Dracula and Mr. Darcy

I have just finished reading two quite enjoyable books and wanted to talk about them. The first one is The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. This book is a different take on the legend of Dracula. I don't go in for scary books as a rule, but this one fascinated me from the beginning. There are several narrators to the book which at times is confusing it also brings different perspective, which is enjoyable. The book starts out with a girl finding an old book in her father's library that is blank except for a print of a dragon in the middle two pages of the book. The dragon is holding in his hands the word Drakuyla. She asks her father about it and little by little he tells her his story. And later on you hear the story of her father's professor and then it comes back to her. I liked the interweaving of stories. I wasn't really sure what we were leading up to. I didn't know if it was leading up to a final confrontation with Dracula or whether it was going to be something else. But honestly, I just didn't care because the journey to get there was probably more fascinating then the final climax. I loved all the history. I was enthralled with all the research. I'm not really a history buff, in fact I usually skim through it. (I never once read one of my history books in school!) It was just a fun and entertaining read. Although, it was a daytime reader. It was too creepy for me to read at night. Even just reading it during the day made me suspicious of the dark. I expected to see Dracula just lounging in the corner of my dark basement every time I went down the stairs. I loved the twist at the end. It just made me smile. This was one of my slow down books. I need these kinds of books now and again because I tend to read books in a day or two because I want resolution. So every so often I pick a book to read that I know will take me a while to read, thus slowing down my voracious appetite for reading. This book took me a couple of weeks to read. I would love to know what anyone else thought about it, but so far my brother and sister are the only two people I know who have read it.

The second book was Austenland, by Shannon Hale. I have read another book by her, The Princess Academy and rather enjoyed it, so I thought I'd give this one a shot. My friend Jill first introduced me to the book and I have to say, even if I hadn't read anything by this author I would have wanted to read this one on subject matter alone. Most of you will laugh when you read the description, but that's ok. I am just fine with myself and my obsessions! : ) It's about this woman who is thirty-something, single and horribly obsessed with Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy. She is so ashamed of her obsession that she hides her dvd in her plant, so no one knows about it. Well, her great aunt dies and leaves her a non-refundable trip to Austenland. It's a resort in England where everyone dresses up in regency style and lives, behaves and everything else like they were really in regency England. There are actors and visitors alike at this resort. Any way, I finished reading this book at about 1:00 am last night. It was thoroughly delightful. I even read the last 5 pages over. Which, for those of you who know me, is not an uncommon thing for me to do when I really like the book. I truly enjoyed the characters and the references to Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, etc. And because I have read all the books that they were talking about it felt like I was in on the inside joke. It was a lot of fun. I'll probably buy it when it comes out in paperback. Just as a side note, this was not a slow down book. I started it on Sunday and finished it early Tuesday morning/ Monday night.