2009: A Very Vampire Year

So far, since receiving the book Twilight for Christmas from my mom last year, I have been on a bit of a tear. I read Twilight and the two books that followed: New Moon and Eclipse. Of course, Twilight was a movie as well, albeit a crappy one. Tonight I will finish the fourth book, Breaking Dawn. The first and last books were much better than numbers two and three, and overall I guess I'd give the series 3 stars out of 5.

In between times, I also read the Swedish vampire novel, Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindquist. The book was 4 stars out of 5. It was also made into a movie, which looked like it might have been good, but I just couldn't get past the really awful, awful dubbing. I'd rather read subtitles than hear a series of disembodied voices for two hours. Plus, the book was so long that they had to leave a lot out. That always disappoints me.

Finally, I have just started watching the HBO series True Blood. Love it! I know the rest of the world's already seen it, but in case you're in my no-cable-TV-having club, the vampires in this show are "out of the coffin" and trying to fit into society. The main character is Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana, who meets a vampire, Bill Compton. (I don't know much about what happens after that, because I'm only on the fourth episode. So don't spoil it for me!) One thing I really like about the show is that it's set in true backwoods Louisiana, and what's a better setting than that?

Additionally, I've always wanted to read Dracula. Maybe someday.

I know that the vampire-centricity of my entertainment this year is largely due to how popular they've become lately. Before that, it was wizards with Harry Potter. (I'm afraid I bought into that one too, full speed, but again--I was hardly alone.) I wonder when this will pass, and what will be the next juvenile trend to which I happily succumb?

Reading Rainbow, Vol. 6: The Time Traveler's Wife

I did a lot of reading this summer, particularly on my trip to Europe, and this was one of those books. I was a little unconvinced when I read the premise, but I was surprised to find out that the book was so well-written that it wasn't silly at all.

Clare and Henry meet when Henry is an adult and Clare is six, and then they marry when Henry is 28 and Clare is 20. This is because Henry suffers from a genetic anomaly that causes him to travel forward and backward in time involuntarily when his genetic clock resets. Throughout the story, each section is prefaced with the date and both character's ages at that time, since they're not always eight years apart.

They experience things like trying to buy a house (searching for the particular house that Henry has already seen in their future), wanting to have a successful pregnancy after numerous setbacks, and trying to hide Henry's condition from those who probably would not understand. Additionally, they have to face the challenge of keeping Henry in the present for important moments, such as their wedding.

You may have seen the previews for this movie, which will be released this coming weekend. I am not sure if it will be as good as the book, but I'm looking forward to seeing it anyway. You still have time to get this book and read it before you see the movie--it is long (500 pages) but is an easy read that passes very quickly!

Reading Rainbow, Vol. 5: Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

My mother gave me this book for Christmas, and although the story is very sad, it was incredibly interesting, and I highly recommend it. Enrique's Journey is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper series in the LA Times, which Nazario wrote after spending time following the journey that brought Enrique to the United States from Honduras.

Enrique was a young child when his mother, Lourdes, decided to leave him with family members in Honduras to work in the United States and send money home to her destitute family. As he grows into a rebellious, drug-addicted teenager, Enrique wonders why his mother left him, and decides that the only way to turn his life around is to make the dangerous trip to the United States by riding the tops of freight trains. He is deported from Mexico to Guatemala multiple times, robbed and beaten repeatedly, and lives in constant danger of death or dismemberment by the train's wheels, as happened to many of his fellow riders.

This book illustrates just how incredibly difficult it is for many immigrants, who have little or no opportunities in their homelands, to enter and make a life in the United States. Unless you're Lou Dobbs, you'll love Enrique's Journey.

Enrique washes cars to earn money along his trip, while living in a migrant camp on the side of the Rio Grande.

Reading Rainbow, Vol. 4: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Khaled Hosseini became widely known as an author when his first novel, The Kite Runner, was published five years ago. It is the story of two Afghan boys, Amir and Hassan, who are childhood friends during the early 1970s in Kabul. The Kite Runner is a wonderful story in itself, but Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, is even better.

A Thousand Splendid Suns tells the life stories of two Afghan women, Mariam and Laila. Mariam, born in 1959 in Herat, is the illegitimate child of a servant woman and her employer. She grows up in poverty when her father sends them away out of shame. Mariam is later forced into an arranged marriage with Rasheed, an older man who soon becomes abusive.

Laila, born in 1978, lives near Mariam and Rasheed. Her best friend is Tariq, a boy who lost his leg in an explosion. They are inseparable and their friendship develops into a romance as they enter their teen years.

It is best for me not to tell much more of the plot, but the rest of the book develops the story of how Laila's and Mariam's paths cross as Laila grows into adulthood. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a very engaging book that shows what women have experienced in Afghanistan in recent years, and like The Kite Runner, is a story that centers on friendship and sacrifice.

Reading Rainbow, Vol. 3: Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

While I was in Hungary, I actually read Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for the first time, and I loved both of them. They were books that I had always meant to read, but never quite got around to it. I read a lot of classics in Hungary, as they were the cheapest and easiest to find books printed in English.

So I recently bought Pudd'nhead Wilson, and I enjoyed it just as much. It's a bit different from the other two, because it's more of a mystery story, but it is set in the same time frame, and slavery plays a big part in all three stories.

David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson, who got his nickname from something stupid he said years earlier, is an accountant, lawyer, and fingerprint collector, and actually does not play a central part in the story until the latter half.

The story begins with a 15/16 white slave woman, Roxana, giving birth the same day as her owner's wife, and switching the two baby boys during their infancy to save her own baby from a lifetime of slavery. As they grow older, her birth son is raised as a spoiled white boy and becomes a well-educated but selfish, irresponsible man with a gambling addiction. He is unaware of what Roxana did until he is grown and she must use the information as leverage against him.

These three characters, as well as a pair of charming Italian twins that come to town, all become involved in a murder that takes place in the town, and the subsequent trial of the accused.

Although the reader can tell most of the events that will happen next throughout the book, it remains entertaining by leaving plenty to be figured out. The ending is satisfying and very funny. It's a short book, a quick and easy read, and highly enjoyable!

Reading Rainbow, Vol. 2: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

In Water for Elephants, Jacob Jankowski is a young veterinary student nearing his final exams at Cornell during the Great Depression. His plans to join his father's practice are abandoned when his parents are killed in a car crash and he learns that they have left him nothing, having mortgaged everything to pay for his education. In a panic, he flees and jumps aboard an open train car.

This particular train, he discovers, transports the members of the Benzini Brothers Circus. He joins them, working as the show's veterinarian and travelling throughout the country. He meets August, the animal superintendent, his wife Marlena, who performs with the liberty horses, and the opportunistic owner of the circus, Uncle Al. Jacob contends not only with the animals, but also with August's violent temper, Uncle Al's questionable and frightening business practices, and his burgeoning relationship with Marlena.

The story is told from the memory of the now-93-year-old Jacob, who lives in a nursing home. It is a very easy read, and though the story is fictional, it is peppered with true stories from travelling circuses of the early twentieth century, and features an interesting historical photograph at the beginning of each chapter.

Reading Rainbow, Vol. 1: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

In short, Middlesex was one outstanding book. I read The Virgin Suicides, also by Jeffrey Eugenides, about three years ago, and it was very mediocre, but I was immediately glad to have picked up the former, as it was interesting from the very beginning:

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

The book is the story of the Greek-American Stephanides family, centering around Calliope, a hermaphrodite, raised solely as an ordinary girl due to the fact that she was not identified as such until she was a teenager. Her grandparents flee Asia in the beginning of the story, aboard a ship bound for America. They pretend not to know one another and marry during the voyage. They begin their life in Detroit, where the story later moves on to the birth of their son Milton, then Milton's wife and children, Calliope and Chapter Eleven. The family's story passes through the times of prohibition, the Great Depression, and then to Calliope's life in the 1960s-1990s.

Eugenides was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this book, and of course, it became an Oprah Book Club selection, although I am not really too huffy about that in this case, as it provides deserved exposure for a great book. In fact, I think that if you don't like this book, you're probably Michelle Malkin, and you simply can't stand the Greeks.