Have you ever wanted to meet the character who you loved so much in a book you’ve read? The character you spent so much time thinking about? Maybe a character who you like enough to learn more about their character arch or maybe even look up fan-art and fan-fiction? Maybe the character is so relatable you’ve even developed a crush on this character? There have been many people who do this. Which is why this story is so intriguing. In Allison Van Diepen’s The Vampire Stalker, the main character Amy is a regular high school girl who is obsessed with reading. Especially The Otherworld Series. A young adult novel in The Vampire Stalker which is just as popular to them as Twilight is to us. Amy loves The Otherworld Series and especially loves Alexander Banks, the main protagonist of these books. Alexander Banks is a rugged, yet handsome, vampire hunter with no other ambition but to seek …show more content…
revenge on the vampire who killed Alexander's family. All except his cousin James of course. The Vampire Stalker takes place in present day Chicago where as The Otherworld takes place in an alternate and corrupted Chicago. Amy writes fan fiction for this series and even has an account on a fan site where her name is Mrs.AlexanderBanks8021. "Yes, but it’s a joke. I mean, there are thousands of other Mrs. Alexander Bankses. That’s why I'm number eight thousand and twenty-one." Then one night after a school dance, Amy is attacked while walking home after dark.
Who comes to her rescue? The dashing Alexander Banks from the Otherworld series whom she loves. He is in her Chicago to hunt down the main antagonist from the books, Vigo, a menacing vampire. The aspect I love most about this story is that the author brings a book character into Amy’s universe. Thankfully, the leading character is not a vampire, unlike many vampire books we know today (i.e. Twilight). Instead, he is a vampire hunter. To me it's a nice change of pace. In the story Vigo has no morals and is definitely not against killing humans for sport. Vigo does not go against his monstrous sins. Amy manages to fall in love with Alexander as a person, learns to stand up to bullies, and helps to kill a vampire. Amy’s infatuation for the brooding protagonist quickly turns from a crush on a book character to love for who the character really is. Within a week or so Amy admits to Alexander that she loves him. Amy confessing her love so early on of course is not realistic. But what 21 chapter novel
doesn’t? I felt like a more realistic timing could have been inserted into the story in order to show a lesson to readers that reality isn't fantasy and that even loving and knowing a character doesn’t mean if they were real they would love you back automatically. The Vampire Stalker was an amazing read, though better for people who have ever fallen in love with a character. Amy is relatable because she is an everyday girl next door, but who becomes more comfortable with herself throughout the story. I think two important things that the author touched on were that it’s okay to be different, and that you should stand for yourself, like Amy does with the bullies at her school. Of course, the book isn't for everyone. Nothing ever is. If I were to recommend it for someone I would suggest anyone who likes romance and some action. If you choose to read it get ready for a cheesy and predictable ending. The entire thing isn't a cliché but it has its moments. Ten out of ten, would recommend.
Sonya Hartnett’s ‘The Midnight Zoo’ a touching story that explores the effect war had on animals, children and nature. Both human and animal characters speak about their experiences throughout this period. The book tells about how a hunger for power over something that is not owned impacts everybody and leaves innocents caught up in a large mess.
Vanitas paintings are two dimensional compositions of symbolic content and iconography. The various objects used in the design of these paintings symbolize the brevity of life, the vanity of wealth and beauty, and the inescapable reality of death. This form of art was developed out of Northern Europe in the mid-16th century and through the 17th century. The word “vanitas” is Latin for “vanity.” Vanitas paintings are designed to remind its viewers of the verse in the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes that says all earthly things are “vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Artists who painted vanitas wanted their viewers to remember that the wealth, beauty, and achievements that people desire and obtain will pass away and that death is a sure thing. Mortality is the message present in each vanitas painting and each artist expresses this meaning individually with the use of iconography, color, and various techniques.
The main character of this book is Susan Caraway, but everyone knows her as Stargirl. Stargirl is about 16 years old. She is in 10th grade. Her hair is the color of sand and falls to her shoulders. A “sprinkle” of freckles crosses her nose. Mostly, she looked like a hundred other girls in school, except for two things. She didn’t wear makeup and her eyes were bigger than anyone else’s in the school. Also, she wore outrageous clothes. Normal for her was a long floor-brushing pioneer dress or skirt. Stargirl is definitely different. She’s a fun loving, free-spirited girl who no one had ever met before. She was the friendliest person in school. She loves all people, even people who don’t play for her school’s team. She doesn’t care what others think about her clothes or how she acts. The lesson that Stargirl learned was that you can’t change who you are. If you change for someone else, you will only make yourself miserable. She also learned that the people who really care about you will like you for who you are. The people who truly love you won’t ask you to change who you are.
For my independent choice reading, I chose the book Rebel Belle. The main character, Harper, is the school’s it girl. She has the boyfriend everybody wants and a group of friends who will do anything for her. This all changes and suddenly she’s a Paladin, protecter of the Oracle. At first she can’t figure out who this is, or even what an Oracle or Paladin is, but once she does, things start to get complicated. She is sucked into this whole other world that involves car chases, murders, and trying to save her own life.
Do not open your eyes! One thinks to themselves as you believe there is something or someone there. It is dark your breath getting heavier and heavier, faster and faster, shaking and slowly you open your eyes… No! The fear paralyzes you, something is there it is getting closer and suddenly Ah! Suspenseful right? Every once in a while we may get frightened at the supernatural events that occur to us, but we never stop to think about how it impacts our society. In the article “Vampires Never Die” by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan they reveal their perspectives about why the supernatural is important in our society. The supernatural impacts our society by using the supernatural popularity to make profit, connecting the human desire to the unrealistic and using technology to keep individuals interested in the supernatural.
This anonymous girl is a normal fifteen year old teenager who just wants to be popular and fit in. In this book, she goes through many different so-called friends, or people who she thinks she likes. Many of her friends at first, were just plain ordinary kind of dorky kids and she wanted something new. She discovered a new crowd who she thought she could be popular with, but they only lead her to make the wrong decisions and to ditch the good friends that she had before. They brought her into the seductive world of drugs. She kept all of her secrets in her diary and she never thought to tell anyone. Not only did she hide it from her good friends, but also she hid it from her parents, who...
In the diverse categories of monsters, there are specific types of monsters which are “cursed by a bite”—Vampires, Zombies and Werewolves (Kaplan 2012: 136). Perhaps vampires are the most interesting of all. They have been around for centuries. From Dracula (Stoker 1897) to Twilight (Meyer 2005), vampire culture has seduced fiction lovers all over the world. Before vampire`s otherness in the 19th century renders vampirism a terrifying threat, but late 20th century America finds itself in a mood to perceive otherness as attractive. (Milly 2005).
I peered around through the rain, desperately searching for some shelter, I was drowning out here. The trouble was, I wasn’t in the best part of town, and in fact it was more than a little dodgy. I know this is my home turf but even I had to be careful. At least I seemed to be the only one out here on such an awful night. The rain was so powerfully loud I couldn’t hear should anyone try and creep up on me. I also couldn’t see very far with the rain so heavy and of course there were no street lights, they’d been broken long ago. The one place I knew I could safely enter was the church, so I dashed.
In numerous interviews, creator Joss Whedon has explained that the inspiration for Buffy the Vampire Slayer struck while he was watching horror films and TV shows in which pretty women run away from or get killed by monsters in alleyways. Whedon claims he wanted to give this paradigmatic girl-victim a new role: that of the monster-killing hero. Whedon's explanation of his own artistic inspiration reveals at least two things about him as a film-viewer and maker: first, his description suggests his awareness of the pervasive, archetypal quality of the traditional, mainstream horror film. Second, his description rather coyly fails to account for the more marginal genre of the "slasher film," in which the pretty girl often does kill the monster in the alleyway.
Ever since I was a young child, I have loved to read. Whether it was Chet Gecko, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, A Series of Unfortunate Events or Animorphs, or Diary of a Wimpy Kid, they all provided me with hours of entertainment and an escape from everyday life. Throughout elementary and middle school, I read constantly and frequently visited the library to find new volumes to digest. Each novel was it’s own world, a new adventure with new friends along the way and an opportunity to travel the world, through time and dimensions, with only the time that you spent reading, in exchange. One year in
When the word “vampire” comes to mind, people think of the traditional pale-faced, malicious bloodsuckers, sporting a cape and killing people when they’re sleeping. Wrong! Nowadays, the image of a vampire is a handsome, polite, and loving person who protects humans. The new cultural phenomenon Twilight is building a new degrading image for vampires that slaps the face of all previous authors, directors, writers, etc. who contributed to giving the monster its unique image in the past.
Ever since I was a child, I've never liked reading. Every time I was told to read, I would just sleep or do something else instead. In "A Love Affair with Books" by Bernadete Piassa tells a story about her passion for reading books. Piassa demonstrates how reading books has influenced her life. Reading her story has given me a different perspective on books. It has showed me that not only are they words written on paper, they are also feelings and expressions.
In Conclusion, Lulu’s revenge, John Paul’s guilt, and Denny’s lust represents monstrous behavior. This story shows us that all humans are capable of monstrous behavior. Robert Cormier shares the perspective of a killer. Its take us on a journey through the characters’ eyes and shows us that even the innocent can be dangerous and how one event can negatively impact a person’s life.
One of the most read series in all literature is Harry Potter. The seven-book succession has sold over 400 million copies and has been translated into over sixty languages. What is it that makes this series so wildly famous? What is it about the boy who lived that makes frenzied readers flock to their local bookstore at midnight on the day of the release to buy the latest installment? How is a story set in a world that doesn’t exist about wizards, witches, magic, and mystical creatures so popular? The series has been able to earn its spot on the New York Times Bestseller list and has granted author J.K. Rowling multiple awards because it is relatable. It is not the setting or the events in the plot of the story that we relate to. We relate to what Harry, his friends, mentors, teachers, caretakers, and even enemies feel. Harry is in a lot of ways exactly like us. He represents some of the good characteristics that all of us have as well as the bad. The series as a whole, is about one thing that is stressed over and over again in the novels, love. The Harry Potter series is one of the most read sequences of novels because the central theme is love and self-sacrifice, and readers are looking for a novel that shows them just that.
George R.R. Martin once said, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies… The man who never reads lives only one.” For centuries, books have transformed readers into someone else and transported them to different worlds. In my fourteen years, I have fought dragons, saved the world, and survived World War II. I have become others who were anywhere from a toddler to an adult. I have gone to wizarding school and a summer camp for demigods all because of books. Something magical happens when I open bound pages of words and begin to read. Books inspire me because they each open up a new world of experiences and feelings that will last with me forever.