A Book I Love

Note: This is part of the October Blogging Challenge.

Today's blogging challenge topic is a book that I love. This one is hard! I love a lot of books. I don't really have a favorite one. So I'm going back a long ways to write about a series of book that I first read in middle school.

In 7th grade, a friend taught me the basics of speed reading and I went from reading very slowly to pretty quickly. I used this new found skill to read our library's entire collection of Christopher Pike books. Christopher Pike writes teenage supernatural dramas. Think Twilight but way better.

There is one series in particular that stands out. The Last Vampire is a 6 part series about, well, the last vampire. She is named Sita and it is her journey throughout history. Most of the story takes place in modern times.

I really love this series and it is really hard to say why. For one, these books were my first introduction to Hinduism, a religion that I adopted in college. I think I know that I connected well with the stories and mythology of Hinduism even from just reading these books.

It also introduced me to the idea that God is universal. That the Hindu god and the  Christian are the same entity just presented differently to reach different people. I clicked with this idea immediately as well.

Funny how a teenage novel can have such a religious impact. But it did.

I even wrote a paper in college about this series and their tie-ins to Hinduism. I also looked at the book Lord of Light, which is also a novel using Hindu characters. I'm not sure where that paper is or I'd post it here.

Anywho, I love these books and they are something that will always be a part of me and my history. Not to mention that the story is fun and they are enjoyable to read.

Christopher Pike recently released a sequel to the Last Vampire series after Twilight came out, but I'd recommend avoiding it. It really wasn't all that great. A lot of the authors that I used to read in middle school are jumping on the vampire re-popularization that was brought about by Twilight. Now if only LJ Smith will finally finish Night World. :)

Here is a link to the first of the Last Vampire books if you want to check them out.