What to Read Instead of the New Stephanie Meyer Book

To those who received a spam message from my email account yesterday, apologies. I blame it on my possessed computer at school...

Negativity is a big draw. I know from personal experience: the largest number of hits to this blog in a single day occurred when I posted a nasty note. Go figure.

I don't like negative, despite the marketing potential. Really. It's been my goal to keep things smiley, but WHAM, there it was all over Amazon.com: The Short, Second Life of Bree Tanner: (wait for it...) An Eclipse Novella.

Right. Hold me back before I buy fifteen copies. At the risk of alienating all the preteen girls who are obviously my potential fan base, I present:

Five Books to Read Rather Than The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner.

1-3: Three Vampire Tales (New Riverside Editions)

You can snag three great classics of vampire literature in one volume. If you claim to be a vampire aficionado and haven't read Dracula, I wag my finger at you. In fact, I've handed many of my students (who have devoured the Twilight books) a copy of Dracula and they couldn't finish it. Bah.

Pick up Three Vampire Tales, and you also have Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu and The Vampyre by John Polidori at your fingertips. Say you like the romance in Twilight? Who is sexier than the female titular character in Carmilla?

4. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Yeah, I didn't like the movie either, but this book puts the whole "vampire" thing in crazy perspective. Do you like bonafide twists in your endings? Brace yourself for the final denouement in Legend. Nothing is creepier than Neville's neighbor, the now-a-vampire Ben Cortman, shouting "Come Out, Neville!" all night long.

5. Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon

Did I mention romance? I mean, Some of Your Blood is a romance at heart, right? Not to mention one of the few books I actually put down at the end and felt a legitimate chill in my gut. Sturgeon takes the reader on a crazy ride in this one. Find a copy (if you can...I think it's out of print again).

And those of you who vote "at least they're reading" when they read Twilight, well, fine. And my track & field team is practicing on six-inch high hurdles.

I Am Legend (Ruined...again)

Ok. I Am Legend, a seminal work in the speculative fiction field. A weird tale for the ages, bits and pieces of science fiction, horror, fantasy, and just plain oddness wrapped tightly in a nice little ironic package by the master Richard Matheson.

Then Hollywood digs its gnarly hands into the story and destroys it. I had high hopes--Will Smith aside--that this incarnation of the classic novella would come close to the original, that feeling of "ohhhhh..." that hit when reading the last page.

Nope. Hollywood intervenes with another martyr/cowboy ending, and Robert Neville goes out in a blaze of glory. No irony. No thought. No "ah-ha" moment for the hungry Matheson fan.

I'm tired of Hollywood selling us the same "good guys win in the end" story and pretending it's something new.

Oh...by the way...spoiler alert. I guess that should have gone first--just like somebody should have warned me about the movie...