Rules...

Rules for reading the VERY SCARY BOOK.

1. There must be other people within screaming distance, but that's the farthest away they can be. The next room or, preferably, 2 feet away is ideal.
2. The book cannot be read right before trying to go to sleep. Appropriately happy material must be introduced. (Last night, I read a Home improvement catalog and an 8-month-old copy of SELF magazine.)
3. Looking under the bed and in the closet for the monster is not a cop-out, even at my age. You never know where it might be hiding. Also not a cop-out is leaping from the bed so nothing can grab my feet. (yes, i'm 27 years old. What you got to say 'bout it?!)
4. The book should live in another room when you're done reading it.
5. The book should be read with one's back up against the wall, so nothing can creep up on you.
6. Stop reading for the night right after something good happens in the story. You never know what will be in the next chapter, and it could keep you up all night.

Finally, I'm done with the scary book. Very scary at the beginning and the end, but that middle hundred pages of history almost made me put it down. I stuck with it, though, and was not disappointed.
It was "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostva(sp?) This book got a lot of hype, and I think is almost on the best-seller list. I went back and forth about buying it, though, because I didn't want to spend $24 for it.

I'll give it four stars out of five. It was meticulously researched, and the story was pretty complex. It was also set primarily in Europe, which is usually a plus for me. I expected the narrative in a book about Dracula to be rather trite, but I almost never felt that way while I was reading it.