Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, a book review

Revisionism has always been a part of history. Take the Civil War as an example. Was the war about freeing slaves, state rights, or any of the hundreds of other reasons? That's how history works. The story is always changing to reflect the Now. That is what we have such stories as Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

This book is brought to us by the same creative mind that brought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to the world. In this book, the text of Pride and Prejudice is injected with scenes involving Zombies. I haven't read that one, but one of my English professors wrote the introduction to the second edition (now with 30% more zombies.)

The concepts are smart and thought provoking. What would history look like if Abraham Lincoln was a vampire hunter? What if the Civil War was really about stopping vampires from using slave populations to fulfill their blood lust?

So how does the book do in telling its story? I found it lacking in a lot of ways.

First, there is definitely not enough vampire hunting for my tastes. Lincoln only hunts vampires as a young man. It does make sense since he can't have that kind of strength and resilience as a child or older man, but I'm not really interested in seeing an older vampire hunter try to be President. I want to see Honest Abe rolling up his sleeves and fighting.

Second, the book takes itself far too seriously. Am I really going to believe that Lincoln fought vampires? Not with the way this is written. When I first heard about the idea, I was excited about the combination of actual written work by Lincoln and fictional passages. There is so much potential there. Unfortunately those passages tend to be a way out of actually writing. Also, there are fictional writings that make it hard to take any of it seriously.

Third, is the ending. I don't want to give anything away, but I did not feel satisfied with the ending. It was a cop out and took away from the rest of the story. I wish I could tell you exactly what I don't like about the ending, but I do want you to read the book even if it isn't as great as it could be.

There are things that I did enjoy, but they tended to be isolated segments. Here are some of them:

• Lincoln seeing the impact of slavery on the slaves as 10 auctioned slaves are sold to vampires to feast upon.
• Lincoln mistakes Edgar Allen Poe for a vampire.
• Lincoln actually fighting vampires.

Top 6 Thanksgiving Foods

Thanksgiving has a pretty long history. Go back to the Pilgrims and then to Honest Abe and all the way up to today, but what is the deal with Thanksgiving. So Abraham Lincoln made it an official holiday on the last Thursday of November, but it has become less about being thankful and more about being stuffed like the turkey you are about to carve in a couple of days.

So if Thanksgiving is going to be all about the food anyway, why not talk about the food for a bit? There are plenty of foods to talk about, but I'm going to limit this list to 6 rather than 12 because I'm almost out of time, and I don't see much point about writing how awesome cranberry sauce happens to be. (I'm not actually a fan of cranberry sauce, so that's even more pointless.)

I'm going to give a couple of honorable mentions and then move on to numbers 6 and 5. Tomorrow, I'll finish up the list with the top 4 Thanksgiving foods. So here are the honorable mentions!

Assorted varieties of bread!

Bread is awesome whatever form it may take. It really is one of the greatest things ever invented. If there aren't rolls or some kind of bread at your Thanksgiving it probably means you have a gluten allergy. (I'm so sorry for you if this is the case.)

Corn!
Corn is an integral part of Thanksgiving. It was one of the foods that was brought by the natives and it's a major part of pretty much everything you eat these days. I'm a big fan of corn and I love it during my Thanksgiving dinner.

Number 6-Gravy
I was at a Thanksgiving dinner for the AmeriCorps members in the Denver area recently and it was an awesome meal, except for one thing-no one made gravy. There were plenty of great foods to enjoy, and I'm not a huge fan of gravy anyway, but it definitely reduced the enjoyment of the meal for the people around me. This more than justifies gravy getting a place on this list.

Number 5-Green Bean Casserole
First a quick confession that I've never had green bean casserole for Thanksgiving, but I always see that commercial where everyone brings it to dinner. That is just about enough to make me put it on the list. Green bean casserole is a great dish and something I would appreciate on my Thanksgiving table.

There are four more dishes to go, and I'll get to them tomorrow.

There has to be something you're thankful for...

So here we are on the most misunderstood holiday of the year. I may be wrong about that last statement. I'm sure if you talked to St. Patrick or the men that signed the Declaration of Independence, there may be some debate about that title.  Let me try again.

So here we are on the holiday that really doesn't work as advertised. Thanksgiving has been around since the first winter after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, but it wasn't until Abraham Lincoln that the holiday was made an official part of the American calendar. Now Lincoln's approach to the holiday was that is should be a day to thank God for all that had been provided, and that's all good and fine, but that's not what I want to talk about today. What I want to know is, where are all the thankful people?

Thanksgiving has turned into a giant food fest with football and sleep thrown in. Where is there any time devoted to expressing thanks for anything that we have? I remember when I was growing up that my Mom made each of us share something we were thankful from over the past year. It wasn't much, but it was something. Now we don't even do that.

So this Thanksgiving, take a moment or two to be thankful. It may not seem like there's much to be thankful for, but there has to be something positive going on in your life. I may be semi-employed as a substitute teacher with $50,000 of debt waiting at the door, and no real prospects at the moment, but I can be thankful. So what about you?