Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

****THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW****

 "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal... Except for vampires..."

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is not only a cool title, but also a cool concept.  I have not read Grahame-Smith's 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies', which also sounds cool, but after reading this book, I will def pick it up. I know this book may seem ridiculous to most, I will admit when I 1st saw it, I was like; "Yeah I'm not reading that".  I'm glad I changed my mind.  It absolutely blew my expectations away.  It was well written and fun to read.  Grahame-Smith does a fantastic job of intertwining historical facts with fantastical fiction.  He could have taken the story and made it silly, but he didn't.  He wrote it so straight-faced that I found myself at times thinking the non-fiction parts were true!  The historical part was just fantastic.  I never realized how little I knew of our 16th president and the dramatic life he lived.  As Grahame-Smith said himself on the Acknowledgement page; "And finally, to Abe--for living a life that hardly needed vampires to make it incredible...".  Grahame-Smith wasn't joking.  Abe experienced the death of his mother at an early age; he realizes his father wasn't the great man he had once believed; Abe lost 3 sons to early deaths, his betrothed (Ann Rutledge) died before they married; his wife (Mary Todd) fell to mental instability due to the loss of their 3 sons; he started a business and it failed.  He ran for congress and lost, he battled deep depression (from his journal he wrote of suicide more than once), and so much more.  Despite all these tragedies, setbacks, trials, Lincoln forged ahead with a strength of character and tenacity not seen in these times.  He lead a country through a war that would pit countrymen vs countrymen, brother vs brother all to do the right thing, to free people from tyranny and enslavement.  He went against the majority and never wavered, never compromised his values.  Now throw in the fiction to sweeten the pot.  Abe loses his mother to a cruel creature, vampire.  Vampires have fled Europe, for they were being hunted by Europeans for centuries, to come to America and take over the "New World".  They loved America for its cruelty toward man, black slaves.  The Union is really a group of good vampires out to rid America of the bad vampires.  Grahame-Smith goes on to "document" how if the North lost the civil war, not only would blacks remain in servitude, but ALL men/women/children would be enslaved by their new masters, vampires.  I love the connections of other iconic Americans.  Abe meets Edgar Allen Poe in Louisiana, Jefferson Davis is an evil human, helping the vampire race to enslave his own race, Henry Sturges is one of the good vampires and becomes Abe's closest and most trusted friend despite Abe's overwhelming hate for vampires and of course John Wilkes Booth, famous actor, ladies man, assassin, vampire.  I found myself hoping for something to intervene with Booth's cowardly deed, that somehow the assassination doesn't take place, but of course as we all know our history and it does indeed happen.  The only thing I will say didn't ring true, was the end.  I knew what the end was going to be, or rather I suspected what the end would be.  Throughout the book every time Abe lost a loved one, Henry Sturges offered to bring them back by turning them vampire, to which Lincoln always declined, so from that foreshadowing one could infer that Abe is coming back as a vampire.  What doesn't ring true is that throughout this entire book the reader is privy to Abe's extreme hate for the vampire race, so would he really come back as one?  I'm nitpicking of course, but I would be remiss not to mention it.  Overall an excellent read and I encourage everyone to read it.  It won't disappoint you, unless you are a vampire sympathizer, then you may not like it. :)   I rate it **** out of 4.  Stay Booked! Happy Reading!

Anthem by Ayn Rand

"Know what you want in life and go after it. I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities..."
This was my 1st Ayn Rand book, which happens to be the 2nd she wrote.  I loved it!  It is definitely a thinking person's book.  Rand has a subdued but powerful voice, one of poignancy and directness.  One can feel the passion in her prose.  She affects the reader by engrossing us in story but more so in her character development.  Her intention in this book (and really in all her books) is one of individualism.  The fight against propaganda and collectivism.  Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1905 and witnessed atrocities none of us could fathom.  But it is about individualism and Objectivism that she is impassioned about most. "Ayn Rand named her philosophy 'Objectivism'.  Objectivism is an integrated system of thought that defines the abstract principles by which a man must think and act if he is to live the life proper to man".
Anthem emboldens that philosophy.  Rand's original title was Ego; "I used the word in its exact, literal meaning.  I did not mean a symbol of the self--but specifically and actually Man's Self".  From the Introduction of Anthem: One correspondent at the time warned Miss Rand that there are people for whom the word "ego" is 'too strong--even immoral'.  She replied: "Why, of course there are.  Against whom do you suppose the book was wirtten?"
My synopsis: Anthem is set in a unknown future and in it there is no "I" or "me" only "We".  Characters have no names, but numbers and refer to themselves in plural form "We were not meant for any other work", instead of "I was not meant for any other work".  Our hero, Equality 7-2521, struggles with his identity as a collective whole after discovering a long forgotten passage to a forbidden tunnel.  This leads to a series of events that ultimately lead him to become an outcast, a traitor, a dissident.  Along the way he falls in love (which is also forbidden-all love, all relationships are non-existent except love for the 'whole') with Liberty 5-3000 who also questions the collectivism.  After Equality 7-2521 is condemned for breaking the rules, he flees into the forbidden forest and shortly after Liberty 5-3000 follows and finds him.  They go off to discover their new world and happen upon an abandoned house which has many books and they discover the old ways of the world, the individual.  They discover people had names and so they rename themselves, he Prometheus and she Gaea, respectively.  Gaea becomes pregnant and Prometheus begins plans to strengthen their new world and to rescue friends they left behind.  But this isn't a rescue story save the rescue of ones self.  This is a short but powerful novel and I highly recommend it.  My review does not do it justice at all, for that I apologize, but believe me when I say it is a well written, supremely character driven & thought provoking work of literary art.

New Book Reviews Coming Soon...

I've been lax in updating my blog, but in all fairness I do also have a book club on FB that keeps me busy not too mention the reading and working and life, etc.  Lol.  But I will have a review of Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King and a review of the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series coming soon as well.  Stay Booked! Happy Reading!

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again..."

Wow.  Seriously wow.  What a great novel. "Winner of the Anthony Award for the best novel of the century", is well deserved.  Mrs. Danvers has to be one of the best antagonists in literary history.  What a scary, diabolical woman.  She is scarier than any current horror movie could ever be.  Having seen the movie prior to reading the novel, I knew what to expect but it still captivated me and drew me in.  Du Maurier's charming prose is wistful, suspenseful, haunting and to be cherished.  It's a novel to be savoured like a fine wine or meal, not like most of today's novels, that feel so rushed.  I can only assume because readers today don't appreciate fine storytelling.  In our fast food, fast internet, text messaging, Water for Elephants novel age, it seems we don't have the attention span to be drawn in to a real, engrossing story.  Du Maurier's well drawn out details and beautiful words paint the scenes vividly and the mind's blank canvas quickly fills with her imagery.  Having read the novel and watched Hitchcock's masterpiece only furthers his genius to me.  He made this beautiful novel into a beautiful film that just isn't seen these days.  Two classics and both the movie is a must see & the book is a must read.  I rate it ****.  Don't deprive yourself of this literary gem.

****DON'T READ THIS PART UNTIL AFTER YOU'VE READ THE NOVEL...****  Another extraordinary trait to the novel is the heroine has no name.  Daphne cleverly writes the entire novel in first person, never at one time giving us the 'new' Mrs. de Winter's first name.  I have to admit that it didn't even occur to me until I finished the book and read the Author's Notes; "I continue to receive letters from all over the world asking me what I based the story on, and the characters, and why did I never give the heroine a Christian name?"  As soon as I read that, I immediately flipped through the book, convinced I had read her first name somewhere!  But it was to no avail. Very cleverly done. I say not to read this part until after you've read the novel only b/c I would hate to ruin something like that for you, dear reader.  Instead of being pleasantly surprised you would be concentrating on finding the name that isn't there.

Water for Elephants, a JaSexxy review...

**** THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW****

Well I want to say that this book was amazing! A must read!  A modern classic!  But sadly I can say none of those things.  I started off with high expectations and came away with, eh, it was good.  It started off with such promise, what a  great premise; 1930's carnival life and elephants!  How cool is that!  But what I got was a watered down version of what I expected.  No pun intended.  The problem with the story is it lacked substance.  There was no meat on the bones, instead of a turkey leg, I got a chicken wing.  There was very little story development and even less character development.  We get a cliffs notes summarized background of maybe 5-6 characters, 3 of them being the main characters in a slipshod manner.  Rosie, the elephant, was in the story sparingly and I think she was in it more to justify the title than anything else.  Now I'm not saying she was only mentioned once or twice, but in all honesty I think she was mentioned more as an outlet for August's anger and to build some schmaltzy sympathy from the reader.  The chapters go by quick and for good reason, to keep the reader from realizing there is no substance to what they are reading.  Not only did the characters have a summarized history, but the entire book felt summarized.  It felt like Gruen threw the book together in one night.  Here I'll give you the entire book; Jacob, a Pollock, is studying at Cornell to become a vet, like his father; his parents die, he loses home to bank; he goes back to school only to run out of his final exams and jump a train, a circus train; gets a job; falls in love with his boss's (August, who is abusive, shocker) wife, Marlena; she falls for him, trouble ensues, bad guy dies, couple goes off and lives happy, happy.  We're being told all this through flashbacks from 90 something year old Jacob, ala The Green Mile.  He's in a living assisted facility,his wife is dead, he's unhappy, he's losing his mind, he's not losing his mind, his kids, grand-kids don't see him enough, and so on.  I did enjoy the supporting characters even though they were there just for show and to later try and draw on our heart strings. Gruen creates a scenario where Jacob and August throw down, both are severely beaten and Marlena ends up with a black eye.  Jacob can't see out of one eye, can't focus and gets dizzy from just opening his one eye, despite that he climbs to the top of a moving  train, jumps cars (all with a knife clenched in his teeth) to get to Augusts' car and kill him.  What sense does that make?  Even if we are to believe Jacob did all these train acrobatics all banged up and in the middle of the night mind you, who wouldn't suspect him to be the killer?  They just had a knock out fight and there were rumors that Jacob and Marlena were having an affair (which they hadn't yet, only kissed and exchanged adolescent glances).  The only suspects would be Marlena or himself.  And when he gets there he doesn't even kill August!  He leaves the knife on the pillow to scare him.  Which no reference is even made to the knife nor the effect it had on August anywhere after that scene.  No, the only reason for this scene was so that Gruen could have Jacob's 2 buddies, Camel & Kinko(Walter) thrown from the train and create some predictable tug your heart strings sympathy moment from the reader, which it did not, at least not for me.  It actually just annoyed me.
It wasn't all bad.  There were some really funny lines and ultimately was captivating enough to keep me reading it.  It was cool to read about circus life back in it's heyday and as I said I did like the supporting characters. There was so much potential with this story and it's a shame it wasn't fleshed out more.
I won't categorize it in Fluff Lit, but I will put it in Fast Food Lit.  It's quick, serves its purpose, but in the end just isn't satisfying. I'd give it *** (out 5*'s), b/c popularity of the book deems it should be, but for me it's more like ** maybe **1/2.
As always I encourage everyone to read it themselves and form their own opinion, this is just what I thought and books, as all art forms, are subjective. Happy reading!

The greats...

So I was thinking of classic lit, or more so stoic authors. I think with authors like Hemingway, Nin, Miller, Dostoevsky, Bukowski, Rand and their ilk, you have to read them from the beginning of their works, to read out of order is disservice to them and as a reader. You read their 1st work, novice, finding their voice, but you sense the greatness lurking there, then progress to where they've settled into themselves, found their voice; then you get to where they've not only found their voice, but are now using it, compelling the reader, daring the reader, exhilarating the reader; then their slow descent either into madness or the ego or both. Or even more tragic into mediocrity.
At least that's just my opinion. I think that's why I put off the greats, I need to be ready! :)

162 of 200

Haven't posted in awhile, sorry, I know all 8 of you must have been so lonely without me!

Still far from my goal, but getting ever closer!
Books
160: FaeFever
161: The Water Room
162: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh
All read! Working on 163: The Continual Condition & 164: Smoke & Mirrors  right now. I will be taking on Full Dark, No Stars this weekend. I'm a huge Stephen King fan and one of my best friends, who is also a SK fan, told me it was great.

Bah Humbug!

I have just bought A Christmas Carol by Dickens. (which also includes The Chimes & The Cricket on the Hearth - $6 - Gotta love B&N classic books!).  I have set aside BloodFever which I am almost done with, in order to read Dickens's timeless classic.  Now I must admit, ashamedly so, that I have never read this book. I know, I know, but I just never got around to it.  But that changes this year!  I will make it a tradition to read it every year, as I read The Raven by Poe every Halloween.  If you've read A Christmas Carol, please share your thoughts on it, if you haven't I'll be telling you about it soon enough. :)

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed..

 After over a decade of being part of this Ka-tet, my journey has come to its end
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed..
This was the 1st line of the 1st book in the greatest adventure I've ever read and quite possibly one of the best opening lines in a book ever. The Gunslinger, the 1st book of 7 in the epic tale of  the Dark Tower was written by Sai Stephen King back in 1970. He wrote 7 DT books from 1970- 2004.
I should've prefaced this with how big a SK fan I am. I have read 90% of his works. I must admit though that I never had any interest in the Dark Tower series. Then I read 'The Stand', one of King's best books, quite possibly the best he's ever written and one of my all time favourite books. I found out that the DT books had a connection to 'The Stand' and also one of my other favourite SK books, 'The Eyes of the Dragon'.  Loving those books as much as I did, I decided I had to give the DT tale a try.  I started reading them in the mid 90's.  After reading the 1st 4 books, I was so mad at myself for having waited so long to start.  From page one of the 1st book I was no longer a reader, but a participant in a fantastical journey of obsession, murder, intrigue, betrayal, undying friendship, pure love, monsters (both human and fantastical), devotion, death (both warranted and necessary of both good and bad characters), villainy, heroism and destiny. An adventure that enslaved me and drew me into, as if I had no choice in the matter.  Whenever the new tale came out, I bought it and read it immediately, greedily, like a junkie getting his overdue fix.  It sounds silly, yes?  But if you've read this tale then you know what I am talking about. If you haven't, I suggest you began. But I caution you, you will not ever want it to end.  I've been reading the last book for 6yrs.  Not because it's terrible, but because to read that final page was like coming to the end of a special relationship.  You know it's coming, but you don't want to face it.  I am both sad and elated that I have come to the end of the journey and not be disappointed with its finale.  Truly remarkable epic tale and may it do ya, I say thank ya Sai King.

JaSexxy's Road to Reading 200 Books

Yellow Book Road to 200

Good book day, everyone! 

At the end of 2010 I had reached 159 books read, so in 2011 I wanted to attempt reaching 200 books read.  The below is a list of the books read in 2011 and the corresponding number in which they were read.  I'm happy to say I not only reach my boal, but exceeded it!

160.  The Water Room (Peculiar Crimes Unit #2)

161.  Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh

162.  FaeFever (Fever.3)
163.  The Continual Condition: Poems
164.  Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions
165.  Water For Elephants
166.  Rebecca
167.  DreamFever (Fever.4)
168.  Full Dark, No Stars
169.  High Fidelity
170.  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide.1)
171.  The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide.2)

172.  Life, the Universe and Everything (Hitchhiker's Guide.3)

173.  So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide.4)
174.  Anthem
175. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.1)
176.  The Hunger Games (Hunger Games.1)
177.  The Catcher in the Rye
178.  Catching Fire (Hunger Games.2)
179.  Mockingjay (Hunger Games.3)
180.  We the Living
181.  To Kill a Mockingbird
182.  World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
183.  Bossypants
184.  The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
185.  Delta of Venus
186.  Into the Wild
187.  The Thief of Always
188.  Darkly Dreaming Dexter (Dexter.1)
189.  Dearly Devoted Dexter (Dexter.2)
190.  The Walking Dead: Days Gone By (TWD.1)
191.  The Three Musketeers
192.  The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead
193.  Zombie In Love
194.  The Hellbound Heart
195.  Mister B. Gone
196.  The Walking Dead: Miles Behind Us (TWD.2)
197.  The Walking Dead: Safety Behind Bars (TWD.3)
198.  The Walking Dead: The Heart's Desire (TWD.4)
199.  The Walking Dead: The Best Defense (TWD.5)
200.  Loving Frank
201.  The Walking Dead: The Sorrowful Life (TWD.6)
202.  The Walking Dead: The Calm Before (TWD.7)
203.  The Walking Dead: Made to Suffer (TWD.8)
203.  The Walking Dead: Here We Remain (TWD.9)
204.  The Walking Dead: What We Become (TWD.10)
205.  Fight Club
206.  The Walking Dead: Fear the Hunters (TWD.11)
207.  The Walking Dead: Life Among Them (TWD.12)
208.  The Rum Diary

It was a great book-year!  Some amazing book adventures.  Some were eh.  But overall a great year for reading.  I've read over 350 books as of 2020 and will be counting down to book read number 400 (ETA 2021)!

Stay Booked! Happy Reading!