I can understand it, appreciate it even, the insane obsessiveness of the combination fangs + hot guys that is vampires. Being a fan of the fantasy genre myself, I am genuinely happy that this wave of undead heroes has brought more supernatural and out-of-this-world literature to the spot light. However, that’s also where my appreciation start to diminish.
I would classify myself as fairly open-minded when it comes to literature — as a child I would read anything I could get my hands on, I always preferred reading a book over playing with other children (my parents feared I had no social antenna) and my close friends usually like to tease me with reminding me that I’ve probably read half of the local library — but I can’t help but frown whenever I stand in front of the top 10 shelves in book shops. About half of the space is occupied by a variation of paranormal romance, and being the romantic sucker myself I should rightfully be thrilled; but I’m not. Picking up a title with anything suggesting vampires makes me feel slightly uncomfortable as I’ve never been a big fan of paranormal creatures such as vampires and werevolves. Don’t get me wrong though, I won’t disregard the books just because of that dislike. Like I said, I’m fairly open-minded so I will still bring the books over to the counter and dish out the cash.
There are a few vampire series that I think are fabulous such as The Morganville Vampires and the Darren Shan saga, and I used to be such a big fan of Twilight as well. With that said I believe it was the well-developed characters that got me sucked into the story (alright, no more bad puns) and not the fact that there were vampires present. I’m pretty sure that had you replaced the vampires with some other badasses it would still have been great.
Don’t worry though, I’m working on it. For now I will feel uncomfortable whenever there’s a vampire title in my hands, but I will still give it a try.
On a different note; I know I’ve been rather absent from this blog and perhaps too lively on facebook, but that’s only because I use facebook as my update space of what’s going on in my life while KIYU-SHII.NET is reserved for thoughts on different subjects. Of course I will occassionally sprinkle it up with some casual updates about my life because some of my friends from Norway don’t have facebook, but in general I like to think of this blog as my quality space ;)
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Tags: books, Fantasy, paranormal, Romance, uncomfortable, vampire, vampires
What I’d prefer in the vampire genre are the more Dracula-esque bunch, rather than the sparkly vegetarian Edward Cullen-bunch, hahaha :) Even in my anime/manga obsession years, I couldn’t maintain interest in the Twilight of the manga world, Vampire Knight.
Like you, I was a childhood bookworm! But I’ve actually never been a fan of Twilight. I picked up the book about a year before it became a huge pop culture phenomenon, and I found it extremely tedious to read… it was badly-written and Bella had a little more personality than a block of wood. She was such a flat character that seemed to fall more into the Mary-Sue range :S
I don’t have you added on facebook but I always find your blog entries a joy to read! :D
Understandable, very understandable. Ah, cheers to being a child bookworm! We are awesome <3 Please tell me your top 5 (you can add more if it’s impossible to only pick 5) all time favourite books/book series?
Haha we totally are! My top 5 would be:
1. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
(This is my absolute FAVORITE book of all time, I’ve re-read it countless times! I just adore everything about it)
2. Harry Potter series
3. The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
What I couldn’t get enough of as a kid was the fantasy genre of dragons, fairies, etc… sadly literature seems to outgrow this genre, it was harder to come along those kinds of books as I got older :(