Medical Myths debunked

Don't Swallow Your Gum: and Other Medical Myths Debunked by Dr Aaron Carroll and Dr Rachel Vreeman

This short book looks into about seventy-five medical myths and old wives tales, examines the evidence, and debunks them.

Many will have read Ben Goldacre's Bad Science - (If you haven't read it, do! My review is here) in which the author did some serious scientific debunking. I would guess that Bad Science is preaching mostly to the converted, non-believers wouldn't necessarily choose to read a book like that. However this book, although also in the debunking business, is light and funny but also full of useful information with wide appeal.

It's split into six sections - Myths about: your body, illnesses and injuries, sex and pregnancy, babies and children, what we eat and lastly myths that spark controversy and debate. It starts off with a funny - The Myth that men with big feet have bigger penises, but soon you're learning that you don't need to poo every day; if you're thirsty you're probably not dehydrated, you're just thirsty under normal circumstances; that it's never safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor even if it was for just a couple of seconds, and many, many more. Most of the chapters are only a couple of pages, so it was an ideal book to dip into over a few lunchtimes (it would also make a good toilet book for those that use them!). An entertaining popular science read. (6.5/10)

An Evening with Susan Hill

There was great anticipation in the air in Abingdon tonight for another Mostly Books event featuring popular author Susan Hill. The small hall was packed to hear her talk about her latest book - Howard's End is on the Landing which I previously reviewed here.

She proved to be a real character, and started her talk with a plea for us not to give up on books in favour of e-readers. She stressed that she's no Luddite, and recognises that there are good uses for the devices, but begged us all to keep everyone involved in the production of books in a job and to buy real books. She then read a couple of sections from HEIOTL, one very funny about her encounters with Roald Dahl, and the other more poignant about meeting Iris Murdoch when Alzheimers was taking its toll.

She then went on to tell us with great wit about how she wonders about whether certain books like being next to each other on the shelf, how she wonders if they all talk to each other once everyone has gone to bed. She encouraged us to rediscover our bookshelves, to handle our books, and that way find the book that wants to be read. Books have characters; she said "If you pick up a book like 'A Passage to India', you don't have to read it to feel India in the room." Her daughter Jessica Ruston was also there and talked for a few minutes about sharing a house with a popular author, a Shakespeare scholar and thousands of books. Jessica's first novel Luxury is just out and looks very different to those of her Mum's!

One of the questions that had to be asked related to 'The Final Forty' - the list at the end of HEIOTL of the forty books she can't live without. Due to an error, one book had been listed twice - so we had to know what the fortieth book should have been - Crime & Punishment was the answer. At the end she signed books for everyone, but wasn't terribly talkative - maybe that lovely old house full of books was calling her home.

P.S. It was also lovely to see fellow bloggers in the audience - Simon from Stuck in a Book and also, especially, Margaret from BooksPlease again as she will be moving up north very soon.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

My Dad, Ray, was born eighty years ago today in 1929, the year of the Wall Street Crash, and on the day of the Grand Banks Earthquake off Newfoundland. He shares his birthday with Alex Issigonis (1906) - designer of the Mini, astronaut Alan Shepard (1923), Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood (1939), Brit actor David Hemmings (1941) and pop-singer turned gardener Kim Wilde (1960) to name but a few.

Although born in Portsmouth, he's a long-term Crystal Palace supporter and a big tennis fan; he's still a season ticket holder and is inordinately proud of the fact that he still plays tennis weekly - his foursome has a combined age of nearly 300 years!

The pic above left shows the bouncing baby, then on the right that's me with him in about 1962. Below left is from the early 1970s in the gardens at Fontainebleau, and below right from a few years ago - but he's hardly changed from then. I don't have that many pictures of him as he has normally been behind the camera - but I have enough!

HAPPY

80th

BIRTHDAY

DAD!

When Scott offered giveaway copies of Shadowmagic by John Lenahan I was quick to comment as I thought this older children's fantasy could be really fun; and that my daughter might enjoy it as it. I was really thrilled when a signed copy arrived - Thank you.

Lenahan is an American magician living in England. He got thrown out of the Magic Circle for revealing a trick, and has provided the voice of the toaster on Red Dwarf, which are rather cool achievements! He's also funny - see the clips on Scott's link above.

This fast-paced novel combines classic plot elements of the magical quest and fish out of water. Teenager Conor finds himself transported from his normal life into a magical world where he is a Prince and nearly everyone wants to kill him. This land is peopled by all the types of faery folk you can imagine, each with its own territory. Magic is controlled by gold - and he who owns all the gold will control all the magic - such is the plan of Conor's evil uncle who would destroy the Land. So we add the race against time and speed through the land to find the way to stop him.

Based upon Celtic and Irish myths of Tir Na Nog, the Land of Youth, for an adult read, there was nowhere near enough background as we sped our way through the magical land. Conor and his companions meet a wide range of faery folk and again it is difficult to get a feel for their characteristics, as character is sacrificed for the speed of the plot, and our hero seems rather good at getting out of all the situations easily. I'd have liked to know a bit more about the roots of the magic with gold, and it's opposite Shadowmagic. Conor's jokey contemporary humour which always falls flat in the magical world is meant to keep us and him grounded with an attachment back to the real world, but rather irritated me.

However it wasn't written for adults! I imagine that ten+ year old boys will get a lot out of this fast-moving tale; in particular they'll identify with Conor, and thus have great fun with it - and I know one who should love it.

Round-up - Fireworks & Blog Stats

It was the fireworks evening at my daughter's school last night. Yes, I know it's not the usual timing, but by having our display a week later we are able to get one of the best firework companies in the country to do our little event. Kimbolton Fireworks are the biz - they're doing the New Year fireworks at Edinburgh this year. That said, our private event was just about sold out, but we were really worried about the weather. Despite gales and rain on Friday into Saturday, we put our faith in the Met Office and it had all gone by teatime, and we were left with a clear but cool evening - perfect! The display itself was great - including some amazing ones call screaming banshees which make a really screechy noise as they whizz overhead.

As I was the event organiser, I haven't been reading much this week, I've mostly been fretting about the weather! But I was looking at my blog stats the other day, and it was amusing to see what people were searching for when they arrived here...

• "scottish accent oafay" - this obviously landed the querier on my Lit quiz report where I apologised for my awful pronounciation of the first line of Trainspotting.
• "Strict boarding schools, Peter and the headmistress" - Not sure which page this would actually have landed them on as I put it into Google and my blog didn't come up on the first few pages ...
• Even stranger still is "Jeanette Winterson + Hylda Baker"! but I have mentioned them both in posts - reviewing the former's Tanglewreck earlier in the year, and mentioning the latter here; Those hits combined made me top of the chart on Google.


• But funniest of all - the searcher of this phrase "what is maschiostic?" which is a typo (obviously!), ended up in a post of mine entitled I'm a convert! I think they would have been really disappointed - as it was a post about my finally reading a Thomas Hardy book, in this case Tess.

Also at the moment I'm trying to decide what to get my secret santee in the Book Bloggers Holiday Swap... a difficult decision, but a fun one. Hopefully, back to some proper book posts next week. Cheerio for now.

Two short novels - Two complex stories

This week I passed the 100 books read this year landmark, and numbers 99 and 101 were both cracking short novels...

The Beacon by Susan Hill is a claustrophobic and suspenseful family drama which leaves you wondering what you believed in the tale. It tells of four siblings, Colin, May, Frank and Berenice who were born and bred at 'The Beacon', the house on the hill. Colin and Berenice marry but stay locally; May, tries being a student in the city but is drawn back to her home and stays to look after their ageing parents; but Frank - well he escapes. Life continues, father John dies and their mother Bertha grows more and more dependent on May. Then something happens which shocks the three sublings to their core - leaving them reeling in horror that Frank has written a memoir about his family and everyone else believes it to be the truth. (All this you can find out from the blurb.)

The writing is economical, and the structure of the story, starting at Bertha's death with frequent flashbacks, is such that you know something happened, but it builds up over half the book's length before you find out for sure what it was. Many other events then fall into place - but not all, for Hill is an author renowned for her playfulness with her readers. There is a degree of ambiguity that leaves you asking more questions than are answered, there are no easy happy endings for this family.

This second dose of Susan Hill coming after this one has left me looking forward to seeing her even more at an author event in Abingdon next week.

Now we turn to Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill by Dimitri Verhulst, trans David Colmer.

Madame Verona lives at the top of a hill on the outskirts of an isolated village. A musician, she has lived alone since the death of her composer husband, with just stray dogs for company. While she has a stock of wood to burn she feels no need to rejoin the small but dwindling community in the village while she waits for the luthier to make her a cello - it will take twenty years for the wood to season. The men of the village rather wish she'd chosen a different course, for there are few women in these parts. Eventually the cello is finished, she plays it for her dead husband, and then, when the last log is gone, she comes down the hill knowing she'll never climb back up.

This little novel is a real gem. Written by a Belgian and superbly translated, in between the melancholy tale of Madame Verona's life are rich and humorous episodes of village life. A village where prowess in Table Football is taken really seriously, and where a cow can be elected Mayor. It is a story crying out to be made into an arty film - a great little love story with a superb backdrop - I loved it. (Book supplied by the Amazon Vine programme; 9/10)

How can you cheat death when you're only 14 ...

The Death Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean

One of my friend Julia's recommendations, this is yet another wonderful crossover book by children's author Geraldine McCaughrean. Surely it must be her turn as Children's Laureate soon ...

Imagine your aunt had prophesied that you would die at the age of fourteen, and worse still that everyone believed her. That's what happened to Pepper Roux, which led to him having a very strange childhood - growing up with his religious nut of an Aunt, his absentee drunken sailor of a Dad, and a mother, who knowing he'd be dead soon, didn't bother much with him. So, when Pepper reaches fourteen, he resolves that if he is to die it will not be a wasted death, and he runs away to sea.

This is the first adventure of many amongst the low-lifes of Marseilles and the Camargue for the youngster on the run. Unfortunately death seems to follow him around, and each time he believes it should have been him. A helpful lad, he tries to do good turns along the way, but they often backfire on him too. All this means that the gendarmes are on his trail.

McCaughrean has conjured up a wonderful French setting with a magnificent cast of sailors, horse-thieves, and gangsters who all try to take advantage of the young man. Pepper however is growing up fast and living life to the full - each day still believing that it could be his last. Along the way he learns about truth, lies and their consequences which, although primarily written for young adults, makes this book a really satisfying adult read. No explanation of the occasional French words is given - that would slow up the narrative which maintains a speedy pace throughout. Pepper's adventures make delightfully witty and page-turning read, but you will think about the story for ages afterwards.

(Book supplied by the Amazon Vine programme; 9/10)

...and the Winner is ...

Thank you to everyone who entered my Paul Auster giveaway. I will be searching out everyone's nominations for their literary heroes - there were several names I don't know at all - and if they're good enough to be someone's hero, they deserve to be investigated - Thank you.

My daughter has just picked a name from the hat for me, and the winner is: ANNA. If you could email me with your address I'll get the book out to you asap.

Anna suggested the poet Cornish Charles Causley as her lit hero. A quick search for a quote gave me this from his first collection published in 1951 which is rather apt for today...

Song of the Dying Gunner A.A.1.

Farewell, Aggie Weston, the Barracks, at Guz,
Hang my tiddley suit on the door
I'm sewn up neat in a canvas sheet
And I shan't be home no more.

Photo from flowersop.com

BOOK GIVEAWAY!!!

Who is your literary hero (or heroine) giveaway?

It's not often I'm in the position to host a giveaway, but thanks to the nice people at Faber, I have somehow ended up with two copies of Invisible by Paul Auster.

Auster is probably my biggest literary hero, and I am really looking forward to reading his new book. I love the layers in his novels - the books within books, the writer as a recurring character, his love of coincidence and circular plot elements, plus a wonderful feel for NYC.

I will send world-wide. To enter this giveaway for an ARC of Invisible just leave a comment by noon on Sunday Nov 8th telling me who your literary hero or heroine is...

I look forward to hearing from you.

Mostly Bookbrains - My first literary quiznight!

It was the Mostly Bookbrains litquiznight last night. As questionmaster, if I say so myself, it went really well. We had a packed house and everyone seemed to have fun. Mark from Mostly Books was a brilliant help as scorer, Ali from the shop made a wonderful trophy - see it here. As any proceeds from the quiz were being donated to charity, we were grateful to The Manor Prep School who let us use the big hall for free, and hopefully we raised a fair amount of money for Helen & Douglas House hospice for children in Oxford (over £200).

It's always fun to go over the answer sheets after the quiz and see some of the fun wrong answers; I'd like to share a few with you ...

• In our picture round of book covers, very few got Nigella Lawson's How to Eat - the most popular wrong answer was Perfume by Patrick Suskind strangely!
• Despite me not even trying a Scottish accent, (it would have been awful), almost everyone got Trainspotting in the First Lines round - "The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling."
• In our round where teams had to name the books that various characters appeared in, we gave them Rob's five girlfriends from High Fidelity by Nick Hornby - one enterprising team put down 'The Telephone Directory' as their answer.
• Likewise, when asked 'Where is Howards End?' according to the title of Susan Hill's new book, someone put 'in Surrey', not 'on the landing'. (Actually the real house it was based on is just outside Stevenage in Hertfordshire near where I used to live ten years ago.)
• When asked what was the title of Delia Smith's first cookery book, published in 1971 which she revised in 2008, only one team got that one - from the others we got virtually all of Delia's catalogue except How to Cheat at Cooking.
  

It was lovely to meet Simon from Stuck in a book too, it's great to put a face to a name. Fittingly perhaps, a team from one of the Book Groups who meet at Mostly Books won the inaugural MBookbrains quiz - I say inaugural, because I think we might do it all again next year.

A technological Cinderella story for the next generation of Microserfs

Makers by Cory Doctorow

If you loved Microserfs by Douglas Coupland which chronicled life in Silicon Valley in the 90s, you'll probably enjoy this which takes the nerds into the near future. Rather than spoofing Microsoft, it takes Disney as the corporate behemoth that needs taking down a peg.

Perry and Lester are two talented engineers who specialise in making things by recycling toys and gadgets into other electronic gadgets which they sell to collectors. Key to this is the 3D printer - which when filled with 'goop' will create any part needed. They subsist in happy chaos in Florida living and working in an old Wal-mart store, living in harmony with a collection of drop-outs and homeless folk who've built a nearby shantytown.

Then they get discovered. One of the corporate behemoths, Kodacell (a Kodak-Duracell merger) is looking for a new way of doing business now the markets don't want their traditional products any more. They think a small is beautiful approach using hundreds of small subsidiaries all networking and using each other is the answer, and want to use Perry and Lester as their flagship. A business manager is sent in, and Suzanne Church - a journalist is implanted to document everything that happens and make sure that the world knows about it. Inadvertently, all this will hasten the demise of the traditional economy!

It goes wild, they're a hit, but what they hadn't bargained for is that Perry and Lester are liberal types - big business isn't really their thing and they'd rather carry on tinkering and helping the homeless. They also have a love of retro-electronics and create a 'ride' that celebrates it and also evolves. This becomes the surprise highlight of a holiday in Florida for many. Enter Disney, and as Perry and Lester's technology gets hijacked, things start to go seriously wrong...

This was a dense and chunky novel - far too long at 416 pages in the hardback format - but generally entertaining to read. Although the characterisation is far from perfect and the writing was a bit clunky, you couldn't help but like Perry and Lester, loveable underdogs who get out of their depth; Suzanne as the hack with a heart of gold was somewhat sad - sacrificing any life of her own for the story. You could also feel some sympathy for the good guys of the business world who tried to help the small fry, but the baddies were portrayed as real pantomime villains in this technological Cinderella story, very shallow indeed. There was one sub-plot I didn't like - regarding a Russian technological miracle to cure obesity - the 'Fatkins' programme. While having a serious point to make, it got in the way of the main story. I wasn't entirely sure where Doctorow was going with the shantytown either, or am I missing the obvious in that the poor will always be with us?

Overall - this is a novel of big ideas - and I could imagine some of them happening! (8/10)

(Book supplied by the Amazon Vine programme).

P.S. I learned a new word last week courtesy of James May's Toy Stories (new series on BBC2). That word is 'sprue' . In injection moulding, the sprue is the framework through which the material goes into a mould and is cut off afterwards. The super cover of this book shows a great example!

The Page 56 Meme

This nice and easy meme came by way of Victorian Geek via Ibooknet blog.

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favourite book, the coolest book, or the most intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Here goes: "Until late in the century, he would visit German houses in Baltimore and Pennsylvania on Christmas Eve, carrying a bundle of switches for naughty children and treats for the good ones."

Who is this strange visitor? He's 'Belsnickel' - a Dutch mythical being similar to Krampus in Austria and Germany - one of Santa's helpers. A dour character who was popular with parents who wanted to keep their children in line.

Big apologies for posting about Christmas when it's still October! This lore comes from a little book I just acquired called The Christmas Companion - a merry little book of festive fun and trivia - a sort of Christmas themed Schott's Miscellany. I got this to help me write some seasonal questions for the end of term staff dinner - we like a bit of a quiz, and silly me - I volunteered to do it this year.

An influential book from an influential writer ...

Howards End is on the landing by Susan Hill

That pesky Susan Hill! She's managed to set the book-blogging world alight with her latest - a memoir about reading the books in her house and the stories they are associated with. HEIOTL, as I shall abbreviate it to, has become a blogging hot topic - but in the nicest possible way...

At the heart of HEIOTL is Hill's decision not to add to her house full of books for a year (except for books she is to review); to explore her collection and find new books to read in it, to re-discover lost gems and re-read favourites, and then to compile a list of the forty books she couldn't live without.

Each shelf examined brings reminiscences. There are stories about encounters with great writers and celebrated personages, who all seemed to be very supportive of the young novelist, and indeed many of them became friends. I loved all this name-dropping, and particularly enjoyed the chapter about Benjamin Britten whose 'Sea Interludes' provided an epiphany for Hill (I love them too - they were marvellous to play many years ago in Croydon Youth Philharmonic Orchestra); the story about Alan Clark was good also.

There are many discussions of writers and their books. Hill is refreshingly honest about what she doesn't enjoy reading as well as her literary loves - she's no Austenite, but reveres much of Thomas Hardy, she can't be doing with Terry Pratchett and Sci-Fi in general but did concede to liking John Wyndham but puts him in the horror pile. I was delighted that she loves Ian Fleming, John Le Carré and Michael Connelly too.

Although I haven't read him, her chapter about W.G.Sebald does make me want to read The Rings of Saturn. She writes "But so many places on a Sebald journey are eerie, deserted, out of date, and lie under a pall of dismal weather. In The Rings of Saturn he walks through East Anglia and manages to make places I know well, and have found sparkling and lively, suicidally depressing." I lived and worked for nearly two years in and around Great Yarmouth - a South Londoner fresh out of uni and mostly have never felt so lonely as then.

Then at the last pages we get to the final forty, the snapshot in time of the forty books she couldn't do without - well on that day at least, for she says she would probably pick a different 40 tomorrow. The natural extension of this is to start compiling one's own forty - but that's another project and post!

Every year I say I must read more books from my TBR mountains. Do I think I could do as Hill did and not buy any new books for a whole year? It would be nice, but I don't think I can. Simon at Stuck in a Book has set himself a post-HEIOTL challenge to buy no more than 24 books in 2010. My biggest problem post-HEIOTL is the number of books I've added to my wishlist, and may have to buy/acquire, after reading it - an index would have been slightly helpful here!

I love reading books about books, and this one (with its lovely cover) didn't disappoint. Susan Hill is doing an event in Abingdon next month, and I'm really looking forward to hearing her talk about it. I also hope to fit in reading another of her novels too - The Beacon has been on my shelves unread for ages too.

This book sure has got us all thinking! If you want to read more reviews, see Dgr, Paperback reader, Savidge Reads, and Other Stories to name but a few. Oh, and by the way, if you love books about books, do read Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman - it's utterly brilliant.

My Season of the Living Dead is over!

My month of vampire reading is over - Ended! Finito! I've read six novels back to back, mostly extremely enjoyable until I came to the last. Dracula - the Un-dead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt ...

Co-written by Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew and a vampire expert, this official sequel tries to shoehorn in every single bit of vampire lore in existence into its length, moving the action on to 1912, twenty-five years after the original novel ends. Someone is after the survivors of the original band of heroes who 'killed' Dracula and is picking them off one by one. It appears to be another evil historical figure - Elizabeth Bathory, (another real person who is reputed to have bathed in girls' blood), or could it be Jack the Ripper(!), or has Dracula risen again from the undead. It's up to Jonathan Harker's wife Mina, and son Quincey to stop them or be killed themselves.

The novel was never sillier than when they put Bram Stoker himself into the plot as a struggling writer trying to put on a play of his novel - for a book supposing to put right the injustices done to the Stoker family when they were denied royalties for Dracula in the USA, I couldn't understand this move. Mercifully, it was a quick read - fans of Dan Brown should love it!

*****

I finally watched the film of Twilight yesterday. I loved it! I liked the Twin Peaksy feel and the lighting. I felt that Bella came across as having a bit more self-determination than in the book, and of course it pared away some of the frustrating talk that clogged up the novel. I also like how they handled the vamp's shimmering in the sunlight. Of course, the two lead characters were lovely to look at which always helps - Kristen Stewart reminded me of Harry Potter's Emma Watson with dark hair and a bit less earnestness - they have very similar facial expressions. The result is, of course, that I may have to read a seventh vamp novel very soon - New Moon, but first I need a break - I've a book group choice and some ARCs to waiting to be read!

A chilling and contemporary twist on the vampire novel

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

All the other vampire books I've read in my 'Season of the Living Dead' have been rather cosy or had a good sense of humour. But then they've been mostly aimed at teens and young adults.

Then I came to a Nordic vampire novel Let the Right One In, and found something truly dark and horrific that needed a strong stomach and nerves of steel. It is a real contemporary chiller, full of violence and gore, totally relentless - yet at its heart is a the redemptive relationship between a twelve year old boy and a 200 year old vampire frozen into the body of a young girl.

The book is set in and around an anonymous housing estate, built at the edge of a forest in the suburbs. We are introduced to Oskar, twelve years old, fat and geeky, who is the chief victim of the class bullies, and we immediately feel for him. But then we meet Håkan, a quiet newcomer to the town; but he's also a seedy forty-five year old in a raincoat and has 'serial killer' written all over him - he's carrying a cylinder of anaesthetic, and he's prospecting for a victim - it doesn't take long, and then it's horrorshow time! Meanwhile Oskar meets Eli, a strange young girl who only appears in the evenings in the playground. They gradually strike up a friendship and once they realise that their bedrooms share a wall, they start to send morse code messages to each other; Eli's the first girl who's ever noticed Oskar. The rest of the supporting cast comprises a group of old men, drifters and alcoholics who meet at the pub - one of them thinks he saw something on the night of the first murder but they're all too scared. Eventually all of these character threads come together.

I won't expound any more on the plot as it would spoil the suspense; suffice it to say there are some particularly disturbing scenes in its 500+ pages. The relationship between Oskar and Eli is fascinating; Eli is of course a vampire. When Oskar finds someone to love it is touching, it is also the beginning of his growing up, being able to stand up for himself.

Oskar held the piece of paper with the Morse code in one hand and tapped letters into the wall with the other...
G.O.I.N.G. O.U.T.
The answer came after a few seconds.
I. M. C.O.M.I.N.G.
They met outside the entrance to her building. In one day she had ... changed. About a month ago a Jewish woman had come to his school, talked to them about the holocaust and shown them slides. Eli was looking a little bit like the people in those pictures.
The sharp light from the fixture above the door cast dark shadows on her face, as if the bones were threatening to protrude through the skin, as if the skin had become thinner. And ...'
What have you done with your hair?'He had thought it was the light that made it look like that, but when he came closer he saw that a few thick white strands ran through her hair. Like an old person. Eli ran a hand over her head. Smiled at him.
'It'll go away. What should we do?'

This novel was entirely different to any other vampire story I've read. It was thoroughly modern with no hints of Gothic melodrama at all. It was too long, but thoroughly gripping if you have the stomach for it. Moreover it takes our current fascination with all literary things Nordic, particularly crime novels, to another different level. Read it if you dare! (9/10)

P.S. Just got the original Swedish movie to watch. Apparently it's marvellous.

Paving the way for the teen vampire sensation

Vampire Diaries by L.H.Smith

Anyone reading this book would be forgiven for thinking that it was rather derivative of a certain other one - Twilight that is. It even has an apple on the black cover ... Amazingly, it was published over ten years before Stephanie Meyer had even started hers. Understandingly, the publishers have jumped on the bandwagon with a new edition. I didn't discover it until I had already read Twilight though, so my thoughts about Smith's book can't help but but be influenced by the other.

The Vampire Diaries was originally written as a trilogy in 1991, and extended to 4 parts a year later. This edition contains parts 1 & 2. Smith is now adding another new trilogy to the series, and inbetween also created the 'Night World' series of novels featuring many different supernatural races.

Smith's heroine is beautiful and popular, and when a new boy Stefan comes to school, she just has to have him. Sure enough he's a vampire with an evil older brother Damon. Back in the Renaissance they both loved the same woman, who became vampire and then when they forced her to choose between them, she took both, but Stefan still thinks she really loved him before she died. Elena reminds him of her - so they're made for each other. Then nasty things start to happen in this little town - there's a big black crow always around, then people get scared in the old ruined church, and an old guy is killed under bridge over the river. Then at the school's Halloween Haunted House party, someone dies - all fingers point to Stefan, but we know that Damon lives and he wants what his brother wants ...

Arguably, more happens than in Twilight, however I found the Vampire Diaries rather ordinary and humourless, somewhat full of stereotypes and also lacking the former's subtlety. Also, for a book with the word 'Diaries' in the title, the few diary pages included were strangely uninvolving to me. I would describe the book(s) as competent, and fans of her Night World series will surely enjoy these vampires. (6/10)

Sookie & Vampire Bill - what a couple!

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

The high-school vampire novels I read last week were but mere hors d'oevres in preparation for this - the main course.

The Sookie Stackhouse novels have been given the HBO treatment by Alan 'Six Feel Under' Ball, and are currently on our screens as True Blood, but before I watch the TV series (I've recorded initial episodes) I wanted to read the first book...

Pretty Sookie Stackhouse waits tables at Merlottes, a bar in Bon Temps, deep in the heart of Louisiana. The locals think she's slightly crazy - but they don't know that Sookie is a telepath and can hear everyone's thoughts - to stop herself going mad she has to concentrate to keep her guard up. She lives quietly with her Gran, boyfriends being difficult with her knowing everything they are thinking!

Since the invention of synthetic blood, vampires have come out into the mainstream but one has never been to Merlottes, until Bill. Unfortunately he sits next to the wrong people who are after his blood - it's worth $200 a phial, and they lure him out to the woods beyond the carpark where they tether him with silver and start to drain him - until Sookie intervenes. She saves Bill, and it's fair to say it's love at first sight for both of them - particularly as Sookie can't hear Bill's thoughts. Bill now owns the old house across the way from Sookie's Gran. He's one of the few who wants to intregrate into a community - to live quietly, and only drinking synthetic blood. He was made a vampire during the civil war and is tired of living on the edge.

The only problem is that as soon as Bill appears, murders start happening. They're all good-time girls who have a bit of a reputation as 'fang-bangers'. Suspicion is automatically on all the vampires in the region, but Sookie's brother Jason also knew the murdered girls. Sookie decides to use her powers to help solve the crimes. The wider vampire network is a dangerous place and there is a serial killer somewhere out there in this close-knit community that must be caught.

A kooky heroine and vampires combined with a top-notch crime novel set in America's Deep South is a winning combination - I absolutely loved it! Sookie is sparky and resourceful, yet has been waiting for someone to love; Bill wants to be normal and to be taken at face value - he is a good and chivalrous vampire and Sookie awakens his protective instincts. This book is immense fun, it's sexy and intense with thrills aplenty. Volume two, Living Dead in Dallas is already in my reading pile. (10/10)

Brothers under the skin???

I will get back to writing about books very soon, but an off-duty photo I saw yesterday of Twilight hunk Robert Pattinson in my daughter's kids' newspaper 'First News' gave me a jolt - for the delightfully chiselled Robert is looking rather like the handsome younger brother of the comedy demi-god that was John Belushi! I couldn't find the exact photo - but it's all in the eye-brows ... What do you think?

Now I can see why teenage girls love vampires ...

Although I have more of the same stacked up, (vampire novels aimed at teenagers that is), I think I've worked out why teenage girls love reading them... They have all the features of many traditional favourites:- set in schools pupilled with bullies, geeks, jocks, all the usual stereotypes are there; there's good/bad, sympathetic/not teachers; an overwhelming hatred of maths; but most importantly the heroine is new to the school - an outsider who is different and sticks out a mile. Mix thoroughly and then spice liberally with vampires to bring a whole new level of fantasy to the staple genre. However given all that, these first two books have totally different approaches ...

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer.

Although not the first, Twilight is the book that has ignited the current vamp fever.

Isabella is a beautiful yet clumsy girl who has left her Mum, and her new husband, in Phoenix to live with her Dad in the small, rainy, northwestern town of Forks. Enrolling at the local high school she soon makes friends, but then attracts the attention of the mysterious and impossibly good-looking Cullen family. It is love at first sight for Isabella and Edward - but the course of true love never runs smooth, as the Cullens are vampires. As Edward and Bella start to explore whether it is possible for them to have a relationship, some other vampires come on the scene, and Bella is put in danger.

It could have been really brilliant, but to be honest I didn't warm to Bella - she's a bit of a whiner and homebody, and so drippy once she falls for Edward. He on the other hand is the business, provided you can forget the slightly creepy fact that he's a hundred year-old vampire in the body of a seventeen year-old Adonis. Crucially though, it's so slow in getting to the action as they talk and talk and talk; and the central romance is totally frustrating for an adult read, (younger teens may baulk at the length). The overall feel to me was like one of those über-slick good-looking American TV series like Beverley Hills 90210 (or whatever the number was) with less sex and more talk. Reading Meyer's website it appears that Bella is the daughter she's never had, and that there is a certain amount of wish fulfillment going on too. It was compulsive though, and I shall definitely read the rest of the series to find out what finally happens!

*****

Now to a rather different type of high school vampire novel ...

Marked by P.C. & Kristin Cast

Written by a mother and daughter team, this is the first in a series called the 'House of Night'. In the Casts' world, teenagers are 'marked' to become vampires. It has a cracking opening line - "Just when I thought my day couldn't get any worse I saw the dead guy standing next to my locker." Zoey is picked to become a vampyre (yes, with a 'y'), the tracker marks her forehead and from that moment on her life changes.

She has to abandon everything and go to the 'House of Night' - the vampyre finishing school where they will take over her schooling and help her go through the change into becoming a vampyre. She's happy to leave her mother and her horrible new husband, but has to say goodbye to her Cherokee grandmother who lives out of town. While out looking for her Gran who is out in the hills, Zoey falls and has a vision from the vampyre goddess Nyx who asks her to be her eyes and ears at the House of Night. Once at school, she finds that she's the centre of attention, for the mark on her forehead has changed - it's different to all the other fledglings' ones, and not only is the headmistress Zoey's mentor, but the head girl Aphrodite is soon on her case!

What ensues is more of a typical boarding school novel with secret clubs, cliques and escapades, and all the stereotypes above are present too. Many have commented that there's a touch of Hogwarts about it with the pupils learning to be vampyres, but these teenaged vampyres' blood is full of raging hormones so it's definitely not suitable for younger teens. It was more fun and definitely has a better sense of humour than Twilight, but I don't feel the compulsive need to read more of the series, (well - maybe!).

*****

Having read these two, I can understand why teenage girls are adoring them. The presence of the vampires adds a fantasy element to the high-school novel that heightens the romance to a new level, providing the escapist fun that teenagers crave - but I wouldn't recommend even the sex-free Twilight for any younger readers.

Now I'm reading the first Sookie Stackhouse novel - Dead Until Dark, which is the sexy older cousin to those above. I keep on discovering more vamp fare to add to my reading list though - The Vampire Diaries by L J Smith, which was published in 1991 and thought to be a key influence on those who came after; and Nordic vamp novel Let the right one in by John Ajvide Lindqvist. "Bring it on!" I say.

Bad Haikus for National Poetry Day

It's National Poetry Day and to celebrate here are two topical Gaskella original haiku(s?) plugging my current reading trail... Sorry but they're the best I can do in the short time available. Please feel free to slag them off and show me how to write a haiku properly - I can just about get the 5-7-5 and a seasonal reference, but finesse comes a lot harder!

Nights are drawing in,
Season of the Living Dead
on Gaskella’s blog.

Autumnal sunshine
Lifts the spirits when reading
Books about vampires.

These books are obviously beginning to get to me!