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Why haven’t I been blogging as much lately? Quite simply, I have had my nose stuck in books! After finishing the Twilight Series and the Harry Potter series, I was having a hard time getting into anything again. But knowing that I had a little bit of time to relax over the long Labor Day weekend, I was desperate to find a book to read. In the aisle at Kroger, I found a book that said “Now on HBO, True Blood, the original series based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels.” All of the similarly marked books said that they were written by Charlaine Harris and have “dead” somewhere in the title. I had heard people raving about True Blood, so I figured that I would buy the first book and see what I thought.
By the end of the Labor Day weekend, I think that I was on the 2nd or 3rd book. Fast forward another week and I am now on book 6! They are quick reads (about 300-ish pages each). The first book had an alarming number of similarities to Twilight. But then it diverged and took a different direction.
Similarities to the Twilight series: Main character is a woman who falls in love with a vampire. She has some “other” types of love interests as well who are not completely human. The authors set an interesting atmosphere of a world that is both similar to normal and different. There are enough books that you can keep reading and reading and reading to truly feel invested in the stories.
Differences from Twilight: Sex! While Twilight is in large part about abstinence, the Sookie Stackhouse books each have at least one sex scene that is pretty graphic and a couple of pages long. It’s not like the whole book is about sex, but there is definitely enough to make your cheeks flush.
From what I can tell, there are 9 books in the series. 8 are now in paperback, and you can get a set of the first 7 from Amazon for $32, including free shipping. That’s terrific considering that I paid $48 for the first 6 that I bought at Kroger. I have read that a boxed set of the first 8 is coming out soon as well if you want to wait for it. It’s $34.50 at Amazon with free shipping and ships at the end of September (if you can wait that long!). Book 9 is only available in hard cover right now, and book 10 will be released in May 2010.
I’m making myself take a break before I buy 7-9 so that I can have something to look forward to in the coming weeks if I get all of my work done. I’m anxious to hear what you think of the books if you are reading as well!
Alrighty. I got all of these books loaded into my to be read list over on librarything.com. Now I just need to find some time to read everything.