DRACULA

Last October the Classics Book Club of the Marathon County Public Library read Bram Stoker's DRACULA as the month's selection. Our meeting was scheduled to be held within a couple days of Halloween and it seemed appropriate. I've never been a big Vampire fan but I confess to having enjoyed Stoker's book.

However, I realize that there are a lot of Vampire fans out there as evidenced by the success of Anne Rice's books as well as those of several other writers. I have a couple of alerts for such fans. Sunday evening on PBS there is going to be a newly filmed version of Stoker's DRACULA. It will star David Suchet who has been the star of countless POIROT mysteries.

Also, BookLetters Daily is featuring TODAY as a "notable title" a book called FANGLAND by John Marks. Marks is an acclaimed novelist and is a former producer for CBS's "60 Minutes". He reinvents the DRACULA epic in the halls of a television newsmagazine. The book is written in the form of diary entries, e-mails, therapy journals, and other artifacts of early 21st-century American professional-class life. "This vampire novel is a biting commentary on the way we live and work now."

The review written by Tasha Alexander of this, John Marks' third novel is entitled, "A Novel To Sink Your Teeth Into"

So OK, I'll give up the tooth commentary. Both the PBS broadcast and the book sound interesting. Tune in and check out the book on Amazon or whatever.

The picture at the top of this post troubles me. He looks like one of my wife's relatives!