Abraham Lincoln: The Vampire Slayer Assesment #2

So when I last left off we were just in the prologue, describing how the author came about these "journals". Now's where the story starts. The author goes into extensive detail describing Abe's early life in the wilderness with his parents. The author does an amazing job conveying the loneliness and desparity that there is out in the wild; but also the stark contrast it all is to Abe, a young, loving boy who cries and vows to never kill again after killing an animal for meat.

So years pass and Abe grows up, and he finally becomes aware of vampires because one of them kills his mother his father reveals. During this part of the story I get the feeling that Abe becomes more masculine and has a growing up moment. Not because he hits puberty necessarily, but he begins taking responsibility into his own hands and trains himself to fight the undead.

One of the most chilling moments so far is when Abe's dad reveals to the young boy that his mother was actually killed by vampires. For the whole beginning of his life Abe's father always denied supernatural, but we learn why. We learn details about how Abe's grandfather was killed by a vampire in front of Abe's dad. This part kind of creeped me out just from the way the vampire was described. It was a young looking vampire, and very pale. Yea, that's where the comparisons with Twilight stop. The vampire had jet black eyes and a kind of drawn back face, not to mention fangs. He also is enormously strong, for he lifted up Abe's Grandfather and broke his neck.

So far this book has kept me extremely interested, and I hardly want to put the book down unless I have to. I really want the vampire hunting to start though, and I've been thinking how the story might end sinces Abe is killed in the theater by who everyone though to be a "man." So far this book has had enough dark humor, creepiness, and detail to keep me reading.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Independent Reading Assessment #1 )

Vampire Hunter is quite the interesting book. It takes the life of a man that every American should know, but throws in the, "What if he hunted vampires?" The story doesn't get right into the action of course; it shows backstory to how the writer, Seth Grahame-Smith, came about acquiring these journals that Lincoln wrote about his vampire hunting and slaying in. I came into this thinking that it would just be a hilarious perversion of an American figures life, but boy was I wrong!

I really enjoy how he gives backstory to how the journals were practically thrust onto him. I mean, writers give the origin for the books a lot, but never do the do it quite as humorous, crazily,  and yet believably as Smith does. He works in some knick-knack store in a small podunk town in New York, but has a frequent, odd, quiet, and seemingly wealthy visitor. The guy is your typical mystery man, donning shades, even in the winter. I liked the character, and after learning who he really was, I thought it was a nice touch to the story.

The mystery man turns out to be one of the bloodsuckers himself, and seems to offer little choice to Smith on how he can go about these journals. If you were to look at this from a different light, he could be the bad guy! I wonder to myself why a vampire is getting in touch with humans when the story is mostly about the killing of vampires. Why couldn't he get some vampire to write the story? Dont they live forever? Would that not give him all the time in the world to get whatever message he needs out to the world? I dont know yet, but the opening was a very excellent one at that, and I cant wait to read further into this book.

Things Fall Apart Critique

Things Fall Apart was somewhat of a shocker to me. At first I really couldn't get into it. I disliked the slow pace of the beginning, and it kind of just seemed random old memories at first. Then at about 40% through the book things turned around. The pace picked up when Ikemefuna died, and it started just building momentum which made it hard for me to put down at times. Nearing the end I began to appreciate the vague beginning, it was refreshing having a beginning like that instead of the author spelling out everything in chronological order.

I also found the conflict between the church and the indigenous people to be intriguing. The ending was somewhat of a shocker coming off of the chapter before, because the events of Chapter 24 didn't really indicate what was going to happen in Chapter 25. Overall I ended up liking the book, it was a great read, and I do recommend it, you just need to get past the slower beginning to gain understanding.

Tragic Hero

My idea of a tragic hero is a hero that is destined to fail, no matter how hard they try to succeed. Okonkwo starts to always lose at life, no matter what it is. Whether its sharecropping, getting titles, or just plain havin a funeral. I also can compare my definition of  a tragic hero to some ancient myths. The way I thought of it was that my definition is a lot like prophecies many mythological heroes receive or are part of that foretell their death or a failure of that magnitude.

Fear

Fear is one of the most simple emotions we feel, not convuluted or caused by other emotions, but something thats usually just hardwired into us. We fear because we want to protect ourselves, as is human nature. Fear is an emotion we get when we sense something harmful or wrong coming, we are hardwired to avoid that. In the sense of countries fearing other countries because of destruction, we just want to be the best, which is simply humanity, we need to be the best. Humanity is competitive, and fearing that someone else is better will drive us to better ourselves. We fear unknown because we dont want them to compromise us, whether its by simply being better than us, or by killing us. That compromises or human nature or humanity, and we cant be second.