Sam Iles's Blog

Look what the postman delivered! (Although, I was hoping an owl would deliver them…)

I’m a little late to the party. I get it. It’s ok. Everyone has read the Harry Potter books or seen the Harry Potter films. The first book came out in 1997, so I’ve had a long time to read it. I have, in fact, had the first book on my book shelf for as long as I can remember. At least ten years. But, I’ve just never been interested in Harry Potter.

I’m not entirely sure why. Mainly, it’s just because I’ve never really been one for magic and all that in books. Yes, the Lord of the Rings happened the be my favourite book ever since I read it when I was nine or ten but that’s a high fantasy book set in another world. I was always aware that Harry Potter was about a wizard who goes to wizard school in our own world. And it just never appealed to me, so I never bothered.

But, a few months ago I decided that I should finally read the books. I can’t quite remember what sparked this decision – but I am very pleased that I made it.

From the first book I was, to coin a cliche, hooked. I read the others, choosing to take them out from the library. I have read them over the last few months, with other books spliced between. And, they have been truly remarkable. I don’t need to tell you that Rowling is a skilled writer. As the oft quoted review goes: “comparisons with Dahl are, this time, justified.” It’s difficult to fault Rowling on her writing, really.

Perhaps the element of the books I found most impressive was how tightly plotted they were. It’s amazing how, through the last book, so much from every other book in the series makes sense. You spot the clues which are placed throughout the series and, I can only conclude, Rowling must have a literally incredible imagination and have spent hours plotting these books for it to come out making so much sense and being so very smart.

And, of course, the characters really are clever and vibrant and intriguing and incredibly deep. I keep thinking about Harry Potter’s characters compared to Twilight’s. When the love of Heroine’s life leaves her in the Deathly Hallows, she keeps looking for Horcruxes. When the love of Bella’s live leaves her in New Moon, she curls up into a ball for a few months and then jumps of a cliff. Hmm.

Anyhoo. After reading each book, I watched the film right after. (Naturally, books precede films…) The first few films were extremely enjoyable, of course. The cast, too, is quite remarkable. The cast list over the course of the Harry Potter series reads like a who’s who of British acting. Maggie Smith as Minerva McGonagall? Perfect. Alan Rickman as Severus Snape? Perfect. And so on. Last night, after finishing the final book the previous night, I watched the final two films back to back. They were, needless to say, brilliant. “I’ve always wanted to do that spell!” Love it.

Anyway. Last night, I bought this. I have a few books to get through in the next month or so, but then I plan to read all seven books back to back, uninterrupted. That’s how much I liked it.

The Twilight book series gets a lot criticism and the movies even more so. I’m not sure why it does, but I do disagree, so let’s explore…

Firstly, people suggest they are badly written. OK, Meyer isn’t the best writer in the world. She’s no Dickens. But then, really, who is? Her books are, in my opinion, perfectly readable.

One common complaint is the Bella is dependent on Edward or that she is silly because in the last book she says she’d rather die than abort her baby. People declare this to be anti-feminist or something and that it creates a culture of girls who… oh, something, I dunno. But the general gist is that the book promotes bad messages. But I don’t see how this is really a valid point, primarily because this is a work of fiction. You never see the same people complaining that a book shouldn’t be written about a serial killer, because killing people is wrong, and so on, because in books people make decisions which may or may not be good ones.

Still, they remain decisions in books. Books are there to tell a story, not paint a picture of a utopian world where everything is wonderful. Bella makes decisions, decisions which Meyer thought the character should make. I don’t think Meyer should have sat around contemplating how Bella’s decisions would affect some highly suggestible girl when she needs to abort her vampire baby… or something.

The fact is Bella makes plenty of her own choices. She chose to move to Forks, she chose to stick with Edward after he tried desperately to get rid of her and – crucially – she’s always pleading to become a vampire so that she can take care of herself; something which Edward doesn’t want to do because he doesn’t wasn’t to be selfish.

Of course the one most people pick up on is that Edward ‘hits’ Bella, which is, of course, entirely false. He doesn’t hit her. He may have hurt he one or two times due to being a vampire, but this is entirely accidental and clearly explained in the book. I can’t imagine anyone is thinking “gee, my boyfriend hits me but that’s OK because vampires exist”. Yeesh.

Ultimately, what really counts with Twilight is that a) it’s a work of fictitiously fictitious fiction, and b) millions of people enjoy it. Whichever way you look at it, Twilight is insanely popular. In the 21th century, there’ve been two literary phenomena: Harry Potter and Twilight. No book series before those two have been so widely read and so impressed on popular culture so very quickly. The reason Twilight is popular is because it’s a good story. People like good stories. I think the books are good.

The Walking Dead comic has an iPad app which lets you download all of the comics for £5.99 each.

It has three stars.

What is probably the best comic of the last decade has three stars.

I read the reviews and all the negative ones are from people complaining about the price. “£5.99! That’s an outrage!”

What they don’t realise is that the actual paper copies, which I buy, are £10.99. So you’re saving £5. Not to mention that Apple takes £1.79 of that price for themselves, too.

Saving £5. In theory, that is the cost of printing the paper. Your money goes to the publisher and the author and the artists and the rest.

One person even said he wouldn’t pay “more than 99p for them”. Really? You only want to pay 99p for an incredible comic which costs £10.99 in the shops?

Do these people really have no concept of value? Saving £5 seems like a bargain to me.

“I am here to do Your bidding, Master. I am Your slave…”

I am gobsmacked. I know I say this a lot, and the Lord of the Rings often ends up creeping back to first place, but this time I mean it: Dracula is absolutely and unequivocally the best book I have ever read.

Published in 1897 by Irish author Bram Stoker, it was proclaimed by the Daily Mail at the time to be a “classic of Gothic horror”. It’s proved not just to be the classic horror book of all time, but a true classic of all fiction.

The first word which springs to mind when thinking of Dracula is “atmospheric”. Stoker creates a book which is so, so atmospheric. In the first 90% of the book the word Vampire is only written a dozen or so times, but it’s still implicit within all of the book. To a Victorian audience the book would have been truly terrifying, I’m sure.

It’s so, so well written. Stoker weaves horror narratives as good as Poe or Mary Shelley or anyone else. He really is a master of fiction and especially the horror genre. In fact, the portion of the book which takes place in Castle Dracula is true literary perfection…

And it is fantastically Victorian British too. When two men have to wake a sleeping lady to check if she’s alive, they first discuss for a minute how rude it is to break in to a sleeping ladies room and the best way to go about it.

Stoker plays on society’s greatest fears and explores the human psyche brilliantly. This isn’t just a vampire novel in which people run screaming from the Count. This is deep. Very deep. And long too. My particular copy is some 460 pages of very small writing. But, it rushes to its final incredible climax like an action movie.

OK, I’m gushing a little bit and getting perhaps a little over excited. But, I just loved Dracula. Loved Dracula. It’s a masterpiece.

Just read it.

Amazon are missing a trick here. There isn’t yet a good way to read graphic novels (comic books, you could say) in a digital way. Sure, you can buy graphic novels on the Kindle, but they are few and far between and certainly aren’t the popular ones. There’s no Walking Dead or Watchmen or even the old DC/Marvel comics.

But if they created a proprietary format (like they did for normal Kindle books) which could display comics well on an iPad or any other screen by automatically adjusting to fit the screen size, they could totally own the space.

Of course, there is the fact that most comic book artists like to lay out their books very precisely, with boxes overflowing others and such, but, still, I’m sure Amazon could do something good.

I read a lot of books. I also read a lot of different types of books. But, there’s one genre I keep coming back to which I probably shouldn’t be.

Young Adult or Teen fiction. Or, books for kids.

Obviously, there are stand outs in any genre. Harry Potter is the classic Young Adult series which has found favour with adults. But, the books I enjoy the most are nearly always young adult books.

Twilight, Alex Rider, everything Garth Nix, Young Bond, CHERUB, Pullman – I could go on. In fact, young adults get some of the best one off novels too. Things like Feather Boy come to mind. Novels which are deep and meaningful.

Yet, there still seems to be a stigma attached to reading them. Shouldn’t one start reading adults books as soon as one can? I don’t think so. Because, they really are so good. I think there’s more to it, also. For example, YA books are, generally speaking, easy to read. That isn’t to say that adult books are hard to read. Just, there’s something so easy about reading through a YA book. Many of them can be powered through in just a few hours and are a great way to relax.

In fact, children get some of the best books. There doesn’t seem to be as much pressure on the author to write a work of art which, I think, often makes them better. Really brilliant stories come from YA books.

So, this is what I want to put to you: try out some books for younger people. They really are very, very good.

It’s about time I fully explained my feelings towards The Twilight Saga. If you’re not familiar, it’s Stephanie Meyer’s series of four books for ‘young adults’ about the diffident Bella who falls in love with the equally diffident and vampire-y Edward Cullen. And, mayhem ensues.

I love Twilight.

I know what you’re thinking: ‘it’s badly written’ and ‘it’s for teenage girls’.

1) It’s not badly written. It’s certainly not a wonderful work of literature that will go down in history as a perfect piece of prose, but it isn’t bad. I feel that people who ‘hate’ Twilight do so because it’s so popular and people like disliking things which many others like. But, Meyer is a good writer and the books are enjoyable to read.

2) I can’t argue with the teenage girls point…

But what I love about Twilight is the story. It’s that impossible love thing which is present in most all love stories. A vampire and human? Golly. And, mashing my three of my favourite genres (impossible-romance, coming-of-age and vampires) really is lovely.

But it’s all so wonderful how it works out. And, gosh, didn’t it make vampires the new, sexy item of the moment? Book after book and TV show after TV show seems to feature the new style sexy vampire rather than the middle aged neck-sucking Dracula version.

For some reason, the whole vampire love thing really connected with me. At this point I realise that I’m making myself seem most odd, so I’ll move on.

The movies. They’re most enjoyable. I think that all the actors are perfect for their roles. Especially Kristen Stewart. Gosh, I love Kristen Stewart. They’re well produced, exciting, a little over the top and generally very fun viewing. Suffice to say, they are the only movies that I’ll actually go to the cinema to watch rather than just wait for the DVD.

Unfortunately, the fourth book sucked and we’d all be better off if it’d never have been written. It changed a lot about the character of Bella and make me sad. Meyer didn’t really think carefully enough about it. If it would have been half the size, it would have been good, I reckon. But, hardly enough to ruin an entire series, of course.

But, vampires. I also want to clear up a common misconception: vampire novels are not a fad. In fact, they’ve been consistently popular since the 1800s.

This Google Ngram (a graph which represents the times a word appears in a book from the 1700s through to now) shows that vampires have always been in books (and, some of the best books, for that matter).

Even the vampire-romance genre has been exceedingly popular throughout the years. In fact, vampires really have been seen as sexy as well as scary for many, many years. The sub-genre of “vampire lesbians” even has enough references to warrant its own Wikipedia article…

So, there it is. I heart Twilight and I heart vampires.