Tuesday, November 17, 2009

VAMPIRES

With the popularity of the “Twilight” books and the movies (New Moon to come out this weekend) about vampires, here are 2 books that WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group provided me to review

The first is a non-fiction book (“Touched by a Vampire: Discovering the Hidden Messages in the Twilight Saga” by Beth Felker Jones) that guides the reader through the “Twilight” series. It uses the themes of the Twilight books such as romance, love, gender roles, good bad, choices, desires etc.as a springboard to look at what the Bible says on such subjects.
This is one of the best books I have read that takes a look at a pop culture fad and opens the subject up for discussion without being totally negative or discouraging about reading the original series. This book, with questions at the end of each chapter, would be a great small group study for high school or college age adults.
I would give the book 5 stars.

The next book is a novel by Tracey Bateman titled, “Thirsty”
I generally am not a reader of novels, but seeing the popularity of the “Twilight” series (not to mention my daughters numerous readings of the whole series) I thought I would give this book a try.
For the most part the book kept my interest, for the fact that I kept expecting something great or unusual or shocking to take place. The book seemed to me to be a reading of a predictable made for TV movie (nothing great, unusual or shocking took place).
The characters in the story were pretty much predictable: you have a good person (Nina) struggling with a bad habit (alcoholism). And how that habit has affected those family members around her. You have a evil person trying to be good (Marcus). You have a small town, with its sheriff, trying to unravel the mystery of strange murders. And then you have the happy ending.
One area of the dialogue that was very silly was on pg.228. The main character of the story (Nina) and the sheriff of the town (Jill) are awaiting the highway patrol to come and examine a murder.
Nina says, “The calvary has arrived.”
The sheriff corrects her with, “Cavalry”. …”How can you get a bunch of old horse soldiers mixed up with the place where Jesus died?”
I felt that this was some sort of feeling of obligation to say something about Jesus in the story.

Overall I would give this a 2 ½ stars out of a possible 5.

Touched by a Vampire: http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/catalog.php?isbn=9781601422781
Thirsty: http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/catalog.php?isbn=9780307457158

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