Carrie

There have been two different versions of the movie Carrie made. The first one starring Sissy Spacek in the lead role came out about a year after the publication of the book of the same name by Stephen King. The other was a made-for-TV-movie released in 2002. I have seen both, despite greatly disliking horror films. The more recent version followed the structure of the book, flipping frequently between the present and past which I can imagine would be hard to follow if you had never read the book. The original film which came out in 1976 followed the story of Carrie White chronologically from the beginning of her getting her first period in the shower to her eventual demise after destroying the entirely of her little town. I enjoyed how the first film in my opinion more accurately portrayed her religiously fanatical mother with all the hidden symbolism (most specifically her final pose in death resembling that of the Jesus statue that Carrie was forced to pray in front of.)

Carrie was the first published novel of the great American horror author Stephen King. He has been my favourite author since I was 14 years old. My Nana’s (dad’s mom) always had an entire bookshelf covered in his novels, but my mom discouraged me from reading them as she knew how poorly I responded to horror films. In Grade 9 however, I needed to pick a book to do a book report during the winter semester. I wound up stumbling across a yard sale and a beaten copy of Firestarter by Stephen King. It cost all of 50 cents so I figured even if the book was garbage; I hadn’t spent a large sum of money on it. Firestarter (also a movie starring a young Drew Barrymore) wound up being the best book I had read in a long time. It was an intriguing story about a little girl named Charlene (Charlie to her father) who had the uncanny ability to start fire with her mind, often when she got angry. She and her father were on the run from a group of scientists who her father feared were going to capture her and perform experiments on her, to test her limits and treat her like a lab rat. After that, I was hooked. I checked out Christine, Rose Madder and It from my high school’s library the day I handed in my book report.

Paranormal activities, the supernatural and the unknown are all common trends in works of King. While Carrie is telekinetic, Charlie is pyrokinetic, Christine is a possessed car, Salem’s Lot is about a town gradually all becoming vampires, It is about a murderous clown that haunts a group of children, Needful Things has the devil as a shop keeper who sells people’s lives for pennies, and The Tommyknockers has an aspiring writer who is able to channel vibes from the alien spaceship she discovers in her yard. I have read all 56 of his novels, with the exception of his three most recent ones: Full Dark, No Stars, Lisey’s Story and Duma Key. His autobiography On Writing provides a very enlightening account of his early ventures into writing. “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write,” is my favourite quote from the book. His persistence at becoming a published author was absolutely admirable – even he, the great Stephen King received thousands of rejection slips from magazines and publishing companies.

Mr. King also didn’t have the easiest life growing up. His father was out of the picture at a very young age and he was raised by his mother who worked multiple jobs to put food on the table. He was an awkward and goofy kid in school, but he was well-read and well-educated and for that, the other kids respected him. He did his degree in English at the University of Maine, where he would meet his future wife Tabitha Spruce. Although a certified teacher, he was unable to find work and wound up having to work several garbage jobs, including at a laundromat just to prevent the heat from being turned off. He continued to write, getting articles and short stories published in Playboy, Cavalier and other men’s magazines. King and his new wife were juggling two young children and were barely making ends meet when he finally succeeded in getting his transcript of Carrie approved for publication.

The publication and success didn’t remedy all his problems however. With money came access to drugs. For many years King was heavily addicted to cocaine and alcohol. In his autobiography he wrote that he had no memory of writing Cujo (one of his favourite novels) because he was so intoxicated. He truly is a fascinating character and a wonderful author. For those of you who haven’t watched it yet, you should have a listen on YouTube with Stephen King bashing Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, it’s absolutely hilarious. When a man of that caliber and experience level says you’re garbage, you likely are. He has read more books than I’m sure most people could even imagine and as an acclaimed and decorated author, he has penmanship and writing skills oozing out of his pores. I would love to get a chance to meet him and have him autograph a copy of either Christine or Needful Things (my two favourite books). I have been to Maine (the birthplace, current residence, and state where the vast majority of his books take place) and would love to go back.

One of the most useful writing tips I took away from King’s autobiography On Writing was to write about what you know. This blog pertains to things in my life that I know only all too well. You won’t be seeing blogs about football, the economic crisis or computers I’m afraid. When people write about things they know nothing about, it shows.

The Little Mermaid

I am a ginger. Admittedly with age my stunning ginger coloured hair darkened, so now I am more of a cinnamon colour, but that is not the point of this blog. Even when I was little I recognized that not many other kids had the same colour hair as me. In fact, redheads make up only about 4% of the population worldwide, the rarest colour by a substantial margin. My favourite Disney princess has always been Ariel from The Little Mermaid, as she was the only one that had red hair. The Little Mermaid also had some of the most catchy and well known songs: Under the Sea, Part of Your World and Kiss the Girl.

Redheads endure piles of stereotypes. Due to the propagation of pop culture, namely several episodes of South Park, redheads are supposed to have no souls. We are all supposed to be short-tempered and crazy in bed with insatiable libidos. I have been hit on by many guys, largely based on the colour of my hair. We are rare and elusive which makes us a hot commodity I guess? In the middle ages, women with red hair were singled out as witches, as they had the same colour hair as Satan himself. They were seen as using their red hair to tempt and seduce men, further propagating the sexual connection to women with red hair. Redheads have a whole slew of nicknames as well, from Carrot Top, to Firecrotch. The whole “does the carpet match the drapes?” has been far too over asked.

Another interesting tidbit I discovered more recently was that there is genetic link between red hair and pain tolerance. Scientists are still working on the exact cause, but for whatever reason, people with red hair have a higher threshold of pain. Redheaded women experience less pain during labour than their brunette and blonde counterparts. While I have never given birth, I can attest to this pain tolerance. I have three tattoos (and hopefully three more to come), two on my back and one on my foot. I nearly fell asleep while the artist was doing the ones on my back and the while the foot is supposed to be one of the most painful areas to get a tattoo, I didn’t even flinch. I remember this even when I was little, being able to endure Indian rug burns, the game of mercy and friends yanking on my hair. That is to say we still feel pain, but we are able to endure more of it I suppose.

Red hair is a recessive gene, that is to say it is a gene that skips generations. Neither of my parents are gingers, nor is either of my siblings. My family roots (if you trace them back dozens of generations) are in Scotland, where my family was a part of the Gordon clan. I have always loved my red hair and can’t imagine having any other colour. I think it’s pretty cool that in the Netherlands, they have a festival dedicated to those with natural ginger hair which lasts two days: Redheadday. I would love to go and take part in the future. Red hair should be celebrated and not mocked. The recent trend of “Kick a Ginger Day” spread like wildfire and although was perhaps initially seen as funny, became just another form of bullying. I was never picked on when I was in school for having red hair – in fact it was just the opposite, many girls told me that they wished they had my coloured locks.

There are also many celebrities that have increased the popularity of red hair (both natural and dyed): Nicole Kidman, Rhianna, Alyson Hannigan, Marcia Cross, Christina Hendricks and Geri Halliwell. Many memorable characters from books and TV also have red hair: Pippi Longstocking, Anne of Green Gables, Daphne from Scooby-Doo, Jessica Rabbit, Yosemite Sam, Wilma Flintstone, Poison Ivy, and the Weasley Family. Blondes apparently have more fun, but redheads are remembered.

Bon Cop/Bad Cop

This Canadian comedy-action movie is likely one of my favourite movies of all time. It’s funny, it’s a creative concept, and for me especially – it mixes both French and English dialogue together (with subtitles of course for those who aren’t as fortunate to know both languages). When a dead man’s body is found slumped over the sign dividing the province of Quebec from the province of Ontario, officers from both forces must join together to find the killer. The underlying issue that the film addresses is the cultural and language differences between the two provinces, with Colm Feore embodying Ontario and Patrick Huard as the stereotypical Quebecois man. The two men despite their linguistic barriers (which results in many hilarious scenarios) learn to compromise and work together and ultimately solve the murder case.

Growing up in Ontario, a predominantly English-speaking province, knowing how to speak French was not essential or even really encouraged. When I was 9, the opportunity to go to a bilingual school arose, and my parents took advantage of it, placing me and my two siblings in the program. I really had no say in the matter, but as a 9 year old I really no trouble making new friends and adapting to a new school. Even at the age of 9, I had an aptitude for the language. I thrived in the new French environment and even got the opportunity to go into a gifted program in Grade 8. Unfortunately in Ontario (I don’t know about the rest of Canada) French in high school is only mandatory in Grade 9, every year after that it is an elective credit. There were 6 classes of 25ish students each in Grade 9. By Grade 10 there was one class of 30 students, which dwindled to 12 students in Grade 11 and down to ten pupils by Grade 12. I was one of ten students in a graduating class of around 300 that took French all the way through secondary school.

My hometown is an entirely English speaking Caucasian population. My family is completely Anglophone. My dad believes that French is comprised of sticking le or la in front of English words and saying them with a French accent. So instead of: Veux-tu des oeufs pour le petit déjeuner, his version sounds like “would you like le eggs for la breakfast?” I decided to pursue French in university, and was one of maybe 30 students who studied French as a Second Language (Français langue seconde). French is not a particularly popular major for native English speakers. I studied French in the nation’s capital. Ottawa is an entirely bilingual city with French and English signs everywhere, which helped me fully immerse into my program. I volunteered at the bilingualism centre on campus, working with an exchange student from France to improve her English. I took many courses over my four year degree where I was the only native English speaker in the class. I was teased occasionally by friends who were in science programs about being an Arts major; my retort was that they weren’t doing their entire degree in their second language.

I am very pro-bilingualism as you may have guessed. Living in a country with two official languages, I personally believe that every Canadian should be able to communicate in both. Unrealistic perhaps, but I don’t believe the expectations of Anglophones having to learn French is anywhere the same as Francophones being forced to learn English. I dated a Franco Ontarian for nearly 2 years, and he needed at least three English credits in high school, whereas I only needed one in French. As part of my program, I needed several French history and culture credits, one of them on the province of Quebec. I understand why the French are fiercely proud of their language and culture and are not terribly receptive to the English-speaking world. «La langue est la gardienne de la foi» The French language is the root of French identity.

I am proud to be a Francophile and find much of the Québécois culture fascinating. Cultural events like Cirque de Soliel and Bonhomme Carnaval, and foods such as poutine, pâté chinois, Montreal smoked meat sandwiches, and tortière all have their origins in the French province. They have their own unique history from the Battle on the Plains of Abraham, to the conservative regime of Maurice Duplessis, to the Quiet Revolution (la révolution tranquille) in the 1960`s, to the actions of the FLQ (Front de libération du Québec) during the time of Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Montreal was the host of the World Exposition in 1967, which put both Canada and Quebec on the world map. They underwent two referendums to decide whether they would remain part of Canada or seek independence as their own nation. Quebec and its people have definitely fought to protect its culture and identity, which has gone so far as to exclude English speakers. They fear assimilation and go to (sometimes) extreme measures to prevent it from happening. But for those who have made the effort to learn Canada’s second official language, an entire other culture is there to discover.

Precious

About two months ago I watched the Oscar nominated film Precious. I put off seeing the film for several months because from what I had heard on TV and seen in the trailers disturbed me immensely. I hate to see people hurt, and the visual images of things (animals or people) suffering burn into my brain and I can’t seem to shake it. I love pets and children dearly and hope to have my own eventually. I work with children and have for the last two years, and the thought that anyone could physically, emotionally, verbally or sexually abuse a child breaks my heart. Those people must have no souls and no conscience. I believe children are born a clean slate and that it is mainly the environmental factors that shape who that child becomes. It goes back again to that nature vs. nurture debate again, but that is my belief.

Precious is a victim of sexual abuse multiple times by her father, with whom she has two children (the first of which has Down’s syndrome which brings on more verbal abuse from her mother). She is bullied by classmates because of her weight and learning disability, and the verbal abuse only worsens when she goes home to her mother. Her mother does nothing but degrade her, hurl objects across the room at her, and sit in her chair and bark out orders and various profanities. She takes the anger about her own life, out on her daughter. She holds her daughter responsible for her husband leaving her.

I think I have always been a compassionate person, but only realized more so once I started working within the school system. Children really are the world’s most valuable asset and we must do anything within our means to protect them. I fully support the Children’s Aid Society and have looked into becoming a member. I want to be a teacher so that I can be a positive influence and figure in the lives of children. I was blessed to have had a great home life growing up, with a stay-at-home mom and a hard-working father who were (and still are) best friends. I have no memories of my parents fighting. Not all children are that fortunate. I always loved school and for some children it is an escape from the nightmares at home. They can see their friends and not have to endure the unimaginable things they do under their own roofs.

Every day I get to see joy on kid’s faces, after doing well on the most recent test, finally figuring out that math problem that has stumped them for the better part of an hour, or learning a new way to checkmate their opponent. I love to see them proud and succeed. They are so innocent and naïve about the great wide world out there. I wish sometimes I could go back to being that age – life was so simple and carefree. I’m only 22 and sometimes life is overwhelming; bills to pay, work to go to, friends and family to keep in touch with, budgeting for groceries and maybe a social life and hobbies all mixed in there. I don’t have a husband, or a house, or children, or pets yet but those things will no doubt come in time. Even now, before all these other responsibilities, there still never seems to be enough time in the day to get everything done.

There are many ways to help children, both here in Canada and abroad. Join your local children’s aid and see how you can volunteer/ get involved/ donate. The YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, and Girl Guides/ Scouts of Canada are always looking for volunteers. Samaritan’s Purse does Christmas shoe boxes every holiday season that are sent to third world countries. I did them with my church for several years, filling them with goodies that I had purchased with my own money. Sponsor a child overseas – a year of sponsorship costs around $412.00, less then one month’s rent for me. It’s crazy how much farther our dollar stretches abroad. Most cities have a toy drive around this time of year for less fortunate families. A teddy bear or new book is under $20.00 and will put the smile on the face of a child you have never met.

The Last Song

I have a weakness for Nicolas Sparks novels, I admit it. Most people however are probably more familiar with his movies: A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe, Dear John and the one I most recently watched The Last Song. Miley Cyrus plays the protagonist Ronnie, a rebellious and moody teenager who is forced to spend the summer with her father and little brother. Though I am not the biggest fan of Cyrus, I thought she did a decent job of covering up her southern drawl. It was difficult for me to watch however because I couldn’t stop thinking about her in the role of Hannah Montana. I decided to watch this movie while at home alone one night – a bad decision on my part. As with all Sparks’s works that are tear-jerkers, someone dying is usually involved. At the end of the film, with Ronnie playing the last piece of music her father composed, he finally passes away from cancer.

Death and dying is a natural part of the cycle of life, but that doesn’t make it any less difficult to deal with and overcome. I have always been a very emotional and expressive person. People know when I am happy, sad, angry, frustrated, etc. I have been fortunate to have only had one close family member or friend pass away. I was 16 years old when my grandma succumbed to emphysema and I remember her funeral pretty vividly and how distraught I was. We were never particularly close but seeing my mother all upset distressed me a lot as she always seemed to have herself together. I was only 5 when my grandpa died and I only vaguely remember the reception afterwards and eating the tiny little egg salad sandwiches, sweet pickles and lemon squares that were served.

It’s sad enough when someone dies of natural causes, but something entirely when they are taken suddenly from our lives. Suicide I believe to be one of the saddest things that I have ever heard of. With all the recent coverage of the dozens of teenage suicides, many of them linked to bullying and homophobia, it is amazing how poorly humans can treat each other considering life is so short. I for one am guilty of making my parents lives difficult on more than one occasion, and for many years I resented and wished I didn’t have siblings. I consider myself to be a kind person, but I’m not perfect. I wish I was some days but I’m not. I, along with many teens, was bullied for part for part of Grade 11 by a girl that went on my bus. She was a resident of a local group home, had no doubt been bullied herself and felt the need for whatever reason to single me out. I dreaded getting on the bus every morning and evening after school, knowing she’d be there to taunt me. We didn’t have classes together and we had no common friends so it didn’t last all day. But with that hour a day I spent on the bus, I know how miserable and helpless I felt. The fact that some teens have to have to deal with that all day, from multiple people is absolutely unacceptable. We all deserve to live with dignity and respect, to achieve our personal goals and have a successful and fulfilling life. Any life lost to suicide is one life too many.

People deal with loss in many different ways. Some grieve for months and can never really accept that the person they loved is gone. Others focus on the positive memories and don’t dwell on the sadness, to keep that person’s memory alive. I really don’t know how I will deal with the loss of someone I love, as I never have really had to before. The concept of dying for me is terrifying. It’s something you can’t control. I could die tomorrow in a freak accident or when I’m 80 years old, widowed with 7 grandchildren. It’s this lack of knowing and inability to control it that for me personally is so overwhelming. I can control what I eat, what I wear, my grades in school, the space in which I live. But I have slowly come to realize that there are so many more things that we have no sway over: who we love, how people feel about you, which team is going to win the Superbowl, what the weather will be like tomorrow, etc. I have always struggled when dealing with the unknown. I am someone who loves when things are planned and organized and structured. I am working on this “flexibility” part of my personality but I will never be a go-with-the-flow kind of person.

As odd as it may sound, I’ve already figured out how I want my funeral to be. I guess my logic is that if I can’t control how/ when I will die, I can control how I want my final moments to look. I want to be buried in a white casket, covered in red roses and tiger lilies, my two favourite flowers. I want to be buried with a picture of my family because they are the most important thing to me (all the more strongly recently, finally realizing that they have always been there for me, when most other people turned their backs). I want to have “Remember Me” by Josh Groban playing. The song, while sad has a very positive message in it and I absolutely adore Groban’s voice. I want to be dressed in red, my favourite colour and the colour of my birthstone. I would like some sort of scholarship/bursary to be set up in my name so that there would something positive to bear my name, even years later. I know these things are trivial but hopefully (God willing), I won’t have to worry about this for many, many more years.

A Charlie Brown Christmas

I hate to post something about Christmas, with the holiday being more than a month and a half away, but I need to vent. What is with stores pushing the Christmas hype barely a week after Halloween? It makes me want to vomit. A couple of days ago I saw a Wal-Mart commercial advertising Christmas shopping and the possibility of buying things on layaway. Like seriously? Even worse, I was in doing my grocery shopping at Loblaws and there, in the bread/dessert section was Ready-to-Make Ginger Bread House kits. IT’S THE FIRST WEEK OF NOVEMBER. As a kid, I never remember it being this bad. I swear, if I walk into any store and hear “Jingle Bells” I’m going to find the manager and complain. I haven’t even started my Christmas shopping yet; like a normal human being I wait till it’s actually the correct month to start worry about that.

It’s this Christmas obsession that people have that reminds me of the message in a Charlie Brown Christmas. I think in all the hype and stress of shopping for the perfect gifts and the perfect Christmas turkey dinner, the majority of people forget the meaning of Christmas. The holiday season is not about the stuff and the gifts and the materialistic stuff. I love Christmas because I am able to spend meaningful time with my family, both immediate and extended. Yes I give and receive gifts each year. Yes my family have a tree and decorate the house with stockings and wreaths and holly. I’m not against celebrating Christmas at all – but it’s this ridiculous push by marketing companies to get people all worked up about sales and Christmas shopping in November that makes me nauseous. People’s stress levels go through the roof and they rack up their credit cards – for what? One day of the year. Seems a little ridiculous to me.

When Charlie Brown picks the sickly little pine tree over the pretty aluminum ones for the Christmas play, he is ridiculed by the other kids unless Linus speaks up. It is this sense of inferiority I believe that pushes people to go into overdrive during this time of year. They feel this need to have bigger and better gifts, the “perfect” gift for each person on their list. A Charlie Brown Christmas came out in 1965, long before the relatively recent commercialization of the holiday but even then the message rang true. Many people I know who celebrate Christmas do not practice any religion, when that is why we have Christmas in the first place; to celebrate the day that Jesus Christ was born. The gifts we buy are to symbolize the gifts the Wisemen brought to the child in the manger. In recent years, my family has reduced the number of gifts we give to each other. We’re all more or less grown up now and to be honest we pretty much have everything we’ll ever need. My brother and I both have jobs – if there’s anything we want we can go out and by it ourselves.

I love Christmas shopping, I honestly do. There is very little stress involved for me. There are very few gifts I have to buy each year: my siblings are pretty much my entire list. Ever since I was 8, on Christmas Eve, I get to open the gifts from my two siblings as a sort of pre-Christmas thing. It’s fun and heart-warming. I am very close to my siblings especially now that we are older and I love the thought that they put into my gifts last year. My little brother wound up getting me a $250.00 gift card to Chapters (my favourite store on the planet) and from my little sister I got a plush Yoshi doll (my favourite Nintendo character) and a matching ring and necklace set which I still wear everyday. I love shopping for my siblings. I managed to track down the elusive video game my sister wanted last year, and the look on her face when she opened it was amazing. My brother still lives in the American Eagle sweatshirt I got him last year as well. I haven’t quite figured out what to get the pair of them this year, so I will have to do some prying.

Little Ashes

I watched this movie several months ago while I was taking a surrealism course. Robert Pattison plays a young Salvador Dali, and portrays his pure genius and his struggles with his sexuality. The principals of surrealism were revolutionary for the time and very intriguing. Surrealists rejected all principals of traditional and classic art. They experimented with drugs to open new pathways to the creative process. Surrealist authors and artists kept dream journals. The juxtaposition of images that would not normally go together created a shocking new set of images. There was no planning involved, the creation process was spontaneous and random. The Count of Lautremont described this new vision of beauty as : « Beau comme la rencontre fortuite d’un parapluie et d’une machine à coudre sur une table de dissection. » Roughly translated as “beautiful like the random encounter between an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissection table.” Thousands of scholars have attempted to analyse what this passage could possibly mean which has resulted in hundreds of possibilities. Nothing was structured or for certain in the surrealist movement. Surrealists admired the imagination of children, which was untainted and uncorrupted by the structure of society which they believed striped the imagination and creativity out of humans.

I currently have a poster of Dali’s Swans reflecting Elephants on my wall in my bedroom. Dali’s reputation and his outrageous and flamboyant antics tended to take away from the quality and impact his works had on the art world. To this day, most audiences will recognize The Persistence of Memory – that is to say, the painting of the melting clocks in the desert. His paintings look as though they were pulled straight out of someone’s dreams, mixing a combination of objects and scenery that would never been seen together while conscious. He is definitely one of my favourite artists – I like things that are different and stick out. One of his most outrageous paintings is Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. Its title alone speaks volumes as to the originality and unusualness of the work.

I was actually able to stomach Robert Pattison in his role as Dali, the same actor I absolutely despise in the Twilight Saga. He is a better actor than that series lets on, but it also speaks volumes about how terrible an author Stephanie Meyer is, that her character seems so lifeless (no pun intended as his character is a vampire.) I have read all four books in the series: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn and wasn’t terribly impressed. It is clear that Ms. Meyer has moulded the character of Bella around herself and all of her characters fall flat. They don’t act and behave like real people do. Bella is an idiot – salivating over a vampire that she just met and who displays violent tendencies, and choosing him over Jacob, a family friend that has known her for years and actually gives a whoot about her. There is apparently a drinking game that teens/ young adults are playing now: take a drink every time only Bella’s father Charlie seems to be the only one who gives a damn about her. You will be plastered within half an hour. Whether you are a lover or hater of the books, there is no denying the fact that there are thousands of Twihards out there, and that the popularity of the names Bella, Jacob and Edward have skyrocketed.

In addition to reading all the books, I have also seen the three Twilight movies that have been released so far. Part 1 of Breaking Dawn comes out in a couple of weeks here in Canada and I’m very curious how they are going to be able to show a couple of major scenes to teenage audiences, namely the violent sex scene between Edward and Bella on their honeymoon. In the book, Ms. Meyer describes the bruises Bella discovers on her body the following morning and how much pain she is in after their rendezvous because Edward loses control. Showing that sort of violence is not going to go over well with movie critics who will slam the director/screenwriter for portraying domestic violence. The other sequence I’m curious about is the birth of Renesmee (the half-vampire/ half-human child of Edward and Bella and also the dumbest name I’ve ever heard). In the book she more or less eats her way out of Bella’s womb which strikes me as a little graphic.

The whole vampire faze I was never really taken with. I love the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, but that was published over a century ago before this recent onslaught of vampire-based TV series and books. Dracula was intentionally written to scare women into not being promiscuous. Mina represents the ideal Victorian woman, she is chaste and faithful and not easily seduced by Dracula. Her best friend Lucy on the other hand, gets three marriage proposals in one day, and once bitten by Count Dracula must receive blood transfusions from other men (which can be symbolically be seen as sex, as it is their bodily fluids entering her). It is a wonderfully crafted and intriguing novel, and remains a classic to this day. I have never watched True Blood, The Vampire Diaries or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’m not entirely sure why but the whole mysterious fanged stranger thing never did it for me, and most definitely not the Edward Cullen type.