Currently reading
McGlue
Knife Fight and Other Struggles
Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
The Good Lord Bird
Ancillary Justice
Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More (New Edition)
Dissident Gardens
Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
Complete Novels
This will surely suffice for many horror fans -- it displays the competence of the big-budget apocalyptic thriller, carefully trotting out the (stock) characters, carefully teasing and deploying the (stock) scenario, with just enough tweaking to suggest innovation without annoying the base. I like the high-concept reframing of vampirism, but frankly at 150 pages I was still muddling through the set-up. That's fine, if you've got some wit, even in merely reiterating stock characters. (See any number of great C-grade monster films, particularly the lovely Tremors, say, or del Toro's own fine Blade II.) But these characters could be simply checked off (iconoclastic family-man-torn-by-vocational-passion hero, check), and the actual, extensive explication of each then became an exercise in redundancy. And, as many reviewers note, in the film adaptation (sure to come?) this stuff will be done with a far more ruthless efficiency . . . so, I will wait. If you want a great new vampire story, go read and/or see Let The Right One In.