Thursday, February 9, 2012

Wuthering Bites

Wuthering Bites is a delightfully dark mix of vampires and the classic, tragic love story of Cathy and Heathcliff, from Charlotte Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.

Significant parts of this new, twisted story match that of Wuthering Heights, with the simple addition of vampires in the mix. Heathcliff and Cathy’s bond begin when her father brings the orphan home and introduces him as her new brother, though Cathy’s blood brother Hindley is less than pleased. Heathcliff’s gypsy blood is apparent, but there is a much darker secret that he is hiding from his new family: the fact that he is a vampire. After Cathy’s betrayal, Heathcliff disappears to make his fortune and then returns to enact his revenge upon the evil Hindley and his family, all while mourning the death of Cathy, who dies soon after his return. This classic story envelopes the new vampire obsession with surprising ease, and is destined to leave readers with a deeper understanding of the story.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Secret Shopper

I went to a library in the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library system to do some secret library shopping. In this particular library I wandered around the fiction stacks a bit before scoping out the librarians; there were two at a reference desk and they seemed to be answering quite a few questions, so I felt bad taking up their time. Anyway, I walked up to the desk and was greeted with a friendly smile (thankfully!) and asked how I could be helped….

Me: Hi! I’m looking for something to read...
Librarian: Ok, do you have a specific title or author that I could look up?
Me: No, I was kind of hoping you could give me a recommendation of some sort.
Librarian: Oh, ok! Well, do you have a specific author or book that you really like?
Me: Well…I just read the Hunger Games and really liked them, but I was hoping for something more for adults because I tend to read a lot of Young Adult stuff.
Librarian: Ok, so you’re trying to get out of the Young Adult area...let’s see what we can find

At this point, he is clearly searching something on the computer but I have no idea what it is…my gut instinct is that it was NoveList because I know they have a subscription to that database. He seemed to be struggling since I wanted to find a crossover from YA to Adult fiction.

Librarian: Well, what did you like about the Hunger Games?
Me: Ohhh, I really liked that it was in a different sort of world, I guess I kind of like fantasy books like that.
Librarian: Would you be interested in a series?
Me: Definitely!
Librarian: Ok, let me show you what I’ve found and we can see if it’s something that you would like…

He led me over to the Charlaine Harris series that True Blood is based on (which I’ve actually already read…but I didn’t want to tell him that) and told me to look at it and he would see if he could find the first book somewhere. They didn’t have it at that library so he let me know the other branches where it could be found (but never discussed putting a hold on it and getting it sent to this library) and when I seemed interested showed me to the second book in the series. Then he said that I shouldn’t blame him too much if I didn’t like it because he really had no idea with those books…which kind of made me question his assistance, though he was very friendly and helpful the entire time. Overall it was a much more positive experience than I expected to have.

Note: I'm sorry that this was posted late, my plan was to have this happen Thursday afternoon and my dentist appointment in the morning that was scheduled to be a simple teeth cleaning actually turned into two teeth being yanked, so I was busy spending quality time with a pillow and painkillers all day.