Books: Let the Right One In

Hi, everyone! So I only have about a week of school left, and then I'll get to spend the rest of December and most of January doing absolutely nothing, which is exactly what is keeping me going these last few days. I'm going to spend the weekend forcing facts about the Italian Renaissance and polling techniques into my head and I won't have as much time as I like to read for fun.

That being said, I do everything I can to make time to read. People always tell me they don't have time to read. Maybe they don't. But I have five classes, work part-time, write for the paper (which often means agreeing to something without much notice) and run the art history club, and I still find ten minutes a day to read (WOW Eva, you're so awesome and cool, please tell us more about how perfect and amazing you continue to be). Really, though, give yourself those ten minutes at the bus stop or while you're pooping to read something for pleasure. If you commute or have a job where you can listen to your iPod, download some books on tape and listen to them. Read for ten minutes before you go to bed, or during the commercial breaks of your favorite show. Put books on your iPad or tablet so you never leave them behind, and you can read for a few minutes before class starts.

That being said, you need something really engaging to read. Today, I'm recommending "Let the Right One In" by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Maybe you've seen the Swedish movie based on it, which I highly, highly recommend you do. It's on Netflix now, and the children in it are so wonderful, it's like they aren't even acting at all. If you read the book, you'll realize that the movie did a really nice job taking four or five really complex, intertwining stories, and paring it down to just the core story while still letting you feel fulfilled. But what you get from the book is all the layers underneath the main plot, and ohhh, they are good.

If you're not familiar with the movie/book/story, it's essentially about a young Swedish boy named Oskar who gets bullied all the time, and the strange girl, Eli, who moves into the apartment next door. They become friends, and Oskar realizes that Eli is a vampire. That's the very bare bones of it, the A plot. The B plots are about another person living in Oskar's apartment whose best friend is attacked by Eli, and about an older boy also living in the complex who comes face to face with a horrible creature created by Eli, and about the pedophile who provides Eli with blood (We've got vampires and a romantic interest in underage children, which doesn't differentiate us from 'Breaking Dawn' so far, but there's also a lot of great horror and several very beautiful and sad love stories, and alcoholism and drug use and vicious murder and acid TO THE FACE, which does).

What Lindqvist does best is combine the beautiful and the grotesque and makes something sublime. There's some really beautiful imagery (a lovely child, standing in the snow, or two very damaged adults finding comfort in lying in bed together) and some really horrible imagery (a face melted by acid, a body strung up with its throat slit) and they take turns at just the right pace. Ugh, I just cannot rave about this book enough, and if you read it this winter, you can sit by a snowy window and pretend you are in Sweden and drink your coffee and just feel awesome about yourself. And who doesn't like that?