Portion of Stephenie Meyer’s ‘The Host’ bonus chapter revealed
www.examiner.com:
A few days ago, we learned that a bonus chapter from Stephenie Meyer’s The Host was to be included in the paperback release version of the book, and today the Wall Street Journal has released an exclusive excerpt portion of the new chapter.
Panic starts to set in as I wait for her voice. For her to say my name. To tell me where we are. To open my eyes so we can see. I need to hear her voice — my voice, in my softest tone, my gentlest inflection.
As you know, The Host is presently in the pre-production stages of film development and will be directed and written (screenplay) by Andrew Niccol.
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Changeless by Gail Carriger – Extract
www.orbitbooks.net: SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t yet read SOULLESS by Gail Carriger be warned, there are spoilers below!
Chapter One
Where in Things Disappear, Alexia Gets Testy Over Tents, and Ivy Has an Announcement
They are what?”
Lord Conall Maccon, Earl of Woolsey, was yelling. Loudly. This was to be expected from Lord Maccon, who was generally a loud sort of gentleman—the ear-bleeding combination of lung capacity and a large barrel chest.
Alexia Maccon, Lady Woolsey, muhjah to the queen, Britain’s secret preternatural weapon extraordinaire, blinked awake from a deep and delicious sleep.
“Wasn’t me,” she immediately said, without having the barest hint of an idea as to what her husband was carrying on about. Of course, it usually was her, but it would not do to fess up right away, regardless of whatever it was that had his britches in a bunch this time. Alexia screwed her eyes shut and squirmed farther into the warmth of down-stuffed blankets. Couldn’t they argue about it later?
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Changes, Book 12 of the Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher
www.tor.com: It’s scary when the next volume in a beloved series is called Changes. I mean, pretty much every book in the Dresden Files could be called “Changes to Character Relationships and Long-Term Threatening Situations That You Didn’t Even Realize Were Happening Because I Successfully Distracted You With the Plot, Including One or Two Big Reveals and Some Neat Explosions.”
But that’s not what they’re called; they have snappy, two-word titles like Fool Moon and Dead Beat. This title stared at me as I contemplated my copy. Were these changes going to be bigger? Badder?
For the wary: This review contains no more specific spoilers than you would get reading the inside flap. I’m a total nut about not getting spoiled myself, so you can trust me. But Jim Butcher released the biggest spoiler of all on his Twitter stream, and it’s the first line of the book:
I answered the phone and Susan Rodriguez said, “They’ve taken our daughter.”
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Are the Fangs Real? Vampires as Racial Metaphor in the Anita Blake and Twilight Novels
www.psychologytoday.com: They’re physically powerful and move with an unusual combination of grace and speed. They’re sexually seductive, in a forbidden sort of way, and dangerous-even the well-mannered, law-abiding ones are, at their core, threatening. They’re monsters, ever ready to prey and feed on human fears, if not their lives. Vampires? Of course. But vampires have never been just vampires. As vampire literature expert Elizabeth Miller1 points out, “the vampire always embodies the contemporary threat.” Sure, the Buffy, Anita Blake, and Twilight novels can be read as light, escapist fiction, but intended or not, the vampires within represent a number of marginalized groups that are perceived as a threat by mainstream society, particularly immigrants and racial minorities. This essay brings this racial metaphor to the foreground.
It All Starts with Dracula
It doesn’t, of course2, but Dracula is the most famous vampire of all. More than 200 films have been made featuring the Count, and the estimate of films that reference Dracula is in the 600s. And that’s just film. The Anita Blake and Twilight series are part of an entire genre of vampire novels (all undoubtedly influenced by Dracula) that now numbers more than a thousand. Perhaps not quite the way the good Count intended, but Dracula did indeed sire an entire universe.
Stoker’s novel was itself part of a literary movement called “invasion literature,” a genre that included more than 400 books, many bestsellers, in the period from 1871 to 1914. Invasion literature was driven by anxiety about hypothetical invasions by foreigners (H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds is the prototypical and best known work), an anxiety that Stoker deliberately (pardon the pun) stoked with his tale of Dracula, who polluted the English bloodline both literally and metaphorically.
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Will you be buy the new copy of the Host? What do you think of it being turn into a movie and who would you like to see in it?
Have you read Changeless? What do you think of the Alexia Tarabotti Novels?
Are you a fan of the Dresden Files? What do like about them?
What do you think of today’s book news?
