I wanted to know if they were going to die in the next action sequence or not.

The book did several things badly.

First, as mentioned earlier, it gave you no idea why you should care if Paen had a soul or not. You got the idea that it was a negative occurrence, but not what he was going through. He was just a grumpy mildly emotionless vampire. Since half the plot was based on souls, it was kind of important to know upfront what it was like for him, not 60 pages from the end.

Second, they established the love story almost immediately. I don’t mean like “longing glances, oh i like him/her” immediately. But like full-on “hey, let’s do it” immediately. There was a vague plotline about Sam trying to prove to Paen that sex with love is better than sex without love. But it wasn’t actually truly established which one was better so the entire point of that plot line was wasted.  Everybody knows that you can’t establish the love story immediately because then there’s very little reason to keep reading when your book has “Romance” in the genre title.  I think MacAlister was trying to keep us interested by having a “will they stay together in the end or not?” ploy, but frankly, nobody overly cared. By the way, the whole book isn’t filled with sex scenes, regardless of that being a plot point. It’s like 70% plot and 20% sex and 10% almost sex, so completely readable. Oh, and is Sam Paen’s Beloved? You’ll never guess!

Third, like I said, so fast paced. The wording even was just chaotic. You never felt like there was time to slow down and understand the characters. The author was trying to be too funny, all the time.  Sometimes you just wanted Sam to shut up so you could enjoy some writing without dialogue.

And did I mention it’s kind of predictable. I’m bad at predicting novels because I don’t usually think much beyond a chapter ahead. I like being surprised so I just don’t wonder what’s going to happen. So if I guessed it less than halfway through the novel… I don’t know. That’s not a bad point necessarily, just a comment.

But all that aside, it’s a good beach book. Not like the kind of beach book you end up keeping and putting on your shelf when you get home because “wow, this was more than just a beach book,” but really just a beach book. The kind you leave in the library of the hotel or on a chair by the pool when you’re done.  I enjoyed it, I would recommend it if that’s your kind of thing and you’re just looking for a couple hours of fun, but it’s not on my Top 100 Supernatural books.

Carolyn Keene

Mystery Train: A Nancy Drew & Hardy Boys Super Mystery by Carolyn Keene

Okay, no Women’s History Month can be complete without a little talk about the world’s greatest girl detective: Nancy Drew.  There’s a lot to be said for and against Nancy Drew and as anybody who reads my blog knows, I have  a penchant towards The Hardy Boys, but you’ve got to love the daring young girl detective. Yes, she gets kidnapped in almost every book and somehow manages to get the bad guys to tell her all their secrets before escaping, and yes, she’s a little bossy and annoying, but she showed girls if they have a “can do” attitude they can do anything.

The Nancy Drew series actually started in mind of a man, but since it was genuinely written by women in the beginning, I figured it counted. Edward Stratemeyer was the man behind the curtain in this case. He was born in the 1860s and grew up to become the premier brainchild behind every book you’ve ever heard of. Not joking, we’re talking Tom Swift, the Bobbsey Twins, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, etc. etc.  He rose swiftly from a no account writer to the owner of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, an entry in Who’s Who in America, and the man behind over 100 series.  Now, he didn’t write all these, usually he hired people to write them for him. So, Nancy Drew was actually written by a woman, and the original woman was Mildred Wirt Benson (aka Carolyn Keene). Benson (pictured above) authored twenty-three of the Nancy Drew books before it was passed on to other women (who kept the name Carolyn Keene).  Benson wanted a character who wasn’t just your normal female, she wanted a role model– somebody daring, outgoing, and comfortable in a world of intrigue and drama, but still wholly female. By 1938, 8 years after its original release, Nancy Drew was selling double the amount of the Hardy Boys books.  Flash to today and you have a series that has been around for almost 80 years and is still going strong.

So, in honor of all the Carolyn Keene’s, I read Mystery Train which is actually a Hardy Boys & Nancy Drew mystery, but since it’s written by Carolyn Keene, it totally counts.  In this story, Nancy Drew is invited to ride a train from Chicago to San Francisco as it follows the journey of the infamous Comstock Diamond when it was stolen fifteen years before. The “best minds in the mystery field” are all invited to help solve the case for a grand prize of $25,000 as they ride … dum dum dum… The Mystery Train. Of course, as usual, things don’t go according to plan and it’s not just some fun group activity, there’s kidnap and sabotage onboard.

Frankly, you have to love a good Nancy Drew mystery. There’s murder and mayhem and with the introduction of the Hardy Boys you get to watch Nancy flirt with Frank even though they both have significant others. As usual, Nancy is pretty kick-butt and manages to save the day. She’s everything Benson wanted in her young heroine, not afraid to do anything and constantly getting into mischief, even to this day.  I don’t really think the story is the important part though in this case, I’ve read more Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books than I can count and they’re all pretty standard, it’s the idea that with the help of Nancy Drew, girls got to come into their own.  Benson managed to create a role model that’s lasted through the decades, the kind of girl that when you read about her you kind of wish you could be that cool.

Louisa May Alcott

I should have perhaps posted in the last week and a half to let people know that I was a complete sickie. I originally thought it was going for some form of walking pneumonia (thanks Mom) but it ended up just your ordinary cold which I so appreciated. But really, those first few days I was pretty convinced I was going to end up at a doctor which me and my insurance-less self avoid like the plague. And then this weekend, to further my offline plans, two of my really good friends from The College Years, came down to visit. So at least I had a fair excuse as to why I haven’t been posting in the last week and a half, especially when I was suppose to be doing this reading challenge. I’ve felt uber-guilty, so you can rest assured that I thought of you guys every day.

Oh! And you will never believe this week. We have had like 60+ degree days most of the week, or  really light clouds, or (wait for it) … snow. We had snow yesterday, it covered the pink cherry blossom trees in my front yard like grease on bacon.

My two friends from college

It was pretty special.  We heart our bipolar state.  Anyway, so the point is, aside from the snow, it was the best week to go flying, there were like 3 or 4 really gorgeous days and I was all stuffed up with fluid-filled ears. Anybody who has ever flown with stuffed up ears very well knows that you shouldn’t be up there, it’s like somebody is stabbing a giant stick into your eardrum, it’s that fun.  So I was relegated to hanging out on my patio with my papasan chair writing and reading, which admittedly isn’t a bad day way to spend a day, but I haven’t flown in weeks because of this crazy weather. Ah well, Spring has officially set in, so no doubt I can look forward to sun in the near future.

Also, and perhaps far more important for the time being, is that I’m like 23 days late for my Women’s History Month Challenge. I was suppose to be reading 5 books by women authors, and I did actually, but all were by Charlaine Harris and all were within the same series. So I was suppose to read 5 other books, and I haven’t gotten to 5 yet, but I did get a few in while being a sickie, so I will do one a day until I catch up. Again, I did feel really guilty about not updating but what was a girl to do. At least this week should provide some interesting reading. So without further ado…

The Inheritance by Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott, for those not up on their literary prowess, was the woman renown for writing Little Women. I don’t know if you read Little Women at any point, but when I was about 10 I came to Oregon for the first time since I was a baby and I was addicted to that book. I read it like 4 or 5 times in 3 weeks and tried to convince everybody I knew that we needed to sit in the garden and have tea parties and wear fancy dresses and read aloud from books and play yard games.  Kind of like when I read The Secret Garden and I went around asking people if I could have a “bit o’ earth.”

In any case, The Inheritance had been on my shelf for years, perhaps a gift from my grandma.  It’s this slim novel and actually its history is way more intriguing than the actual novel.  The Inheritance was written when Alcott was 17 years old and is thought to be her first novel. It’s also discussed in the book Little Women — Jo, one of the main characters, writes this book and sends it out, and The Inheritance is that book.  It was never published however until the 1990’s when it was rediscovered amongst her papers. The manuscript had been passed around from museum to museum and just kind of hung out waiting for the right person to find it. It seemed that over the hundred+ years it had been occasionally noticed, nobody ever felt the need to actually type it out and publish it. Very weird. But in 1997, it was noticed by the right people and published as Alcott’s “very first novel written at seventeen.”

To preface, The Inheritance is your basic Austen-type romance, a kind of young girl makes good. But we kind of have to let it go since Alcott hadn’t exactly explored the depths of her writing soul yet. It follows the story of Edith Avelon who is an Italian orphan living with a well-to-do British family.  She has been raised a companion to one of the daughters in the family and she of course is quiet, well behaved, and just wants to be loved, which is difficult when the evil cousin comes and just doesn’t like her. Enter Lord Percy- love interest and good man. He falls for Edith but unfortunately, the cousin falls for him. Edith is unsure what to do, after all, she’s just a lowly Italian orphan and Lord Percy is a Lord.  Then cue all the dramatic tension of Edith being accused of stealing from the family and the cousin mwahahahaing  and you have yourself a novel. I won’t tell you how it ends up, but you can guess.

The novel is simple and sweet and vastly different from any of Alcott’s other novels. Like I said, it resembles something closer to Austen but without the depth of character usually found in her books. Did I enjoy it? Yeah. Did I care what happened to Edith? Not so much. But Alcott was 17, and going through an idealistic phase and it was totally worth a read if you’re interested at all in how she got her start towards literary greatness.  What I liked especially about it is how different it actually is from Little Women and subsequent books. She obviously could write, but her ability to define characters and make you care for them, and to describe a story plot hadn’t yet come into focus.  It’s worth a read just to remind your inside writer that even The Greats started out kind of small.

There is also this killer made-for-tv movie based on it that makes me laugh a lot.  I’d recommend it.

So that is my first foray into the Challenge.  Louisa May Alcott, I thought, was a pretty good choice for Women’s History Month. She came from extremely humble beginnings filled with poverty and had to work her butt off before being accepted into the writing world. She also was an avid abolitionist and feminist, so she’s worth a nod or two.  I am still reading The Historian but do intend to have it finished before the last of the month so the review tomorrow won’t be on that. You’ll just have to tune in tomorrow to see what other great books I managed to squeeze in during the last couple weeks.

Okay Creepy Guy Standing At My Door

For some reason people have this tendency to come to my door to ask questions better suited to be answered by a landlord, like about decorations on the property or if there is a room for rent. I don’t know why anybody in their right mind would come to my door and if you saw this place you would totally understand why. My apartment looks like a shed, it’s hidden behind some bushes and is almost unnoticeable from the sidewalk and there is a giant obviously primary residence house next door. Let’s recap: my place = tiny purple shed, landlord’s place= giant purple house.  I don’t know, I’d go to the house before going to the shed, but maybe that’s just me.  This comes up because I just had a guy scaring the pants off me by standing at my screen door in the dark asking me if there were any spaces to rent. There aren’t as far as I know since there are only like 3 rentable apartments on my landlord’s property, but I sent him to the main house anyway.

That small rant aside, I’d like to announce that I started The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova as the first book in the Women’s History Month Challenge. It  was suggested to me by Care (who I may want to stop mentioning every post as it looks a tad creepy) and had been sitting on my shelf for quite a while since my dad gave it to me. Actually, that’s only partway true because I began The Historian months ago, like back before I went flying in Michigan. I just never finished it, so my goal was to pick it up again and actually do so, because it really was a good book, I just got horrifyingly sidetracked.  I’m not actually going to review it until I’m done otherwise I feel a bit like I’m cheating, but it’s still as enjoyable as I remembered. I have about a quarter of it left before I can really say how impressed I am by the ridiculous amount of knowledge required to write a book like that but I will get around to it as promptly as I can.

In between chapters I’m continuing on in my quest to finish The Southern Vampire Mysteries (Charlaine Harris) that I picked up a week or two ago. I’m on Book 5 now out of 9 I think. I actually finished book 4 last night and began book 5 at like 2:30 in the morning, which is why  I tend to get up at noon.  They are really pretty fun though. I found all of them at WalMart so I didn’t have to wait for them to come to my local library.  It’s a shame that I can read one of those books in a few hours and The Historian, which is really quite excellent, takes me months.

This was a perfect day to read too because it was in the high 60s and sunny, but instead I spent most of my day writing which I always need to do, and also picking up my car from the shop because it was vibrating a lot– something about differential mounts. Hey, don’t ask me, when it comes to cars I’m your stereotypical girl.  It seems to be fixed now though which is always a plus.  But since it was sunny I pulled my papasan chair out on the porch and sat in it for hours. I think it may have given me a headache which is the only downside to porch-sitting. I’m lily white and apparently have some issues with el sol.  Hopefully the Ibuprofen I just took will clear that up. Oh! speaking of porches my plants are still out there. Must fly before they freeze.

Women’s History Month Challenge

Hi all,

Thanks to Care I came across a challenge for Women’s History Month, which apparently is March.  Having been out of school for a while, I feel like I’m not told these things, so it was pure luck that I now happen to know. The challenge is brought to you by this blog:

http://regularrumination.wordpress.com/

The challenge is to read books written by women, you can pick how many from the list the blogger provides. I’m sorry, I don’t know a lot about this blog writer, so I’m sure they’re a lovely person but I can’t fill anybody in.  I was going to just write around that and sound knowledgable but let’s just called a spade a spade. Their blog is great though, so check it out.  I picked the challenge of reading 5 books and I of course will write about them when I finish one.  Um… I’m not sure which ones, but my plan is to pick books that I wouldn’t otherwise be reading right now since I have been meaning to get around to some classics. Right now I am actually reading a book by a woman, but I would be reading it anyway so I don’t think I’m going to count it. I know for sure that one of the books will be To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I started it several years ago while vacationing in Canada and I just never finished it because I left the place where it was located, but I’ve always wanted to read it.

Any other suggestions as to books I should read?

It’s a shame I’m not counting the books I’m reading now because  I will definitely finish 5 of them in the next month and they’re all written by the same woman.

I suppose I should mention that I’m kind of a fan of vampire novels. Not the insane kind that haunts Twilight message boards and posts about how they’re moving to Forks, Washington in hopes of finding their Edward Cullen, but the kind that will pick up a vampire novel if it looks interesting. I’ve read everything from Anne Rice, Jocelyn Drake, Stephen King, Tanya Huff, and Laurell K. Hamilton to what I’m reading now, which is Charlaine Harris’s  (Harris’ ?) Southern Vampire Mysteries.  Plus many others, just a sampling so you get the idea. I figure I read enough non-vampire fiction to make up for the fact that I like something that is now very commercialized.

Regardless, Charlaine Harris is a really interesting writer. I’m not sure I can exactly describe her style, but it lends itself more towards the “less is more” approach.  She describes things in few words, and her characters are really growing on me.  I was up till 5am this morning reading the third in the series, which so far is my favorite I think, and I really wanted to finish it but I have this thing about refusing to go to bed after dawn, so I had to call it a night before the sun peeped through my window.  The problem now though is that I can’t find the fourth book ANYWHERE. Every bookstore in town is out of it and I really want to read it. I could buy it online but it would take some time to ship and the library has like 4 people waiting on it and I’m way too impatient to wait with them. So… I’m not sure. I need to call Target and ask them and then I’m out of ideas until the used bookstore opens again tomorrow (they’re closed on Mondays- don’t ask)  and I can search in there. *SIGH*

In any case, as soon as I decide on a first book for the challenge I will let everybody know and you all can be regaled by my attempt to write commentary on it.  Check out the site and join the challenge, everybody should read a little more.

The List

I am really in to making lists. I start making lists in my head before I even realize I’m doing it. Any topic can start a list. I’m talking to a friend of mine and they say “God, Natalie Portman is totally on my list” and I say “what list?” and they’re like… “you know, the list… the one from Friends. The one you get to make where you have 5 people that you’re allowed to have sex with if the situation ever arises and your significant other can’t say a word about it ever.”  — and I say, “oh, that list” because as the super cool and hip young adult that I am, I have seen that episode of Friends.  And then I start to make my list, just in case. I don’t think Natalie Portman would have either of us, but I put her on my list anyway because I don’t care which way you swing, Natalie Portman is on everybody’s list.

Today I started thinking about movies that aren’t suppose to be creepy, but kind of are.  Never Been Kissed is the first one I thought of. I mean, Mwe know she’s an of-age journalist doing a piece on the inner-workings of a modern highschool, but her teacher doesn’t. He thinks she’s a high school student. The movie tries really hard not to be creepy, they never kiss or do anything “untoward” until all is revealed (not to ruin the ending for you) but he does have feelings for what he supposes is a high school student. I don’t know, I’m on the fence about the relationship and I own the movie.

Movies That Try Not To Be Creepy, But Kind Of Are

1. Jerry Maguire
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great classic and it made Cuba Gooding Jr. a shining star, if only for a brief and odd moment. But it also has this weird “I guess I can settle for you” vibe. They end up with each other because they have nobody else? It’s hard to say in the end if Tom Cruise really loved Renee Zellweger, I know she “completed him” but is that really a reason to love her? It almost seemed more of a grateful love than a real love to last the ages.

2. Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
I love Roal Dahl as much as the next kid, but you have to admit that Wonka’s absolute nonchalance at all the children turning into blueberries, falling into incinerators, being stretched by taffy pullers and getting sucked into tubes full of chocolate is kind of horrifying.

3. Gigi
There’s something inherently sad about this story. Gigi has to give up part of herself to be with the man she loves and there’s that weird old guy running around. He reminds me of crotchety old men who look up girl’s skirts with their canes. Again, I own it, and it’s a fabulous, beautiful, and classic movie, but still… just a little odd, no?

4. Mansfield Park
I love Mansfield Park, the movie. This won’t garner me a lot of affection among the Jane Austen elitists of the world since it’s so different from the book, but I just enjoy watching Fanny and Edward figure out they love each other. However, there’s this weird side plot concerning slave trade and Edward’s father has a definite creepy overtone to his character, like he’s leering after young Fanny. Have you read a Jane Austen novel? They’re simple and sweet. It’s like the biggest scandal is an off-page romance between a married woman and a main character. Most of the plot is focused around women doing innocuous things like needlepoint and picking flowers while wondering when Mr. *insert character name here* will call upon them so they can banter artfully until securing marriage.

Annnnd… some other ones. I’m looking for at least a couple more to add to my list. I know they’re out there because I have had the experience many times of watching a movie, enjoying it but thinking that there’s something not quite right about it.  Do you guys have any ideas?