A Reader's Prejudice
May 18, 2010
I'm a fairly open-minded reader, I think. I read thrillers, mysteries, SF, fantasy, nonfiction, even some so-called mainstream (literary), middle grade and YA, and I even read Freudian Slip by Erica Orloff, which I suppose is classified as romance or women's fiction (and enjoyed it).
So I got my Shelf Awareness newsletter today and the ad at the top is for a book called Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth. And it says:
The Ultimate Secret. The Ultimate Agent.
The President's Vampire.
Now, really, I'm sold on the pitch there. What a cool idea.
But. I. Am. Sick. To. Death. With. Vampires.
How about you? Any prejudices?
posted by Mark Terry at 5:14 AM
5 Comments:
You are? LOL! Have you read any vampire books? Just curious. :-)
My prejudice is zombies. I REALLY hate them messing up my Jane Austen, and WTF are they doing in a novel about Abraham Lincoln, for crying out loud? And in ROMANCES? I mean, SERIOUSLY? I don't care how you spin it, a zombie is NOT sexually attractive.
I'm over zombies, though I'm toying with using zombie-esque baddies in my next book.
I still play with vampires sometimes but I'm sick of them, especially the sparkly kind.
Never been entranced with vampires. Kind of weird because the idea is actually creepy and fascinating but I think the ubiquitous stereotype ruined the concept for me before I was ever really exposed to a depiction that did the concept justice. When we were kids and used to tell each other spooky stories vampires, werewolves and Frankenstein were always out because we were already bored with the cliches. Yet a vampire, met in real life, would be very scary.
Natasha--no, not really. I'm just tired of everywhere I turn there being books about vampires. At the bookstore I did a signing at on Saturday I was next to a table that said New Releases. It was a mass market paperback table and EVERY SINGLE BOOK on it involved vampires or vampires hunters.
As for Pride & Prejudice With Zombies, my son bought it (because he's reading P&P in Honors English next year) and he said the last 50 or 60 pages is boring because there are no zombies in it. :)
I don't get the appeal of zombies either, although I thought the movie Zombieland was pretty damned funny.
SS & Eric,
I'm much more into ghosts and werewolves, I guess, in that I'm interested in any of them. If you ever read Stephen King's Danse Macabre, he notes the three horror archetypes are: vampires (outside evil), werewolves (evil within, ala Jekyll and Hyde), and the monster (Frankenstein). The ghost is a 4th, but tends in literature to represent a narcissistic reflection of the person being haunted (which is interesting, from a psychological POV).
One of the appeals of Vampires, I think, is in King's analysis, and I think he nailed it, ever since Stoker's Dracula the vampire has represented sex, albeit from the neck up. Everything about most vampires represents a seduction and sensuality, but for a certain age group and sensibility, the vampire is safe because, you know, no dicks involved.
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