Sundays with Vlad (Paul Bibeau)

I just finished reading a fantastic book called Sundays with Vlad by Paul Bibeau. It is basically a (pop) cultural analysis of the development and spread of the Dracula legend.

The book was endlessly entertaining. Bibeau covers most aspects of the vampire legend. He goes over the historical Vlad the Impaler who was the VERY vague basis off the Dracula myth that was created almost single-handedly by Bram Stoker with the publication of Dracula, published in the late 1800s. Also covered in the book, are the movie adaptations of the novel and the extension of vampire propaganda. Also: Role-playing, vampire crime, people who believe they are either psychic vampires or sanguinarians (they actually drink blood) and even a politician in Minnesota who believed the state should impale criminals, such as rapists and child abusers.

If that doesn't sound gripping enough, there's something wrong with you.

Bibeau's humor was often understandable, even though he grew up in a much different generation that I did. He makes countless current pop culture references as well as personal anecdotes to bring the audience closer to his humor and his personality, which glows through the entire text.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed this book. I bought it on a whim during Spring Break with some generous Barnes and Noble gift cards and am very pleased with the purchase. The first chapter, in which he details his trecherous honeymoon in Romania with his wife, left me suspicious of the rest of the book but it pulled itself out of the gutter, so to speak, and was entertaining, so much that I was wishing I could be reading all throughout the school day and putting off homework in order to read it.

I'd give it, probably, 4 out of 5 stars, just because there were some parts that I wanted to be done with way faster than others, such as the visits to Romania and Hungary. But other than that, the book was humorous and fun to read.