Keeping the Brain Going

( Newspapers - the Trivia Crown )

I've decided to try exercise again as a way of helping combat depression. So I thought over the things I used to like doing. Not team sports, that's for sure. The goal I scored playing Quidditch at Swancon was just about the only time I did such a thing, because mostly mean people wouldn't let me play or I had to stand in the outfield if the game had one. Also I have the coordination of a stoned wombat.

Horse riding and ice skating were the two things I kind of liked so I plan to look into those, though (a) it's usually difficult for a person without a vehicle to get to a place where you can ride horses and (b) there's a severe shortage of ice rinks in Perth these days. The one I remember seems to have closed down. I liked those sports because you didn't have to be on a team or memorise rules or catch anything thrown at you with extreme speed and prejudice.

If anyone else in Perth has some activity ideas or needs a person to join them, let me know.

Vampire Books

I've stated my intent of not reading any more books about vampires! They aren't elements of horror any more or even supernatural creepiness, unless you include such things as a 100-year-old vampire frozen in the form of a 17-year-old boy, obsessed with a teenaged girl. As subjects of romance novels, it's impossible to take the undead seriously.

Yet the last three books I've purchased have concerned them in quite different ways. The first was a teen comedy thing which I bought because I thought the title was sharp and funny and I wanted something light to read at Swancon. This was The Good Ghoul's Guide To Getting Even by Julie Kenner, which very clearly bounces off the Buffy mythos. Beth Frasier, grade-chasing senior, is turned by a football jock who just happens to be undead and is so sleazily repulsive you almost wish Edward would show up to sort the guy out. This book has no pretensions at all and was a fun read, with lines such as,

"I am not the spawn of Satan!" I mean, I may not think my parents are the greatest but they're not that bad!

Beth teams up with her best friend and a geeky vampire-slayer to get her revenge, which unfortunately is in the next book, Good Ghouls Do.

Then there was Evernight by Claudia Gray, which probably does owe something to the Meyer books, if only that they convinced publishers people would buy stories like this. It's different enough, except for featuring two teenagers in a cursed love match, a school and various dark and supernatural doings. Since this book is so new, I want to be careful about writing any spoilers. It's also a YA but much more serious than the Kenner book and it had me going right until it sprang its twist.

I'm still recovering from the third book I bought recently, which is a weird cross between police drama and vampires. This is 13 Bullets by David Wellington and it is nasty. It made me think a little of the Anita Blake books before they declined into soft porn. This one was pure violence and went a long way towards convincing me that vampires could still be scary. The vampires in this story can't be reasoned with. They won't understand any motivations of the living at all and there is no way in hell you'd want to be one. For a start, you lose your hair and look more like the vampire depicted in the 1922 Nosferatu.

So I guess I'll be reading about vampires for a while yet.