But, and I have no idea why, my inner goblin just wasn’t feeling it.

I tried zombie stories. I’ve been reading a lot this year and am looking forward to season two of The Walking Dead starting tonight.

Maybe that was the problem. Too much of a good thing. After a while my spook-o-meter was barely registering. I needed something that I wasn’t familiar with, something that would creep me out, but not so much I’d have to sleep with the lights on for several weeks after finishing.

Vampires are cool. But I tend toward either the classic version or one’s with an interesting twist like Guillermo Del Torro’s The Strain. Which reminds me, I need to read book three of the trilogy, but it’s one of those I know will scare me a little too much, and I was looking for a some frighteningly fun middle ground.

I did find an interesting book in the store where I work. It’s called Renfield: Slave of Dracula. It seems like it would be a great companion piece to Stoker’s work. Much like Mary Reilly to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Which brings me to the cure for my apparent malaise.

In another I-could-just-kick-myself-for-never-reading-sooner moment, I read Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of the dark side of man personified and exposed. I had no idea it would go so quickly, and not just because it is a novella, with most editions being less than 100 pages.

I even made the effort to pull down Valerie Martin’s book to read as I liked the movie and hoped the book was better – and it is. It is also a short novel and easily read in one or two sittings.

My recommendation is that if you have never read either, read them together. If you’ve only read Dr. Jekyll, then I highly recommend you re-read it with Mary Reilly. You will not be disappointed.

Both are dark and disturbing. One exploring the inability to deal with the evil within, the other giving voice to the victims of such evil. The perspectives of the main characters in each book help give a more complete view of how people and society deal with something that lives within us all.

Dr. Jekyll thought he could banish it, destroy it. His folly only made things worse, amplifying the darkness inside all of us and becoming a prisoner to it.

Mary Reilly, before working for Dr. Jekyll, had her own experiences with a man who could not contain his demons. Yet she does not become fear’s captive. Interesting since this is set in Victorian times and women’s roles in society were such that her strength and character stand out against the backdrop of such a sexist society.

I feel it is no coincidence that Valerie Martin developed her story from a woman’s point of view. How better to showcase and manipulate the theme of duality? Stevenson’s work is nearly without a female presence, whereas Martin’s Reilly is all feminine as it is told in the first person.

Reading these two books was exactly what I needed. I am more in the Halloween mood than I was last week.

I might even go buy some bags of candy today.

Or maybe not. Unless I can hide them really well, including from myself, it might be better to wait until the night before – or even the day of. My scale, and dentist, will thank me.

Picking up a stray book from the shelf where I work can be dangerous.

More like dangerous fun.

On a whim I picked this up just wanting to know if the story was as interesting as the blurb.

It’s not like I’m so starved for reading I need to wander the aisles looking for a book. In fact, I owe this blog and a couple of publishers reviews – a few of them. But when you find a gem like this, you just have to go with the flow and enjoy what gifts you are given.

The story leaves strong impressions that last with you long after you put down the book: that the Minotaur symbolizes much more than a creature who is half man, half beast. That perhaps, this is a redemptive tale. Or demonstrates the struggle in dealing with the duality inside ourselves.

His story is one that demonstrates the complexity it takes to not only deal with these struggles but how to deal with needs and longings that make us wonder what side is human and what side is animal and how to reconcile the two.

I could be way off. But that was my initial impression and I hope to either confirm or retract this sentiment when I re-read this novel. And I will. This is definitely a keeper.

As I noted in an earlier post, I’m participating in a read-along of East of Eden by John Steinbeck.

It has been amazing.

The first week has been one of re-discovery, or more like discovery. This is not like any other of Steinbeck’s work. I never came away before with the impressions I have gotten while reading this, a novel even he said was his best:

It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years . . . I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this

In terms of the title, I initially thought of what lays to the East of Eden literally and what it may symbolize. To the east is the land of Nod. A place where one wanders, yet never settles. You may reside there, but it is not home. Home is where you came from, or are looking for, so in a sense, it’s purgatory - at least until you come to that place where you know you belong.

Symbolism is strong in this book. It’s the tool used to engage the reader completely.

In the beginning, there is the Salinas Valley, an integral part of the setting and story. He describes the majesty of the mountains, it’s ability to cast shadow and reflect light. That within this valley there is good and bad, birth and death, feast or famine.

I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother. They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love. The Santa Lucias stood up against the sky to the west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding—unfriendly and dangerous. I always found in myself a dread of west and a love of east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that the morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias. It may be that the birth and death of the day had some part in my feeling about the two ranges of mountains.

There is a cycle to everything and extremes to those cycles. Such is life and this sets the tone for what lays ahead for the characters and their struggles.

The even greater challenge is the fact that these people came to the valley in search of a home. They are pioneers trying to find their Eden and wondering if they have found it or if they’ve fallen short of their goal. Are they stuck in the land of Nod, or can they make it work, make this valley their Eden.

They landed with no money, no equipment, no tools, no credit, and particularly with no knowledge of the new country and no technique for using it. I don’t know whether it was divine stupidity or a great faith that let them do it . . . And the families did survive and grow . . . I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units – because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back.

Another striking feature of his writing is his characterizations. He finds a way to give the reader a deeper view of his people – you just don’t see them, but their souls too:

Alice retired to the background until she was barely visible at all.

—–

Mrs. Trask was a pale, inside-herself woman. No heat of the sun ever reddened her cheeks, and no open laughter raised the corners of her mouth. She used religion as a therapy to fit ills of the world and of herself, and she changed the religion to fit the bill.

—–

Tom came headlong into life. He was a giant in joy and enthusiasms . . . He lived in a world shining and fresh and uninspected as Eden on the sixth day . . . And he was capable of giant joy, so did he harbor huge sorrow, so that when his dog died the world ended.

This is why so many people may like his other novels, but positively wax poetic about this one.

Of course I am only eighty pages in, so I’m still in the “enthralled” stage of this relationship. We’ll see if it goes the distance, or if it turns out to be a passionate fling that burns out by the end of the novel.