What I've Been Reading:'Night Shift' by Stephen King

I've never been overly keen on short stories. I can see the merits of them of course, it's just that they're not for me. I struggle to stick with a collection of short stories because I can't keep my interest up. I like novels. I like the way we gradually begin to know and care for the characters. I like following the story arc and reaching the climax, and I love a book that lasts me a while, a nice thick tome that you get to know by carrying it around with you everywhere for a week or more. Short stories are more like bite-sized chunks to read in one sitting, and as such I just can't get on with them in the same way I can a novel.

But, as this was one of books on my personal Stephen King-a-thon challenge, I had to persevere, stick with it to the end. I didn't want to give up, miss it out of my challenge. It would have been failing at the first hurdle. Anyway, I really enjoyed a few of the stories and yet now that I closed the book and put it aside a few days ago, I can't seem to properly recall more than one or two of them. That's the problem with short stories for me, they don't capture my imagination enough that I'll remember them several years down the line.

However, if you're a fan of Stephen King or the horror genre in general, and you can tolerate the short story format, I'd recommend you give this a go.

3/5

What I've Been Reading:'Interview With the Vampire: Claudia's Story' by Ashley Marie Witter and Anne Rice

I have been a huge fan of Anne Rice's 'Vampire Chronicles' since I first discovered 'Interview with the Vampire' when I was 16 years old. She was the writer who introduced me to the Vampire canon and her writing has really influenced my reading habits.

While browsing through the graphic novel section at my local library, I came across this little gem, a graphic novel representation of Claudia's plot line, told from her perspective. I simply had to read this.

I've always been captivated by the idea of Claudia, of a child turned into a Vampire; a mind that grows from childish notions to an adult understanding of the world while trapped, frozen in time forever in the fragile body of a young child. How torturous it would be to remain a child forever, to have people treat you as an immature being when you are a decades old being, have seen a lifetime of change and several lifetimes of death.

This adaptation didn't really add anything to the story told in 'Interview with the Vampire', in fact it was pretty much just Claudia's scenes transferred from word to image. However, the images were so beautiful that I'm willing to overlook that. The drawings were in sepia throughout, with splashes of brilliant red to depict blood, whether the life-giving blood drained from victims or the blood tears Claudia frequently cries. I think the lack of colour was significant, added something to the story. Colour would have detracted from the storytelling, would have made Claudia's melancholia less dramatic and vivid.

I enjoyed this graphic novel and would recommend it to any fan of Anne Rice or even anybody who simply enjoys a good graphic novel.

4/5

What I've Been Reading:'The Moth Diaries' by Rachel Klein

A copy of this novel has sat languishing on my book shelves for the last few years. I bought it, attracted by the stunning cover, started it straight away and then got distracted and put it on my shelf un-read. It might just have stayed that way if it wasn't for the fact that my other half got hold of two free tickets to see the film adaptation. I'm one of those people who absolutely hates to see the film of a book without having read the book first and so the day before we were due to see the film, I grabbed my copy of this book, curled up on the sofa and read all 256 pages in one sitting, barely pausing to look up.

'The Moth Diaries', as you might have gathered by the title is presented to us in diary form, an interesting concept that really works with the premise. The story opens with a kind of foreword, the now adult diarist giving us a bit of background to the diary she kept as a sixteen year old girl. She admits that she suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder complicated by depression and that her Psychiatrist has requested her permission to publish the tormented ramblings of her formative years. We never actually learn the identity of the girl we come to know so well. She is nameless to us and yet it doesn't hinder the story at all.

The diary opens at the beginning of a new school term. The sixteen year old narrator attends an exclusive all girls boarding school which over the past few years has become more of a home to her than the home she has shared with her Mother since her poet father killed himself. School is where Lucy, her best friend and secret obsession resides. Home has become the suite she shares with Lucy. But all that is about to change with the arrival of new girl Ernessa Bloch.

Ernessa is a mysterious addition to their world. Pale, foreign and a total loner, she is at odds with the world of school. But Lucy is drawn to her. Sweet, innocent Lucy who can't see the bad in anybody is sucked into Ernessa's world. But since Ernessa arrived on the scene, strange things have been happening. Death and destruction seem to plague the school and our narrator is convinced Ernessa is at the heart of it. She becomes obsessed with the idea that Ernessa Bloch is a Vampire.

But do Vampires really exist outside of the macabre stories she has been reading for her English class, or has her fevered imagination run rampant? We don't really find out and I'm reluctant to say too much in case it spoils the story for any of you who wish to read it. I will say however, that for me, 'The Moth Diaries' was psychologically taut, a brilliant painting of mental torment and teen angst. There were some lines that were incredibly poignant, that reminded me a little of my own teenage years.

It was a great read, an amazing little journey inside the mind. I'd recommend it to anybody who likes Psychological Horror with a dash of teen angst.

5/5

What I've Been Reading:'Salem's Lot' by Stephen King

I love Vampires. I'll read pretty much any novel that features those creepy blood-sucking monsters that sneak around at night and feast on helpless virgins. But, I have to admit I do prefer the traditional Stoker-esque Vampire to the sparkle-in-the-sun Twilight version. Which is probably why ''Salem's Lot' by Stephen King is one of my all-time favourite reads. 

'Salem's Lot has never really been the quiet, peaceful town passers by would think it to be. There is a hint of darkness behind the town's picturesque facade. There is the mother who beats her baby and lies to her husband about how the injuries were sustained, there's the gossips who listen in on other's phone-calls and spy on their neighbours with much-used binoculars. There is the decidedly twisted school bus driver who likes to leave kids stranded four miles from home and the school bully who presides over the school yard like some crazy dictator. But the biggest darkness that hangs over 'Salem's Lot is the Marsten House, the crumbling un-inhabitable Mansion that watches over the town, whose tale is a ghost story to scare children with. The Marsten House was the scene of a murder-suicide that the town has never fully recovered from and that eveyone has a story about.

Ben Mears, disillusioned writer and ex-Salem's Lot inhabitant has his own story about the Marsten House, his own childhood memory that haunts his adult dreams. After the death of his girlfriend, he finds himself returning to the town he lived in as a child, hoping that something there will spark his creativity and help him write his next best-seller. But he finds more than he expected.

Around the same time that Ben arrives in 'Salem's Lot, so do Barlow and Straker, antiques dealers who have taken over an empty store to set up business and also, bizarrely, have bought the old Marsten House. Antique dealers are harmless, right? But it's a strange coincidence that not long after their arrival in town, one young boy goes missing and his brother dies of anaemia. And that's just the start of Salem's Lot's unraveling.

As more and more of 'Salem's Lot's citizens begin to suffer strange flu-like symptoms before dying several days later, Ben bands together with several other unlikely heroes - an aging English teacher, an alcoholic Priest, a doctor and a 12 year old schoolboy - to solve the mystery of the Marsten House's new owners and just what exactly they are doing to their town.

I adore this novel, I really do. The characters are so real, so believable. And it's just creepy enough that it stays in your thoughts when you're no longer reading it. It's typical Stephen King in the sense that it shifts from point of view to point of view (most fascinatingly in this particular novel, the perspective of the town itself). He builds the atmosphere and tension slowly and steadily, creeping to a startling crescendo, giving you time to identify with the characters and really begin to care for them before he puts their lives in peril. And you know, Stephen King takes that whole "kill your darlings" adage seriously, which is probably another reason I love his novels so much - he's not afraid. He does what's necessary. He's a cruel and unjust god to the creatures of his imagination. And it makes him a much better writer than those who aren't.

This book is up there with Dracula as a must-read for anybody who thinks they know the Vampire canon. King taps into the old mythologies and even references Stoker's work in his own. A fantastic, creepy, thrill of a read. I'd recommend it to everyone.

5/5

What I've Been Reading:'A Discovery of Witches' by Deborah Harkness

 

I was given this book as a Christmas present in 2011 and despite really wanting to read it, I kept putting it off because with everything that was going on last year I simply wasn't able to focus on 'big' books. But now that I'm storming through books again, I decided to give it a go. And I'm so, so glad I did.

Several reviews of this book compare it to the Twilight series but I found it more reminiscent of Anne Rice's 'Vampire Chronicles' with a touch of 'The Historian' thrown in for good measure. The novel focuses on Diana Bishop, a witch who refuses to use her magic, convinced that said magic was the reason her parents were killed when she was just seven years old. She is a Historian of Alchemy and Science (amazing, I know!) and while researching a paper in Oxford's Bodleian library, inadvertently discovers a centuries hidden Alchemical manuscript that happens to be imbued with magic. This (not so) happy accident throws Diana into a collision course with Oxfords renowned Neuro and Chemical Scientist, Matthew Clairmont, who also happens to be a Vampire.

Soon, Diana and Matthew find themselves tangled up in a centuries long battle for Diana's lost manuscript, fighting off Vampires, Demons and Witches and bringing natural enemies together in a fight for their lives.

This novel was full of action, romance, science and history and kept me reading for hours at a time. A couple of times I nearly missed my bus stop because I was so lost in the world of the book and at least once I went back to work late from a tea break because I simply had to finish the chapter I was reading. Yeah, it really was that good.

One of the main plus points of this novel for me was a bit of a geeky one. The science held up. Working in a lab means that when I read anything that involves science I tend to spot mistakes or inaccuracies. I can say that I didn't spot any errors in Matthew's lab or his work. And that really helped maintain the suspension of belief for me. Likewise with the historical aspect. At no point did I stop and wonder whether the things I was reading were accurate, which is a major deal for me. I like novels to be thoroughly researched and fact-checked. 

This is one of my favourite novels so far this year and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes their Vampire novels with a bite.

Rating: 5/5

What I've Been Reading: 'Silent Sand' by Sam Stone

'Silent Sand' by Sam Stone

If you've read my post about meeting Sam Stone, you'll already know just how much I love her 'Vampire Gene' books.'Silent Sand' is the fifth and latest in the sequence. I finished reading it this afternoon and felt the urge to blog about it instantly. I wanted to share my thoughts with the world and spread the word about these books in general.

A lot of the time, when I'm reading a sequence of books that involve the same set of characters, I tend to get a little bored after a while. It's easy for characters to become stale, for plots to become repetitive. But this has not been the case with Sam Stone's books. With each novel, the characters become more alive for me, more 3D in my mind. Each instalment teaches us more about the characters and the world they inhabit. And at the end of each novel, we're left wanting more.

'Silent Sand' explores the nature of the Vampire Gene further, dipping into new ideas of how Vampirism may be spread. I won't give it away but there's a really inspired plot point to do with a certain bodily fluid that I really didn't see coming. It also explores the idea of how those with similar but not identical genetics to those who carry the Vampire Gene might react to being bitten. The result is a really clever story that expands the possibilities of the world we have come to know in the first four books.

I enjoyed catching up with Lucrezia Borgia and her life as Lucy Collins the Haematologist (I have a little fondness for Lucrezia. Plus, I love the Science-y stuff that she gets herself involved in). I also loved the flashbacks that Gabriele showed us of his life in the Paris of Louis XV. That's the kind of depth of character I like in books.

One of the things I really like about these books is the way Sam Stone experiments with Point of View. She switches between first person narration by Gabriele and a third person perspective which allows us to see more of what is going on than Gabriele would possibly be able to tell us. It's brave, not a lot of writer's attempt this kind of thing but I love it. It keeps the writing lively and the plot moving forward.

All in all, I loved this book, even the torturous cliff-hanger of an ending which I had to read three times before I was willing to accept was actually how I would be forced to leave this book.

So of course, now I'm impatiently awaiting the next instalment. Perhaps I'll use the time to re-visit the previous four books...