Sunshine by Robin McKinley

After reading Garden Spells, I read Sunshine by Robin McKinley. I heard about the book on NPR, and immediately recognized the author as the one who wrote my favorite books in high school: Beauty. So of course, I couldn't pass up Sunshine!

And I have to say, I was not disappointed. I love vampire books like the ones written by Anne Rice — darkly sensual stories with lots of detail and the kinds of characters you can fall in love with. And although Sunshine is kind of a different take on vampire fiction — it's about magic and defeating vampires, albeit with a vampire sidekick — it was just as alluring as Anne Rice's best.

Maybe even more so.

Whether or not you are a big fan of vampire fiction, I highly recommend Sunshine. (In fact, I plan on reading it again sometime soon — perhaps when the new edition comes out next month!) As the NPR story indicates, Sunshine is the kind of vampire books that anyone can enjoy — whether or not they are normally a fan of such stories.

Bram Stoker's Dracula

Amazingly, with all of my literature background, and with all of my fascination with Anne Rice's vampire novels, I've never read Bram Stoker's Dracula. I'm now reading the book at last for a book review I'm writing for About.com's Classic Lit site.

I've been surprised by how interesting the book really is. Even though it was written during the height of the Victorian era, the book doesn't seem Victorian at all. The narrative style - the character's journal and letters used to piece together a story in the first person from multiple points of view - is pretty typical of the era, though. (Case in point - Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, etc.)

Of course, the narration is a little wordy at times, but it's still an amazingly dark (and sexual, in parts!) story for the time period.