Treat...and a Trick!





What better way to get in the Halloween mood than by reading Dracula by Bram Stoker? [I read it for free at www.Literature.org!]  I wondered if I would be really scared because since the age of 14 after reading Salem’s Lot by Stephen King and going to sleep for a month with a cross under my pillow, vampires tend to scare me.  But, I needn’t have worried - I really liked it, particularly the way the story was told by using different journal entries by different characters and compiling them to tell a story that was, at times, a little creepy.  It never got full-on scary, though.  I did fall just a little bit in love with the Dr. Van Helsing character in the book [I tend to gravitate towards the eccentric genius type].

The story moves along pretty briskly and the descriptions, dialogue and multiple points of view are expertly delivered.  I greatly enjoyed Mina’s journal entries, and felt that her side of the story was the soul of the book, while Dr. Jack Sewerd’s was the backbone.  [What else?  I mean, she’s a woman in love and he’s a psychiatrist].  Mina is clearly a smart, independent woman and it shows in her journal entries and her willingness to help the men hunt down the Count and kill him.  I was surprised at the depth of the two main female characters, Mina and Lucy, and their “modern-ness.”  I also found it ironic that the more the men played to the stereotype of men-as-protectors, the more harm came to the women.  Even more surprising [and endearing] was Dr. Van Helsing’s continuous praise of Mina as a strong, smart woman, who should be held as a standard of excellence among society.  The end of the book was rather abrupt, but satisfying.  Even though I didn’t think the book itself was scary, the more I thought about the characters and the story, the more frightened I felt.  I suppose the true test for a horror story is whether the reader’s imagination takes hold of the idea and takes it to the next level.  Count Dracula is a cultural icon and while vampires are all the rage now, there’s a certain simplicity to this book and Stoker’s Dracula character that makes it far more appealing and frightening than anything more recent.    

All through the book, I kept picturing Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing because he was the only character I really remembered from the 1992 movie, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.  So, I felt a good bit of anticipation before settling back to watch the movie.  Now, some people [my son, my husband, my friends, my mother….okay – a lot of people] think I am too hard on movies adapted from books.  I admit I am a purist when it comes to adaptations, but I thought I had mellowed quite a bit [thanks Harry Potter], and was prepared to take some deviation as par for the course.  Well, if it had only been some deviation, I could have gotten over it, I think, but this was a travesty!  I say that, but then I recall the early nineties as being a wasteland when it came to most fashion, music and anything else requiring creative thought.  This movie is no exception.  I’m sure they thought they were being super artsy when Dracula’s shadow does strange things, but in the book, Count Dracula doesn’t even HAVE a shadow.  That’s just one example. 



One of the few scenes with Mina and Lucy fully clothed



Really, you could probably classify this movie as soft porn, what with the women kissing, bared breasts and moaning for no apparent reason, etc.  Ridiculous!  Needless to say, it didn’t follow the book closely at all.  It should have been called “A Vampire’s Kiss:  Mina And Lucy’s Erotic Adventure With An Ancient Vampire Turned Young”.  What’s worse is that I absolutely loathed Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal of Van Helsing!  He was pretentious, overbearing, snobbish and a complete ass – nothing like the book! 



           My advice is skip the movie unless you’re a huge fan of seeing Winona Ryder in revealing dresses and watching her breasts heave, or you want to see a young Keanu Reeves playing something besides a time-traveling buffoon [well, he’s still a buffoon, but he doesn’t get to meet Abe Lincoln in this flick].  If you want a good read that isn’t gory or in-your-face scary, then Dracula is for you.  If you like Dracula, here’s another fantastic read on vampires and Count Dracula - The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. 


Great Book - little scary, though



A Woman of Independent Means

     A fellow member of a writing group is the owner of an online bookstore, and he recently had a huge sale at his warehouse.  One of the books I purchased was A Woman of Independent Means, 2oth Anniversary Edition by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey.  The title seemed vaguely familiar to me and the blurb on the back intrigued me, since I am fascinated by history and books – not necessarily in that order.   Also, the fact that the entire book was written in the format of letters really fascinated me.  The review on Amazon.com says this of the book and of Bess Steed Garner, the main character:

“From the early 1900s through the 1960s, we accompany Bess as she endures life's trials and triumphs with unfailing courage and indomitable spirit: the sacrifices love sometimes requires of the heart, the flaws and rewards of marriage, the often-tested bond between mother and child, and the will to defy a society that demands conformity.”



Money? Yes.  Likeable?  No.

 

     Needless to say, I had high hopes for this book.  I thought this character would be quite the radical – someone who defied the stereotype and was more than a wife and mother. 

     I was wrong.  So, so wrong!

     This woman, Bess Steed Garner, only aspired to be the “perfect” upper class wife and mother – one obsessed with money, status and only a part-time caretaker to her children.  Combine that with the woman’s narcissistic personality and you get a character that I immediately disliked.  I mean, this lady writes her husband’s obituary and then sends it to a paper in her former hometown with a cover letter that instructs the editor to print it in the society pages because he was such an influential person.   Bess asked her dying father’s nurse to leave his bedside and come back to help her instead!  She forced her aunt, who had taken in her father and raised him as her own, to go into a nursing home.  She sold the aunt’s home and made her aunt sign over all her antique furniture to Bess in payment for the nursing home care and then had the audacity to write her aunt and tell her that she was being petulant about living in a nursing home!  Bess asked her housekeeper to delay her vacation in order to decorate Bess’s house for the holidays not for Bess and the children, but for Bess’s friend who would be staying in the house alone, without them.  Bess alienated her children, especially her daughter, and forced them to do as she wanted instead of finding their own places in life.  She did nothing with her money except build houses, decorate them and go to Europe on vacations.  She didn’t do anything special or help others.  Bess absolutely expected to be catered to and resisted any effort made to try to let her know she wasn’t the center of the universe.  

     The author wrote in the preface to this edition that the book was based on her grandmother.  After reading it, I thought “Wow. This was not a tribute to that woman.  How could she have thought she was writing it as one?”

     Not long after I finished the book, I was on the phone with my mother and asked her if she had read it and she said that she had and liked it.  I laughed and said, “Well, it must be a generational thing because I absolutely loathed that woman and was grateful I didn’t have her as a mother!  You may not have had any money to speak of, but you sure did more for your kids than Bess ever did!”     

     I was so relieved to finish that book.      

Diet?!…I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Diet!

Ah, the holidays!  There’s nothing like having to rush out to Dollar General 30 minutes before dusk on Halloween night only to discover that the only candy left is the “bad” kind because somehow all the Twix, Butterfingers, Hershey bars and Snickers have disappeared from the candy bowl at home (“and it was scarcely odd, because they’d eaten every one” – The Walrus & the Carpenter, Lewis Carroll)

Therefore, I have resolved the following:                                      

1.      Not to buy Halloween candy until October 30th;

2.      Walk at least 30 minutes a day; and

3.      Start back on The Dukan Diet. 

I love this cover! Makes me want to go to Paris

Yes, I was one of the millions of sheep, who bought the book after finding out Kate Middleton used the diet to lose weight before her wedding to Prince William in April, 2011.  [baaaaaa].  But, what is more surprising than me being a fad follower and royal watcher is that this diet actually works exactly like it says in the book!  I am living proof, I tell ya’. 

Here’s the catch, though, this is not a diet you can stop and start whenever you want. In order to have long-lasting effects, you have to follow through.  I started the first phase, “Attack,” in early May of this year, and got through it reasonably well with a loss of about 8 lbs.  Pretty good, but the best thing was the belly fat that I tend to accumulate was melting away! Then, I hit the “Cruise” phase and all hell broke loose! I just didn’t make an effort to remember to alternate days of pure protein and protein with vegetables. And, I missed fruit. And, it got hot and I couldn’t walk anymore because it was like walking on the surface of the sun. And, I have many other excuses, but none of them come close to the truth, which is that I just didn’t want to do it anymore.  But, I’m starting again so I pulled the book out and re-read it. 

Dr. Pierre Dukan, the diet developer and author of The Dukan Diet, gives easy to understand examples and directives as well as provides short chapter summaries. Because the diet is four phases:  Attack, Cruise, Consolidation and Permanent Stabilization, the book’s format is easy to follow and especially easy to reference with recipes and menus located at the back of the book. 

I liked Dr. Dukan’s writing style and his ability to tell his story in a compelling way – the preface “A Decisive Encounter, or the Man Who Only Liked Meat” was one of the reasons I bought the book. Dr. Dukan presents complicated, and what has been so often contradictory information in a way that is organized, simplified and helpful. I liked that he presented his theory first and then gives general nutritional information in only about 20 pages, since some books [ahem..Atkins..cough] take FOREVER to actually get to the point – the diet!  Not only does Dukan present the diet quickly, but he also puts the most obvious questions and answers to them within the phase section.  If you just want a refresher, then you can check out the chapter summary breakdowns instead.   

A short book (263 pages) with easy to understand concepts and directions describing a way of losing weight that actually works! Pick up The Dukan Diet and it will persuade you to make a change.