I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Orb Books; 1st ORB pbk. ed edition (September 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031286504X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312865047
• List price: $14.95
  
• I finished this book on Jan. 20

So, someone recommended this book to me because I heart vampires. So, I hunted it down and read it. This particular volume contained the novel I Am Legend and then some other short stories after it. I can't say that I was in love with the short (and I mean really short) stories, but I really dug the main attraction.
First, I'll admit that there wasn't really as much vampire action in the book as I had kind of expected. However, I think the good parts of the book are the same things that make a lot of zombie stories cool: What do you do when you are alone in a crazy and dangerous world. The story picks up in the middle of the survival story of the last man on Earth after what I assume is some sort of vampire apocalypse. Good times. He stays in his reinforced home at night and hunts the sleeping vamps in the daytime. One cool thing I hadn't thought of before is that he can't really travel anywhere beyond a day's journey. So he's pretty much stuck within a safe radius of his home. For the record though, I believe that I would have like 6 watches and an almanac to predict the time of sunset and be safely home by then. (i feel like a farmers almanac or something would have that info).
The ending of this book was awesome, and not what I was expecting at all. Of course, I have a philosophy about reading books. I don't ever try to figure out what the ending will be while I'm reading it. When I'm reading Eve and Roarke books, I am never trying to figure out too hard who the killer is. I like to be taken on a ride, told the story, not try to outsmart the author. Harry Potter books are the only ones that I actively try to figure out what's going to happen, and maybe that is only because it takes so long for those to come out.
Anyway, I thank this book for giving me something to worry about besides zombies taking over the world, now I have to worry about vampires too. Thanks a lot, Matheson.