Graphic Novels Assigned to the 9/9/9 Categories

Graphic Novels recommended by Jeremy and his cohorts at Titan

1. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
2. Therefore, Repent! by Jim Munroe
3. The Blot by Tom Neeley
4. The Travels of Thelonious by Susan Schade
5. The Aviary by Jamie Tanner
6. Glister Volume 1
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Graphic Novels recommended by Steve

1. ?
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Graphic Novels recommended by others

1. The Complete Persepolis
2. Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Independent graphic novels

1. Re-Gifters by Mike Carey
2. The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci
3. Dead at 17: the 13th Brother by Josh Howard
4. Polly and the Pirates by Ted Naifeh
5. Lava Punch by Ben Seto
6. Last Exit Before Toll by Neal Schaffer
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Next in the Series (because I have a lot of series that I read and a lot of backlog here)

1. Walking Dead Volume 6
2. Walking Dead Volume 7
3. Walking Dead Volume 8
4. Hell and Back: Sin City
5. Fables Volume 11: War & Pieces
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

It's the end of the world as I know it: Dystopias

1. DMZ Volume 1
2. DMZ Volume 2
3. DMZ Volume 3
4. DMZ Volume 4
5. Channel Zero
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Zombies, Vampires, Vampire Slayers, and other stuff of the supernatural

1. Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Vol. 1: Guilty Pleasures
2. Buffy Season 8 single issues, catch up
3. Zebediah the Hillbilly Zombie Redneck Bites the Dust 
   
4. Pablo's Inferno: An innocent child's descent into the Underworld and Beyond
   
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Men (and women) in Tights: Superheroes

1. Superman Red Sun
2. Bulletproof Monk
3. Fallen Angel Volume 1
4. Elektra Lives Again
5. Wonder Woman: Love and Murder
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Adaptations of Books

1. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Black Dossier
2. Horror Classics: Graphic Classics
3. Graphic Classics: Robert Louis Stevenson
4. Graphic Classics: Mark Twain
5. Richard Mathesons' Hell House
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Whatever, Whatever, I'll read what I want...

1. Fell Volume 1: Feral City
2. Flight, Volume 1
3. The Killer, Volume 1
4. Ex Machina Volume 1
5. Ex Machina Volume 2
6. Ex Machina Volume 3
7. Ex Machina Volume 4
8. Ex Machina Volume 5
9. Ex Machina Valume 6
10. Jack of Fables Volume 1
11. ?
12. ?
13. ?
14. ?
15. ?
16. ?
17. ?
18. ?
19. ?

Books assigned to the 9 categories for 9/9/in 2009

These might change as the year progresses, but this is the plan.

Books I should have read but haven't (The Classics)

1. Sanditon and Other Stories by Jane Austen
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
3. I, Robot by Issac Asimov
4. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
5. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
6. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
7. The Monk by Matthew Lewis
8. The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
9. Middlemarch by George Eliot
   

Books picked by Steve (and recommended by others)

1. Steve's pick
2. Steve's pick
3. Steve's pick
4. Steve's pick
5. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
6. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
7. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
8. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
9. ?
   

Collections and Anthologies (short stories and poetry)

1. QPB Anthology of Women's Writing edited by Susan Cahill
2. The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas by Sena Jeter Naslund
3. Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
4. The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
5. The Best of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl
   
6. Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood
7. The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
8. e e cumming collection
   
9. Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, or Rainer Maria Rilke

True Stories, Writing, Biographies, History...in Other Words Non-Fiction

1. Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul by Karen Abbott
   
2. Art & Fear by David Bayles
3. What If? Writing Exercises for Authors by Anne Bernays
4. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
   
5. Secret Lives of Great Authors: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights by Robert Schnakenberg
   
6. A Biography of Zelda by Nancy Milford
7. Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West by Ethan Rarick
8. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
9. ?

Good Intentions: Books I Own but Keep Avoiding

1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
2. Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier
3. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
4. The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
5. Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
6. Snobs by Julian Fellowes
7. Fragile Things Neil Gaiman
8. Love by Toni Morrison
9. ?

Books Turned into Movies

1. L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
   
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Books from Childhood (or that I wish had been there for me to read)

1. The Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Lyr, Taran Wander, The High King)
2. The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. LeGuin (The Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore)
3. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
4. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
5. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory & The Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
6. Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures by Walter Moers
7. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
8. Dianna Wynne Jones - something of hers?
9. ?

Books translated into English

1. After Dark by Haruki Murakami
2. The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur by Victor Pelevin
   
3. Perfume by Patrick Suskind
4. Have Mercy on Us All: A Novel (Chief Inspector Adamsberg Mysteries) by Fred Vargas
   
5. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
   
6. Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
7. Something by Arturo Perez-Reverte
8. ?
9. ?

Classic Mysteries

1. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
2. Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
3. Inspector Morse novel
4. Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
5. Dashiell Hammett novel collection
6. The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Whatever, Whatever, I'll read what I want...

1. ?
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?
10. ?
11. ?
12. ?
13. ?
14. ?
15. ?
16. ?
17. ?
18. ?
19. ?

9/9 in 2009: Books I am going to read this year

For the past several years, I stopped setting reading goals for the upcoming year. This year I became intrigued by the 9/9/9 concept that's floating around LibraryThing, so I'm doing one myself. (That would be 9 categories, 9 books in each, in 2009). That makes it 81 books in 2009. Which is okay, but I really want to read 100 books this upcoming year. So I guess I will have 9/9/in 2009, plus 19 freebies to be whatever I want. That might work. Eventually I will fill in the books I am assigning to each category, or at least assign them a topic of sorts.

And of course I have a separate category list for graphic novels, cause those always get left behind.

BOOKS, Meet your 9/9/9 Categories:

1. Books I should have read but haven't (The Classics)
2. Books picked by Steve (and recommended by others)
3. Collections and Anthologies (short stories and poetry)
4. True Stories, Writing, Biographies, History...in Other Words Non-Fiction
5. Good Intentions: Books I Own but Keep Avoiding
6. Books Turned into Movies
7. Books from Childhood (or that I wish had been there for me to read)
8. Books translated into English
9. Classic Mysteries

• Whatever, whatever, I'll read what I want (random picks, 19 of them)
  

Graphic Novels, Meet your 9/9/9 Categories:

1. Graphic Novels recommended by Jeremy and his cohorts at Titan
2. Graphic Novels recommended by Steve
3. Graphic Novels recommended by others
4. Independent graphic novels
5. Next in the Series (because I have a lot of series that I read and a lot of backlog here)
6. It's the end of the world as I know it: Dystopias
7. Zombies, Vampires, Vampire Slayers, and other stuff of the supernatural
   
8. Men (and women) in Tights: Superheroes
9. Adaptations of Books

• Whatever, whatever, I'll read what I want (random picks, 19 of them)

Even more acquisitions to the library

My nephew challenged me this weekend. He said that he had more Hot Wheels than I had books. I hated to contradict him, so instead I took advantage of Half-Price Books 20% off sale and added a few more to the shelves. 

• A Wizard of Earthsea and The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin - The final books in one of my favorite series when I was a kid. I had the second, but not the first or the third. 
• The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe 
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry - Not the type of book I would normally read but it comes highly recommended by a friend. We'll see if I agree with him. 
• Babylon Revisited and Other Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald - I pretty much adore Mr. Fitzgerald
• In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien - Given to me to read by a friend years ago. (Not a friend anymore but at least she introduced me to this book.)  I finally got my own copy.
• Coyote Blue: A Novel by Christopher Moore - I'll read anything he writes. 
• Spaceman Blues: A Love Song by Brian Francis Slattery - This has been on my wishlist so long I don't really remember why - I think I read about ti in Entertainment Weekly. 
• All the Pretty Horses by Cormac Mccarthy - I'll also read anything he writes, or at least, I am working on it. 
• Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe - One of those that I should have read a long time ago. 
• The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border by Teresa Rodriguez - The murders happening down there are so scary.
• Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
• Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
• City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room (New York Trilogy) by Paul Auster
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• The Good Guy by Dean Koontz - I don't read a lot of Koontz but I saw this on Stephen King's best of list so I thought I'd check it out. 
• Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin
• Presumed Innocent: A Novel by Scott Turow
• The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons - The first science fiction/fantasy book I ever read was Hyperion. Many, many years later I discovered there were sequels. I will say that these are some of the very few science fiction/fantasy books I really, really enjoyed, so I picked them up fro Steve to read. He owes me big time for the Dragonlance books. 
  

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

As you might expect, books and DVDs were plentiful under the Christmas tree this year. People know me oh so well. 

DVDs:

• Wall-E (BluRay)
• HellBoy II: The Golden Army (BluRay)
• The Dark Knight (BluRay)
• Cowboy Bebop Remix DVD set (Whee! Finally, Bebop of my very own!)

Books:

• The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams (Thanks LibraryThing Secret Santa!)
• The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore (Thanks LibraryThing Secret Santa!)
• The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
• I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away by Bill Bryson
• Loser Goes First: My Thirty-Something Years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation by Dan Kennedy
• Rock On: An Office Power Ballad by Dan Kennedy
• Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best Loved Books by Jenny Bond
• Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach
• Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
• Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West by Ethan Rarick

Comics:

• Dead at 17: The 13th Brother by Josh Howard
• Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures, Vol. 1 (v. 1) by Laurell K. Hamilton
• DMZ Vol. 4: Friendly Fire by Brian Wood

Live action Cowboy Bebop? Wha?

So Keanu Reeves spilled the beans supposedly.

http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00020675.html

I can't decide if I am overly excited or scared. I srsly love Cowboy Bebop. Keanu Reeves might not be too bad. After all Spike is kind of laid back, but can still kick ass. Keanu kicked ass in The Matrix. It could work.

No, the real question is, who will play Faye...

And will there be a Corgi...'cause go Data Dogs!

Run Fatboy Run

"The only serious relationship I've been in ended in a broken collarbone and a dead meerkat. " - Gordon

I love Simon Pegg and Dylan Moran, even better if they are working with Edgar Wright. Well, Mr. Wright wasn’t in on this one, but Run, Fatboy, Run was funny and sweet. It was a good little movie, and anyone who has ever thought about participating in a long-distance run would get a kick out of it I am sure. I think it could have been leaps and bounds better with Edgar Wright back in there with the team, but Simon Pegg and Dylan Moran do a great job of carrying off the movie. These guys are comedy gold. In fact, I feel compelled to wax poetic on the awesomeness that is Black Books rather than say anything about Run, Fatboy, Run, but I won’t. I’ll just leave it at that.

This time around, Simon Pegg is playing Dennis Doyle, a hapless security guard who made a huge mistake about 5 years ago. He left his pregnant girlfriend at the altar after having a bout of cold feet. Now he wishes he could get her back, but instead Libby (Thandie Newton) is dating a new guy, Whit (Hank Azaria). Whit’s not such a nice guy really, although he treats Libby well. To Whit, everything is a competition, and eventually Whit & Dennis end up competing with each other over Libby, which ultimately leads to Dennis saying he will run the London Marathon. Dennis isn’t exactly physically fit, but he is determined to prove to Libby that he can finish something. Will he make it and will Libby see what kind of man he can become?

This was a sweet movie, and the supporting characters are hilarious, but honestly, it’s not as good as some of Simon Pegg's other work. I'm happy to have rented this but I wouldn't own it and watch it over and over like Hot Fuzz or Shaun of the Dead. David Schwimmer’s directing seemed uneven. Sometimes it seemed like the movie couldn’t decide if it was a comedy or a sticky-sweet romance. The birthday party speech Dennis gives Libby is truly touching. Dylan Moran steals the show as the goofball best friend to Dennis, but that’s no surprise. Dylan Moran is my not-so-secret, over the other side of the ocean crush. He had me at “Popsicle” and I’ll never let go. I'd watch him just sit and eat crackers.

Rating: 4 Purrs for Simon Pegg and Dylan Moran. They carry off the story despite the unevenness of the directing.

Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott

I picked up Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott expecting one type of book and finding, on the whole, another. I thought I would be reading a mystery, but instead I found a complex weaving of mystery, history, romance, and thriller all in one package. Ghostwalk was excellent.

Ghostwalk starts off with the death of Elizabeth Vogelsang. Elizabeth died under slightly mysterious circumstances while writing a biography of Isaac Newton. Enter Lydia Brooke, hired by Elizabeth's son Cameron to come in and finish the biography. Lydia and Cameron have a history together, and when Lydia returns to Cambridge, their romance is rekindled, despite the fact that Cameron is married with children. Lydia begins picking through the mostly written biography and in turn ends up getting drawn in to the mystery surrounding two separate series of murders - a group of Cambridge scholars that Elizabeth discovered when researching Isaac Newton's biography and a group of Cambridge-affiliated researchers that have drawn the wrath of a radical animal rights group. Are these two groups of murders actually connected in some way? Lydia begins to think so, and begins to feel haunted by the ghost of (possibly) Newton. While she follows Elizabeth's research, Lydia realizes that Elizabeth might have uncovered a conspiracy that someone might be willing to kill for. Will Lydia be able to finish the book? Who is the ghostly figure that haunts her? How are the two sets of murders tied to Newton, if they are at all, and will Lydia be next?

This book is a great mystery; it successfully intertwines the current and historical time lines so that you feel much like Lydia does. On one side, you have this wandering, flowing narrative, and on the other, you are inundated with historical facts about Newton, Cambridge, alchemy, glass making, and more. It’s difficult to do, and I never felt overwhelmed with either side. You are captured in a dreamlike state, so much so that I longed to travel and walk where she walked, to see what Elizabeth saw, and know Newton to the extent that these main characters did. It literally felt like I was reading a walking dream and those types of books end up way high on my list of best. Mostly because I think reading should take you away, bring you into a place where your imagination can fly, and help you discover new things about the world and yourself, leaving you in a better place than when you started (even if that place is a sad one). Ghostwalk is one of those. I’m sure some will find things that could be improved, but really, it was perfect to me.

Rating: 5 Purrs. I’ll put this one up there with The Virgin Suicides and The Lovely Bones for the way the words worked in my head.

The Tattooist

I'll watch almost anything with Jason Behr in it. I've been hooked on him since watching Roswell reruns on SciFi channel, so of course I picked up The Tattooist when I found it on NetFlix. (I think he needs to get more work. He's a pretty decent actor and nice to look at.)

In this horror film from New Zealand, an American tattoo artist specializes in tattoos that "heal." Jake is a wanderer, learning about different cultures and exploiting the design and symbols in his tattoo designs. While at an expo in Singapore, Jake sees his first traditional Samoan  tattoo ritual, called tatau, and of course falls for the exotic woman involved in the ritual. He swipes something belonging to the group, and by doing so, awakens an angry spirit who stalks and kills everyone Jake has tattooed since he stole from the group. The bad news: Jake has tattooed the new girl he's dating. Can he save her in time and figure out who or what is killing his clients?

The Tattooist isn't bad. In fact, it's pretty good. Nice scenery, nice acting, interesting culture. I hate that Jake is a callous American who cares very little about using and abusing the rituals and history of the cultures he visits, but I guess that kind of helps push the plot. Like I said before, I really wish Jason Behr would get more work. If you have seen a few Asian horrors with the long-haired ghosts, then you probably won't be surprised by the plot or some of the scares. 

Rating: 4 Purrs for Jason Behr's lovely chest, the interesting take on cultures and respecting what you don't know

Saturday by Ian McEwan

Saturday by Ian McEwan has been sitting on my bookshelf for years, and often when I was searching for the next book to read, I picked it up, flipped through the pages, and put it back down. Not because it didn’t seem interesting, but because lately I can’t seem to make myself read a lot of “worthy” fiction. Instead I end up over in the horror section of my bookshelves, or the mysteries. This time, though, I picked it up and followed through. Boy, am I glad I did, because Saturday was engrossing in a way I don’t find much in books (probably because I keep reading the crap fiction over in my mysteries and horror shelves).

In Saturday, we follow an entire day in the life of Henry Perowne. It’s a Saturday, of course, and it’s been a long week for Henry. He’s a neurosurgeon, and this week has been abnormally busy. When he wakes up in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday morning, he sees something that surprises him – a plane on fire headed for Heathrow. His reaction is much what you would expect in the post-911 world. Is it terrorism? This question drives him all day, never leaving his mind until he hears more and more on the news as to what exactly happened. That Saturday is the day of a public demonstration against the imminent Iraq War, and the demonstration ends up shaping his and his family’s life in an unexpected way. As a reader we follow Perowne throughout his day, fully immersed in this character, his feelings, and his surroundings. On the way to his weekly squash game, he has a car accident (caused in a small way by the demonstration) and is set upon by three hoodlums, and the attack contributes to the tone of the rest of Perowne’s day, culminating with the evening family dinner where his estranged father-in-law, daughter, son, and wife are pawns in a very scary reunion. What was supposed to be a day of gathering, ease, and rest ends up being an uneasy and stressful day, and you the reader feel that throughout the story. The dual nature of the story (Perowne’s scientific brain, his inability to truly give himself to the arts while his children are professional artists, a poet and a musician), pull together in this climax, tying nicely into the final scenes of the story. Where there was fear, anxiety, doubt, even Perowne finds some peace and truth in the classical music he favors while performing surgery on a patient in the novel’s closing scenes. (In a particularly serendipitous moment, Perowne is listening to Barber’s Adagio for Strings at the end of a patient’s surgery.)

I really liked this book and am glad that I also have Atonement up there on the bookshelf to read. The places that Henry visits are richly drawn, the pace of the story builds consistently and rapidly to the end as you would expect. The characters are drawn rather well though Henry’s inner musings, although it becomes obvious that Henry’s thoughts and assumptions are not all truth. When I think of another “day in the life story,” that ever incomprehensible and yet highly revered Ulysses by James Joyce, I can’t help but say this one, Saturday, does it oh so much better. But that could be because I could read Saturday without 3 study guides. It could also be because I could relate ever so much to Henry and the world he lives in. Either way, Saturday is a very good book and worth the time, if only to remind ourselves that there is hope, that fear does not always win, and there is beauty in the world still.

Rating: 4 ½ Purrs

World War Z!!!!!!!!! Why did I not know about this???

The guy who headed up Quantum of Solace (while I thought it was good...not great), is also in charge of the movie adaptation of World War Z, one of my favorite books of the past year. If you haven't read the book, shame on you. It's more than just a zombie novel. It's a biting commentary on the world we live in and amazingly written. It actually brought me to tears in some parts.

But anyway, he says it's going to be huge - a huge scale. Which makes me so f*ckin' happy I want to puke. Like Bourne Identity meets zombies. Which could be really awesome or like House of the Dead. Which could be not so awesome but still watchable because I love/hated House of the Dead.

MTV movies has the comments.

The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries by Charlaine Harris

I first read Dead Until Dark and Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris several years ago, at the same time I was reading the Anita Blake series. I gave them up after two books because I thought they were way to close to the other series, which had really grabbed me and pulled me in at that time. Later the Anita Blake series got to be too much sex and no plot, so I put those away, and really didn't read the vampire type books at all for a long while. Then I picked up Twilight, and when I was finished with that series, my future sis-in-law said, here read these. So back to Sookie I came, and this time I read every single one as quickly as I could. I couldn't put them down. On the tail end of that came the HBO series True Blood, and the sis-in-law and another fiend started coming over for Sookie Sundays. Now my friend is reading the Sookie books, and we are sufficiently hooked and waiting for the next installment.

The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries, starting with Dead Until Dark, are all about Sookie Stackhouse. She's a telepath, and most of the folks in her small town of Louisiana, Bon Temps, aren't quite sure if they should pity her or fear her, so they do a little bit of both.  In Sookie's universe, vampires are real and they have come out of the coffin, so to speak. There's this synthetic blood developed by the Japanese that allows the vamps to "main stream," so a few try it. Enter Bill the Vampire. One night he walks into Sookie's bar (where she waitresses) and her life will never be the same. Bill's mind is the one she can't read, and so she becomes fascinated. The relationship between those two is at the heart of most of the books, and as the series goes on, more and more supernatural things become a part of Sookie's world. In the process, Sookie realizes her telepathy may not be such a curse, as she can use it to help, sometimes most reluctantly, to aid those in the supernatural community.

I love these books. They are sweet and frothy, not too bad on the violence (except Sookie does seem to get herself into some pickles that can turn bloody), and pretty light even on the mystery. However, Sookie's voice is so refreshing. She's no nonsense, hopeful, sarcastic, and romantic. She's got that Southern thing going on, which on one hand bothers me because we are not all chicken-fried down here, thank you very much, but then again, some of us are. I really detest the clothes. I know that seems weird, but Sookie's fashion sense is appalling, and I wouldn't care except that Charlaine Harris spends a lot of time talking about banana clips, short denim skirts, and big blue bows.  The secondary characters are eccentric and varied, but none are well developed, but you aren't really reading for those guys, you are reading for Sookie and her various cohorts and new loves. 

One thing that I think kept me from reading the books for so long is the fact that my grandmother had a cow named Sookie, and every time (even now) that I read that name I picture my grandmother standing in the back pasture calling, "Soooo-kie! Come 'ere girl!" I would recommend them to anyone who might like a bit of southern-fried mystery, and who doesn't mind the batter a bit thick. You should also watch True Blood, but don't expect the series to follow to closely to the books. Major characters have been changed, but it didn't bother me too much. The series can be a little heavy-handed when trying to use the vampire as a metaphor for racism and gay rights, where the book does it in a way that you could almost miss it.  It seems like it would be better to have a happy medium in there somewhere. 

Rating: 4 Purrs for Sookie and Bill. No matter what, I'll be Team Bill over Team anyone else Charlaine Harris throws in the mix.