Werewolf's Guide to Life
Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m heartily sick of vampires (except for bottle-blonds named Spike), and I can take or leave zombies. So it’s nice to see werewolves – shamefully and inexplicably overlooked in recent years – get some media time. I think it’s high time the werewolf had a pop culture comeback.
Unfortunately, The Werewolf’s Guide to Life isn’t going to be the book that sets this comeback in motion. It’s an amusing and entertaining attempt to recast certain aspects of the werewolf legends, but ultimately it just doesn’t pack much punch.
Subtitled “A manual for the newly bitten”, The Werewolf’s Guide to Life is just that – a guide for a werewolf “newbie” who’s unsure of what will happen at the next full moon. The book takes on the tone of an instruction manual, with a bit of self-help thrown in, and while the tone is successful overall it does make for slightly dry reading in the first 40 pages.
Things pick up once the book gets past the “coming to accept that you’re a werewolf” section and into the nuts-and-bolts of how one deals with becoming a ravenous monster three nights out of the month. It’s here that the Guide shines, pointing out the obvious (apartment living isn’t ideal because a fellow apartment dweller is bound to hear your noisy transformation and subsequent howls) and the not-so-obvious (the exurbs make a good living place because most of them have big box stores where you’ll need to stock up on restraint materials and enough meat to satisfy your lycanthrope hunger). Probably the funniest chapter is the one dealing with the always fractious relationships between werewolves and vampires (or as the book calls them, “the smug, effeminate undead”).
Other highlights of the book include testimonials and anecdotes from “actual werewolves” that play to the book’s strength of reconciling the extraordinary circumstances of being a lycanthrope with the mundane concerns of everyday life – how to explain your monthly absences to your boss, what to do if you divorce and don’t want to give up your house with the excellent restraint system, the issues that “purebloods” (those born to be lycanthropes) face.
Yet the book doesn’t linger in the mind after reading. It’s entertaining enough, and makes for a fine bathtub read. Perhaps I wouldn’t be so vexed by this (the book is clearly meant to be light and humorous) if I hadn’t recently read Max Brooks’ amazing World War Z.
I’m still waiting for the book that’s going to revitalize werewolves (and give us a break from the smug, effeminate undead). In the meantime, The Werewolf’s Guide to Life makes for pleasant reading.
...the whole movie. I watched about twenty minutes of it and left the room. My wife fell asleep. The one person who wanted to see it (my thirteen year old nephew) said it was, and I quote, "wicked gay".
I was so sick of the "You've never even seen it" argument that I actually made myself sit through the first Twilight film (never the books, I have a hard enough time reading as it is) a month ago or some nonsense. The film literally made me sick. While I was watching it I got such a bad headache I had to lay down afterwords. It just felt like, to paraphrase Jim, teenage scribbles dressed up with vampires to make it "dark" for morons. The whole affair is just too frustrating for me.
As she's a big fan of Charlaine Harris' trashy True Blood novels. A few of her co-workers swear by the Twilight series, but, as should be expected, they're also big fans of romance novels; perhaps the trashiest genre of all!! I've actually picked up one of the Twilight books and read through the first few pages while at Barnes and Noble. The prose, to me, reeked of a fifteen year old scrawling in her diary, although that's probably why young readers love it as much as they do. It doesn't matter whether or not I love it or hate it, though; it's obvious that millions of readers love it, so, to me, the author is most certainly doing her job.
I can't speak for the movies, but the Twilight books are very well marketed - stunning covers, very striking. Before I knew what the books were even about I was intrigued by the covers, which goes to show that although it's what between the covers that should really matter, you'd be foolish to deny that there's a good deal of visual attraction involved when people go book-buying.
I probably will read at least one of the Twilight books one day - I always fall prey to "Gee, is it really THAT bad?" thinking. But I'm less troubled by the changes to the vampire myth than to what I've heard about the main characters' relationship. The problem isn't that Edward is a vampire, nor is it that he's a creepy, controlling, perhaps borderline abusive person - it's that this relationship is being presented as so romantic and as an ideal. Yuck.
I think I understand why it's popular. . .but that doesn't make me despise the Twilight universe any less. Vampires are supposed to turn to dust or explode into flame or some such crap when exposed to sunlight, not friggin SPARKLE. Ugh. The thought alone makes me want to vomit. Having said all that, I do agree that 30 Days of Night was kickass.
And World War Z blew me the hell away, on numerous levels. I honestly believe that book is some kind of masterpiece.
My favorite movie of 2008, for sure!! I should have probably refrained from posting at 2:00 AM and after several beers, as, like you, I'm really only tired of the glitzy/glossy, sexy, cool, hipster vampires; the Hot Topic bloodsuckers in $2,000 dollar leather jackets with Emo hairdos. There was a time I felt quite the opposite, though, as I was a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel, which, in my opinion, probably spearheaded this entire new generation. One of the things I love about Let the Right One In is that, while it's still a love story, it's a fantastically dark and twisted one that portrays vampires as savage and desperate creatures. Sure, we all feel for Eli's situation, but, at the same time, we know what she's capable of, and we also know where her relationship with Oskar wiill ultimately (and tragically) lead. Just a gorgeous film.
As far as vampires go, I am just so sick of this new age transformation they went through to becoming sexy and cool. 30 Days of Night was wonderful because David Slade used the same slick, clear camera he used in Hard Candy and combined it with the ugly, violent, near unstoppable creations vampires were born as (makes me sad to hear he is working on a Twilight film next though, uggh). Another recent film I really did enjoy was Let the Right One In. While the vampire wasn't ugly, it was just a little kid. This unique perspective of being so "young" mixed with the films moral dilemmas really made it a great time for me (plus who could forget the pool scene..)
Like the old Hammer films? 'Salem's Lot? Heck, even The Lost Boys are tougher than the Twilight dudes (and, considering those guys were the creation of Joel "Batsuit Nipples" Schumacher, that's saying something!
I will say that there's one recent vamp film I love, and that's 30 Days of Night. Those guys definitely don't "sparkle".
How sick am I of vampires?
Well, one of my future fiction projects is one that exploits the phobias of my friends and family (fears of roaches, quicksand, snakes, heights, and so on). Basically I want to make my friends and family squeal in fear like little girls when they read it.
One friend is terrified of vampires. But I'm so bored with them I can't be bothered to write a vampire scene (let alone a book) even if it would freak her out. So I'll have to exploit her other fear (frogs - don't ask).
I love love love that picture.
It's sad that two of my favorite horror creatures have been so overexposed of late. Obviously, the former more so than the latter (although, right after the Dawn of the Dead remake, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a zombie movie, it seemed). Now, thanks to Twilight and the seemingly endless parade of chick-lit ripoffs, vampires have become the stuff of soap operas and romance novels. sigh...what I'd give for a new Blade movie in which he runs wild in the Twilight universe.