Vamps

Hello folks,
A happy first week of December to y'all. I hope that you are doing well. I can tell you that I love hot chocolate and some good Christmas lights, but Xmas is hard on your book slave. Too many great books out there! And then the best of lists start appearing, like the New York Times. Pain, ripping open my bleeding wallet. And then I have to find books for other people. Geez! Life is hard. Also just a gentle reminder to please be nice to your retail representative. Chances are that woman/man who is ringing up your books is actually a person with feelings.

Shout Outs
I just wanted to point out that on the sidebar I've added a new feature. Thanks to those magicians at Google we all can become "followers." While I'm not completely happy with the Orwellian sounding terminology I think it might be fun to interconnect. So become a follower, gentle reader.
And now for something different.

Literary Commentary: Vampires
Tonight I saw the amazing Swedish film Let the Right One In and it was great. I know that vampire stories are all the rage at the moment. I have never been a fan of the genre. Actively avoiding Twilight is incredibly easy when I have wikipedia to fill me in if anyone has questions. I'm not a total vampire snob, I have read Dracula. Here's the thing what I dislike about the genre is when vampirism is played as moody romanticism. Pale, wan, grayish male vampires still need to kill things to survive. That's right vampires are killers. Eternally youthful, yet still killers.

I am more intrigued by vampirism as symbolic of sexual desire. The undertones of sex, blood, and death that are apparent in Stoker are far more interesting. My favorite scene involving the Count is his seduction of Wilhemina Murray. He captures her and bites her. However he decides to create a connection by having her drink his blood. This reappears in Anne Rice's series where vampires are created in the same way.
In any place where there is repression of normal sexuality, than a natural regression occurs. In vampiric lore this took the form of sadism, in particular oral sadism. The act of bloodsucking is linked to sex and creation. No moony teenagers here. Let's put it this way I don't want my vamps Twilight-style.

Have a great weekend! Book Slave.