Good Books

The other night my oldest son (who is nine) wanted something to read. He is almost done with this HUGE book on Sherlock Holmes (some complete collection or something) and he wanted something else to read in the meantime. He got these books on Misty of Chincoteague for Christmas from his Grandma, so he plowed through those in a day. I pulled out a small book on Edgar Allen Poe that I had sitting around and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He did not seem so interested in the latter. I have not read much of Poe, I can't even remember if I have fully read The Tell-Tale Heart. I flipped over to that one since it is famous. My son seemed really interested, so he started reading. I left him there and soon he came upstairs declaring that he finished and said, "I wanted to know what would happen next so much my hands were really shaking!"
Mr. Wilhelm gave me a look. He said he wanted to read another and started on that right there in our room. Soon he put the book down with a forlorn look and said, "That one was boring."
Now he is reading (again!) The Lord of the Rings.

Since I am such a literature fanatic, I can't wait to get my literature claws on him. I have sat and told him about Dracula and Frankenstein and some of The Invisible Man. He really wants to read these books, especially Dracula, but I believe it is too scary for him. That kind of stuff does not scare me much, but I remember I read the book (for the second time) at a bookclub I used to be a part of and some of the ladies could not finish because it scared them too much.

Which reminds me of the book I just finished: The Historian. I really enjoyed it. If you want your fill of scholars going nuts over ancient manuscripts, crispy vellum, moody librarians, leather and velvet bound books from 1500, quest after quest, yellowed letters containing various clues, silver daggers and bullets, record after record, monasteries and monks, this is the book for you. I have read a couple of Anne Rice novels (this was when I was just coming out of my teens) and have enjoyed them. I think that the reason I do not read them now is because there is a certain sort of following that goes with them and I am not interested in that. This book, however, is a marriage of sane fans of folklore, and academics.

I read a review the other night about it and someone said that throughout the letters, documents and narration, the same voice was speaking. I agree. That was the only real downfall of the book next to the rather quick ending. The cool thing about the book is that you never knew a lot of what was going on or where it would lead to, so all the "same voice" documents you are reading and all that don't really matter to you so much at the time. You just want to read the stuff.

With all that said, it is really cool. Godless, but cool. In the novel Dracula says something like, "True goodness in a human being can never be perfected but evil can."

There is one perfect human being.