Current guilty pleasure

I feel somewhat embarrassed to admit this but, I am listening to Stephanie Meyer's Twilight.

Yes, it is a young adult book. However, I have an extreme weakness for vampire fiction. The Anne Rice vampire series books are some of my favorite all time reads.

I decided to read the Twilight series months and months ago, before I heard they were making a movie out of the first book. Then an office mate, who isn't a big reader, told me how obsessed she was with the books a few weeks ago. She read all four of them in a week. So, since I had already picked up the first one on CD I decided that now was the time to listen to it, before going to see the movie.

Twilight is a truly engaging book. It's not 'fine literature' by any stretch of the imagination. However, I can't wait to get back in the car to listen to the next 50-60 minutes of the story.

I have already picked up the next title, New Moon. Books three and four are on my Amazon wish list for Xmas. And, I'm already anticipating Stephanie Meyer's next book, which tells the story from the vampire's point of view (the first four tell the tale from human Bella's point of view).

I periodically allow myself a foray into young adult fiction. The last series was James Patterson's Maximum Ride books. Those were pretty good, but they seem shallow and poorly executed in comparison.

So, if you like a good vampire story and aren't too embarrassed to be caught reading a YA book, I highly recommend Twilight.

The latest vampire movie

When October comes along I have a tendency to read and watch horror. Because of school commitments, I have kind of fallen down on the job in the reading department. Also, as I've gotten older, I've grown a lot pickier about what kind of horror I'm willing to subject myself to.

My mature sensibilities (ha ha) require that the horror have some sort of supernatural aspect to it. I am not interested in psychos or serial killers or anything entirely plausible to the scientific/logical mind. Real life can be disturbing enough, and I don't need to dwell on something that actually could occur. This still leaves a great deal on the table.

This weekend we rented "White Noise", simply because we'd seen a commercial for "White Noise 2" which intrigued us. We figured we'd better watch the first one before committing to the second one. The first one stars Michael Keaton as a recently widowed man who is still seriously grieving his wife after six months. He discovers a means of seeing the dead through the 'white noise' of off-air radio or television stations. It was interesting and a little bit creepy. Recommended if you like horror.

Tonight, we went to see "30 Days of Night," the latest in vampire flicks. I LOVE vampire flicks and books. This one took a slight step off the path, which was refreshing. The setting is a little town in the way north of Alaska where the sun disappears for 30 days (every vampire's fantasy). Just prior to the setting of the sun for the month, the majority of residents bug-out. And, at the eleventh hour, some odd things start catching the attention of the local sheriff (Josh Hartnett). He and his deputy find a huge pile of cell phones melted on a roadside just outside of town. Then, all the sled dogs in town are killed. Finally, the satellite/telephone substation is destroyed and the caretaker decapitated. Sadly, this last bit happens after the last airplane leaves the airstrip out of town. With 153 residents left in town for the dark month, it's a virtual vampiric buffet.

Overall, "30 Days of Night" is a pretty good horror flick. The vampires are not sympathetic in any way. They don't even speak English, so we get all of their lines in subtitles. My only real quibble with the movie is during the transition from human to vampire, the teeth of a new vampire are pretty different from the human form and there is no spitting out of the useless flat-edged human teeth. Suddenly, they're just this mouthful of fierce canine-like weapons (which is pretty cool - these are not your grandma's vampires).

If you are into horror, particularly vampire stuff, I totally recommend this indulgence.