Bookish Thoughts

It's been about fifteen years since I first read this book back in high school, but it turns out that I'm still a little bit in love with Lestat. I guess that first love never really goes away. Reckless, blonde, devil-may-care vampires who fall in love at the drop of a hat do it for me every time. The Vampire Lestat  is a much better book than Interview With a Vampire , mostly because Lestat is a much more interesting character than Louis. He's curious without descending into brooding. He tries to be moral without getting self-righteous about it. He makes mistakes, but he's mostly able to learn from them and move on. And he's just so in love with the world around him that you can't help but fall a bit in love with him, too. This book is epic and romantic. It dragged a bit at times, especially in the middle. But the payoff is so rewarding. I love the deep dive into vampiric lore and how their culture has changed over the centuries. I love the way answers are ...

"Louis, Louis, Louis. Still whining after all these years." That quote isn't actually from the book. It's Lestat's final line in the 1994 movie adaptation. But, damn, is it an appropriate summation of this book. Anne Rice's Interview With a Vampire was a genre changer. It was the first mainstream media that took a sympathetic view towards vampires. They're just lonely immortals at the top of the food chain who spend their free time reading poetry, visiting the opera, and looking for other vampires to share eternity with. Not all the different from you or me. This also introduced a dynamic that has been repeated in vampire literature ever since. We get Louis, the brooding brunette who doesn't want to kill people; Lestat, the partying blonde who's just out to have a good time and who cares about the body count; and Claudia, the super special girl that they're both obsessed with. This dynamic has gotten a ton of mileage from Bu...