Reread Brahm Stoker's Dracula.
Took like...two months (this is why I don't read high literature very often anymore. To be fair, Starcraft 2 took a big bite out of my reading time). Not a whole lot to add to my inital assessment. Mina is actually GI Jane, what with the "according to these topographical maps and these train schedules, I can predict the path here". I paid a little more attention to the sexuality stuff--notably the book arguably alegorically references homosexuality (Dracula almost feeds on a man...almost. He resists, though). The treatment of sexually promiscuous women is pretty conservative--with Dracula's harem declared "not women at all", and Lucy put to an elaborate death. Mina as the token smart chick does pretty well for herself, though--in fact, every time she's excluded from the men's club it turns out to be a mistake.
Other than that...geez, eight years ago I found Van Hellsing's accent charming. In 2010 I found it really annoying, and an impediment to entertaining reading. Not that I haven't enjoyed books with funny accents--sure, Harry Potter has Hagrid, but Hagrid doesn't make four-page-long speeches on a regular basis.
Anita Blake novels 1 and 2 (Guilty Pleasures and The Laughing Corpse).
Recommended to me as the original 90s badass female vampire hunter (along with Buffy). I'm told that by the fourth book it basically becomes pornography, but the first few books were fun. About 50 pages into the first book I was worried that it wasn't going to take four books to get there--they'd already had a vampire strip club (with only male strippers), various male characters with "rippling muscles" and "deep blue eyes you could get lost in", and an offer of sex from a were-rat, including discussion of the size of his genitals. Fortunately (for me) the books take a sharp turn away from this style of "heterosexual romance novel". Instead it focuses more on Anita Blake being a traditional badass (trained in Judo, armed with an automatic rifle, and able to raise an army of zombies to help her). Although to be fair, the men are still usually in the 20-40 range, while female characters that get described in detail are like...13 and 70.
Anita is not a traditional hero--she's willing to launch a pre-emptive strike; she's willing to kill someone because they "deserve to die". Her nickname is "The Executioner" (the one who executes vampires who break the law) although...she's not always strict about waiting for the order of execution (provided she can get away with it--killing vampires is against the law in this universe). Despite all this she has an extremely soft side. And no--I'm not referring to her penchant for collecting stuffed penguins; that's just a vice and/or comic releif. She'll grow attached to an unimportant known minion of the enemy whom she knows she can't trust, and become horribly enraged if this minion comes to any harm, to the point that she'll put her own life at risk for the character and/or avenge the character. From the woman who's willing to kill preemptively if she can get away with it legally, the contrast is a little shocking.
Also, something that stood out to me was the 90s-style sexism. Anita declares that if you're in this kind of work, it's not enough to be as good as the boys, you have to be better than the boys. One of the women in the books laments the fact that Anita makes too much money, complaining that it causes her to not require a man (which was a problem, because Anita was still a spinster at the old age of 24). Anita notices that all the people home watching the kids were women, commenting "some things never change". I dunno if this was true in the 90s, but these days I certainly know some stay-at-home dads. Anita is visibly grossed out when offered sex by a woman, and shudders when she passes two leather-bound men holding hands.
Mythology-wise, Vampires are legal...but only in the United States are they given rights, having their largest public face in middle America--Missouri. (Yeah, I find that part pretty hard to believe). There are vampires, and werecreatures, and the main character is none of the above but also has partial immunity to vampire mind tricks that mind control the average human. (Hmm...where have I seen that scenario before? To be fair, this may have been the book that started the genre). Other creatures in the mythology are Necromancers/Animators, the Zombies they raise, Ghouls (undead that eat flesh; tied to cemetaries), Witches, and ghosts. Vampires are pretty standard (can't come in unless invited; sleep during the day unless quite old; killed by sunlight; master/slave mind-control relationship; can do mind tricks on humans; silver doesn't kill, but makes them heal almost human slow). The one unusual part is the ability to designate a willing human servant--an undying human on which your mind-powers won't work, but with whom you can communicate telepathically, and who will have part of your stamina.
