This collection was edited by Rea Wilmshurst. Apparantely, all of these stories are all more of the darker side of Montgomery’s writing, and aside from a couple of chapters in her well-loved books I would totally agree with that. However, all in all they were definitely more charming than creepy (especially compared to my other RIP reads). They do have elements of RIP-challenge-worthy stuff: ghosts, witches, murderers… but they also had amusing drunks, cute love stories, and whatnot, so it’s a little all over the place. And nothing is really truly scary, as to be expected from Montgomery.

There were a few stories in particular, though, that were very gothic in feeling, and you can see how earlier gothic writers influenced her. The one that sticks out the most in my mind is Some Fools and a Saint. In this story, a new pastor comes to a small town and is boarding in a house that all the locals say is haunted. You can hear a cradle rocking when it isn’t, a violin is heard playing in different places in the house, curses written in blood are sent to the inhabitants of the house. The pastor is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, and I have to say that the ending quite surprised me. It reminded me a little of The Thirteenth Tale and the like.

And, typical to Mongomery, there were phrases, sentences, paragraphs that were just so … true and right.

It was a rainy afternoon, and we had been passing the time by telling ghost stories. That is a very good sort of thing for a rainy afternoon, and it is a much better time than after night. If you tell ghost stories after dark they are apt to make you nervous, whether you own up to it or not, and you sneak home and dodge upstairs in mortal terror, and undress with your back to the wall, so that you can’t fancy there is anything behind you.

Overall, I thoroughly and completely enjoyed this. It wasn’t my favourite of her short story books, but it was charming and a nice, light read.

John Hughes is brilliant. Sixteen Candles? One of my all-time favourite movies. I may have had a bit of a crush on Jake Ryan, and yes, deep down, I may have wanted to be just like Molly Ringwald.

I may have been a (really) little kid when most of the movies written about in these essays were first released, but that doesn’t mean I can’t love and appreciate them as much if I had seen them all in theatre.

This book is a collection of essays on those films that became such well-known and well-loved movies. It mostly focuses on Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but there are some mentions of Weird Science, Some Kind of Wonderful and Uncle Buck in there as well. The foreword was written by the lovely, talented Ally Sheedy, and it really showed how much she respeced Hughes and enjoyed working with him.

As with any collection by numerous people, there were essays I did not enjoy, and others I loved. Make a Wish: The First Kiss Lasts Forever (written by Mary Sullivan) was my favourite; she analyzed and compared some of John Hughes’ movies (as well as what she herself was going through during that time period) to the Cinderella story. It always amuses me to see how much what we watch and read today has to do with those classic fairy tales or myths, and next time I sit down and watch any of those movies, I’m definitely going to be thinking about Cinderella.

Another one I quite enjoyed was by Moon Unit Zappa – How John Hughes Altered My Life – although, at times it came across that she was trying to impress the reader with everyone famous that she has met.

This was definitely a thought-provoking read, and I will view the movies just a little bit differently next time I watch them.

Ah, the search for Dracula. Definitely not the first of those sorts of stories, but with a bit of a different twist.

The story is told through a series of stores and letters told/written by Paul to his daughter, explaining to her the story behind a book she found in her father’s library – a book that is completely blank except for an image of a dragon in the center. The stories tell of how Rossi, Paul’s advisor at university, disappears, and the ensuing search Paul goes on to find him, all the while being persued by vampires who want him to stop the search. Paul is accompanied by Helen, Rossi’s daughter, and the story is as much a tale of Dracula as it is of the love story between Paul and Helen (quite beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time).

I have mixed feelings about this book. Really mixed feelings.

I have always had a very impressionable mind. A very active imagination. I cannot watch scary movies because I won’t be able to sleep afterwards for days. Books, however, normally don’t bother me to the extent where I lose sleep. I don’t think a book has given me nightmares in a long time. And then along came The Historian, and I couldn’t sleep most nights for fear that vampires would appear in my apartment. Needless to say, it took me a very long time to read this book as I couldn’t read it past dark.

On the other hand, it was dripping with atmosphere. The writing was fabulous; things fell into place a little bit too easily for me, but it helped the story move along a little bit faster. It was, quite possibly, the perfect book for this challenge. A lot of the vampire books I’ve been reading lately are very much the sort of book where vampires aren’t as bad as they should be – they make vampires more romantic and sensual. This one certainly didn’t romanticize the monsters, and that certainly impressed me.

I also really enjoyed how it brought those blank books (with the exception of the image of the dragon in the center) into the story. I love why all these people were given the books, and who gave the books to them, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read The Historian yet.

I guess I am officially finished the RIP challenge, but there are still a couple of other books that I want to read before the end of the challenge, so I’m just going to keep on plugging away and hopefully get rid of a few more books that I’ve been meaning to read for a long time.