A Belated Friday 13 Post

I have written about Friday 13 before, so won't go into the background. Go check out my earlier post here. Yesterday I cheerfully mentioned it in class. One student said, "Would you stop talking about that!" Later I discovered it was her birthday. No wonder she was upset!

So let's just waffle about books with appropriate themes.

I've just started rereading Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. My ebook edition has an intro about all those old, battered copies they were brought to sign, indicating they had been well loved, and, for some reason, a copy that the owner had put on black velvet in an elaborate box made especially for it. They didn't ask.

A wonderful book I've read over and over - a send-up, of course, of The Omen, in which the Anti-Christ baby goes to the wrong family. But it has fun with plenty of other deadly serious horror fiction.  And, o joy, I've just read that not only is it finally being made into a movie(or TV series), but the role of the cool demon Crowley has been perfectly cast with David Tennant! I've seen a picture of him and Azirophale and he is just right for the role! Wonder if he'll do it with his own Scottish accent? There was a touch of Scottish in his Benedick, but on the whole, he seems to have to go English for most roles.

Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin(mortal woman bears the Devil'd child)is not as scary as I had thought it might be, but it does bring horror to the home front, instead of somewhere in Transylvania, as had always been the way of things before it. Maybe that, and not the Satan stuff, is what's scary. The author wrote some much scarier novels, as far as I'm concerned. The Boys From Brazil, in which someone is creating clones of Hitler - brr! And The Stepford Wives, in which women's husbands, in a small town, are killing them and replacing them with androids who stick to housework.

But speaking of Transylvania(I was), I found Dracula much easier reading than I'd thought it might be. It was written in letters and diary entries, so short, and the novel itself was not all that long. And it was scary! You'd mutter, "No, you idiot, leave the garlic in place! Don't open the window!" And she does, of course, and that's the end of her. 

Terry Pratchett has great fun sending up the vampire genre in Carpe Jugulum, in which a family of vampires takes over the tiny mountain kingdom of Lancre, due to an invitation to the royal infant's christening. That counts as inviting a vampire in. And these vampires believe in being all modern, like in those vampire novels where the camp wears his hair in a ponytail and suffers angst. They make the mistake of challenging top witch Granny Weatherwax and find themselves craving tea...

There are other vampires in the series, such as Black Ribboner Otto Chriek, who has given up blood drinking and who loves light. But he is an iconographer for the Ankh Morpork Times and falls to dust every time he takes a picture. Eventually, he gets into the habit of wearing a small bottle of blood when he works, which breaks and lets him come back without relying on anyone else's kindness. 

And there's Lady Margolotta from the Discworld Transylvania, Uberwald(means the same thing) who has replaced her addiction for blood with one for cigarettes. 

Dan Simmons' vampires, in Carrion Comfort, are vampires of the mind, who can control and manipulate others. They are truly evil, and one of them is a Nazi. It was very very good, and I went on to read some of his other books, but it put me off horror fiction, as characters I cared about were killed off. (Are you listening, Mr Martin? And by the way, I like Fevre Dream, your vampire novel, much better than the Game of Thrones series)

This author also wrote Children Of The Night, in which the historical Dracula is still around. He has gone off blood drinking and thrown himself into starting a business empire. He thinks the Stoker novel is dumb. And he's fed up with his family and planning to blow them all up, perhaps the only way to get rid of them. See, these vampires are not undead. They have an extra organ that processes blood and re-builds their cells. 

I confess to not giving read a lot of Stephen King, mostly his short fiction, and I do enjoy his non fiction, but his novel Misery was truly terrifying, especially for a writer. It has no fantastical elements as far as I recall, but it's as scary as any horror novel. In it, a historical novelist has been writing a series about a character called Misery. He has had enough and has written one last novel in which he has killed off his heroine. After an accident, he is rescued by a qualified nurse who is a huge fan of the series...and not at all pleased to find out the series is over...

Look, I could go on and on, but I won't. Instead, I'll invite anyone who reads this to suggest some other Friday 13 titles. Hope you had a great day!