Book Review: Interview With The Vampire

This is the third book I read this year and the first of which I did not enjoy. At all. In keeping with my effort to actually 'review' all the books I read this year, I will attempt to put my thoughts into a comprehensive overview of why I did not enjoy this novel.

Interview With The Vampire By Anne Rice

Anne Rice is one of those writers that I have received as gifts many times over. And I've never really understood the reasoning behind this. I do not enjoy her books, the few that I've read. Maybe it's the sheer amount of them, cluttering up my bookshelves, that people see and think "hey, she has a lot of her books, maybe I should get her another." This is terrible reasoning people. Terrible.
The reason I have so many of her books is because you people keep buying them for me. And I, as the consummate reader, won't get rid of a book until I've read it. So there they sit, taking up precious book space and looking all ominous with their titles and bad cover art.

Well, in my journey to declutter my apartment, and hopefully my life, this year, I embarked on the 2 week journey that was Interview With The Vampire. It does not take me this long to read a book, normally. I can read a book in a few hours if I'm really into it and have nothing else to do with myself for a bit. This book took much longer than that because Rice's writing style is too florid, too languid for me. She has a very verbose way of describing things that feels very fraught. I can see where lots of people would love her writing style. It is very romantic, very gothic. It reminds me of Poe, which I would have loved as a depressed 13-year-old. I think that's when I started wanting to read her books, actually. Wait, this is all starting to make sense. But I digress.

What I really wanted to say was something about how the only people that read Anne Rice are the same people that love movies like 'Nosferatu' without a hint of irony. I just can't get into it, personally.

But as for the review part of this diatribe, the story itself is not bad. The characters are endearing, especially Lestat, who exists to fill the villain status quo. Louis is a very lovable character, despite his being a vampire thing. He reminds me of Angel from the Buffy-verse. He seems very distraught with his vampire heritage. He accepts who he is but he also shies away from it.

I feel like I should also tell you, for full disclosure and all, that this is not the first time I've tried to read this book. It might even be something like the third. I usually give up less than halfway through. So I skimmed over A LOT of the novel this time through.

Save yourself the trouble and watch the movie instead. It's much better, in my opinion.