Books 17, 18, 19 - Sookie Stackhouse
True Blood Omnibus: Dead Until Dark, Living Dead in Dallas, Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
True escapist fiction of the most shameless variety. Totally delightful to read, maybe because I like Charlaine Harris better than the woman who wrote Twilight. She's for one a better writer - her characterizations are more fun, the story moves along, stuff happens, and all her characters are grown ups making grown-up (very bad) choices. Because really, True Blood is just an exhibitionist's masturbation fantasy exactly like Twilight except the Mormon lady who wrote Twilight is not. actually all that into sex. She likes to long for sex, but not actually think about it any great detail. Harris is much lustier, and hence much more fun.
i watched the first season of the HBO series that was made based on this book, and I found that I kind of liked it and kind of didn't. I don't dislike Anna Paquin as an actress, but whenever she's cast as 'the pretty one' I get irked. There's something kind of weird and gawky about her, which works most of the time to her advantage as a performer, but being the severe lookist that I am, I get actively annoyed when model-perfect actors say to quirky short actresses with big noses "You're sooo beautiful" over and over. It reminds me of that Barbra Streisand movie where her character stuffs a pillow under her dress before she has to go on stage to sing "I am beautiful" in front of a line of actually beautiful chorus girls.
Anyways.
Sookie Stackhouse of the book though, is utterly lovable. Spunky, brave, honorable, tough, and sarcastic. i like her self confidence, and that she's really, really randy.
These books are also more 'logical' about its fantasy element - if vampires are real, it posits, then so are witches and fairies and werewolves and goblins. I like the specificity of location, and the details of life of being a barmaid, of keeping house, of being a telepath.
It's hard for me to articulate why I got such a kick out of this series other than to say, it's actually REALLY HARD to find escapist fiction that actually allows me to escape and wiggle my toes in delight and giggle to myself and feel that delicious sensation of being silly and naughty, you know? Romance novels sometimes have glaring gender problems - like, the dark brooding hero acts more and more like he's gonna be a fine wifebeater someday, for example, or the heroine is a moron, or there's entirely too much rape. Detective stories are escapist until I have that same sensation I get when I watch CSI or Law & Order - I feel a bit sick to my stomach. It's too real, and too dark, and I feel guilty that as someone who lives so safely and so well protected, I'm reading about the imagined lives of women and men without that protective cover to amuse myself. This series has violence - Sookie gets beat up a lot but each time, she fights back, and she stays very analytical about how and why she ended up in such violence, she's aware of it and sickened by it and hates it a lot. Plus it's vampires and witches so it's safely removed from reality for me.
Book 4 is apparently when Eric loses his memory, and I've been mainlining those adorable much-nekkidness episodes of Season 4 of the HBO show as edited by the fine young men & women of youtube featuring Alexander Skarsgard doing his best puppydog eyes over and over, so I have to download the remaining nine (NINE!) books of this series toute suite!