My Favorite Vampire Books

I spent a good portion of today in a bus full of teenagers and young adults.  We're heading to Omaha, Nebraska for a band trip.  (Why else would anyone go to Omaha?)  The bus smelled, of course, like teenage boys, gym shoes and beef jerky.  I tried to ignore it.  I spent part of the time writing my presentation material for next weekend's theology conference in Ohio (I know. I'm traveling everywhere.) and part of the time reading a new book:

Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahme-Smith (author of another recent favorite, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies)

And I am enjoying it very much.  I frequently read books about American History, and have read several about our esteemed 16th president, and it is fun to see how the fiction of this story weaves in and around the events of reality.  The telling rings true enough that I could will myself to believe it.

Facts

1.  For over 250 years, between 1607 and 1865, vampires thrived in the shadows of America.  Few humans believed in them.
2.  Abraham Lincoln was one of the gifted vampire hunters of his day, and kept a secret journal about his lifelong war against them.

3.  Rumors of the journal's existence have long been a favorite topic among historians and Lincoln biographers.  Most dismiss it as myth.

I'm a little more than half way through it.  I've heard rumors that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is going to become a movie and that sounds cool, but Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter!  Doesn't that just sound like a great movie?  Yes.  The answer is, Yes.

As I've been enjoying this vampire book, I've been thinking about others that I have read and enjoyed or not enjoyed.  Earlier this year I read Dracula: The Undead.  I didn't care for that one so much.  Strike that.  I didn't like it at all. I wanted to, but there was nothing good about it.

99 Coffins by David Wellington in a setting similar to ALVH.  Through a series of flashbacks we follow a unit of vampire soldiers in the Civil War discovered entombed in coffins beneath the Gettysburg battleground.  I've also read Wellington's Monster Island - a zombie novel, and I liked it as well.  I recommend both of these.

I read the entire Twilight series.  I know.  I know. You've just lost all respect for me.  I've lost all credibility.  But if you've been reading this blog in recent months you are aware that I'm quite willing to subject myself to godawful fiction on behalf of others.  I read Stephanie Meyer's books for the young ladies in my Sunday School class.  They were very excited about the series, and when they discovered that I like vampire stories they were quick to suggest them to me - to foist them upon me.  I read them and shared my impressions.  The girls were not impressed with what I had to say.   

There is of course, the great-granddaddy classic: Dracula. I first read this when I was 11.  I was engrossed. I loved it.  I read it late into the night in my basement room by the light of a small bedside lamp. And when I turned the final page, I closed it and started over again. 

In high school I read Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire.  I actually read the entire series, but the only one that I really liked - the only one that really resonated for me was this first volume.  I understood Louis' despair, or at least I thought I did.  I was a gloomy, moody, lonely teenager. 

Stephen King's Salem's Lot is a wonder.  Wow.  Moving the vampire story from the Gothic and Edwardian London and Transylvania to small town America was such a brilliant thing.  We take it for granted now, but it was a bold shift in the vampire story.  No longer were they somewhere over there in cobwebby castles in countries with difficult names.  Now they were here.  I can't read that book without hearing (or re-hearing, rather, in my memory) the music of Gustav Holst The Planets Suite.  I listened to that over and over as I read Salem's Lot and now the two are permanently entwined for me.  I also can't read it without crying a little bit for Father Callahan.  I appreciate very much that he gets to find some redemption in The Dark Tower series.

Another more recent vampire story that I have enjoyed is The Historian the debut novel of Elizabeth Kostova.  I love everything about this book: the attention to historical detail, the slow deliberate pacing of discovery, the connection made between the reader (me) and the characters.  It's a vampire story, a detective story, a Gothic romance, a travelogue, and a historical thriller.  It's great.

Other great ones include I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (which has inspired 3 filmed interpretations, none of which have I enjoyed.)  And - chuckle all you want.  I like it. - Bunnicula by James Howe. That little vampire bunny was so much fun.