10 Books A Day: #158

All titles are by Anne Rice and Published by Ballantine Books unless otherwise noted.

Interview With The Vampire

The Vampire Lestat

The Queen Of The Damned

The Tale Of The Body Thief

Memnoch The Devil...Knopf

The Vampire Armand...Knopf

Pandora

Vittorio The Vampire

Merrick

Blood And Gold

Blackwood Farm

Blood Canticle

Cry To Heaven

The Mummy, or, Ramses The Damned

Servant Of The Bones...Knopf

Lasher...Knopf

Taltos...Knopf

I started reading Anne Rice completely by chance, way back in 1977 0r -78, when my brother Mike bought Interview With The Vampire off the racks of one of the local Pic'n'Pacs. We all loved supernatural thrillers and our book market was scant (no real outlet store for 30 miles), so we were taking what we could get for our summer reads. I was just at that age when horror, eroticism and teen angst make a heady brew in the blood, so it left its mark on me. Some 8 or 9 years later when she started writing vampire books again I kept picking them up, this time mainly out of interest in her addressing themes like the existence or absence of God, ethical behavior in what appears to be a moral vacuum, and the fantastic quandary of physical immortality. She is an eminently readable writer, with a particular facility for describing the sensuous nature of things. As of late, Rice has gotten over her beef with God, but is less than enchanted with Established Christianity. She has left vampires to the Twilight crew, and her latest work concentrates on the doings of angels and her literary imagining of the life of Jesus.

Book Count: 1901.