Fun with the Undead.

I just finished the dazzling 2005 novel by Elizabeth Kostova entitled "The Historian." A true gem of a Vampire novel, in the sea of fairy tale worthy vampire hunks. This novel will reintroduce you to the dark side of the lore and legend of the Vampire. It draws heavily from Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and also several actual (and some fictional) historical documents chronicling the history of the folklore of Vampires.

The book is also sexy. It's sexy, not only because it takes you back in time a little, spanning from the 1930s-1970s, but into these particular scholars worlds, who have not yet felt the wild impulses of the sexual revolution. The girl who dates herself as having been a teenager in the 70s even lets us know how particular odd this was for her, even if it isn't so odd for the older characters. The desire is palpable but the intellectual respect and outright innocence of assumption is startling. There is one passage where Paul, a main character, is staying at a monastery with his female traveling companion and fellow scholar, Helen, and he has just proposed to her the night before. He hesitates before entering her cell, but then says that he suddenly remembered that she was his fiancee, and he felt that it was right to go in and kiss her good morning. For God's sake, how sexy is that? The innocent hesitation at one's own fiancee? His love for her surpassed a sexual habit. He knew her enough to ask her to be his wife; he did not need to sleep with her to know that.

And there's a lot of good old fashioned eerie tomb digging, ancient artifact finding, bloodsucking/ demon creating, silver stake in the heart driving, Vampire fun.

A fun question for those who have read or plan to read the book: Who exactly do you think Kostova is referring to in the title? Or is she referring to anyone particularly at all? I have my thoughts, tell me yours!

A Quick Note

I just found out that I am going to be listed as the co-author of a text book. I figured that Facebook was too immature of a place to go shouting about it, so I'd just write about it here. I was hired for the summer to help Dr. Susan Kattwinkel edit and prepare her textbook that is basically an "Introduction to College" textbook for freshman in First Year programs at the College of Charleston. For 3-ish months I sent out e-mails to various CofC representatives to ensure that we could use certain material, searched the Kendall-Hunt website for non-offensive Health sections (I will tangent on this in a second), and, most importantly, wrote small sections and created exercises/ worksheets. These exercises included scavenger hunts, money management, time management, and my favorite, how to write a paper for college. I assumed that I would be listed as an editing assistant or intern, but an e-mail from Susan a couple of days ago informed me that I would be listed as the co-author and that she would send me the information for my resume. I thought that this was pretty swell, and wanted to share. Huzzah!

*Health Sections that generally screamed NO SEX EVER multiple times. They argued that having sex could add stress to your college workload. I think that healthy relationships lend themselves to healthy, stress relieving sex. Maybe they should have told the kids about building healthy relationships, and then having as much sex as possible.