NO.GO.BELIEVE: June 2011

Friday, June 24, 2011

Not Mandatory But Freaking Good: The Sookie Stackhouse Novels

In honor of the season 4 premiere of True Blood (thank you God) this Sunday, I decided to write a post on the book series the show is based on. I don’t give anything away so don’t worry about spoilers.

I happen to live with someone who happens to be a bigger book junkie than I could ever hope to be. She’s what I thought I’d become after a liberal arts education.

Because of her love of books, I have access to a pretty impressive book collection in the apartment. I need never visit a library again.

If you like southern gothic novels or if you like novels about vampires, you’ll love Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse Novels. They’re pretty awesome. No, they’re not going to win any points in literary circles but they’re written well in my opinion, with lively characters, funny dialogue and rich story-lines.

I’m going to refrain from stating they are better than the Twilight series. The two novels are obviously for different readers. So I’ll put it this way:

The Sookie Stackhouse Novels are what readers graduate to after the Twilight trilogy. In other words, the Sookie Stackhouse novels are not for kids.

Would you let a 13 yr old watch True Blood? Exactly.

While I think HBO did a pretty good job with the show, I prefer the novels so much more which isn’t surprising since most adaptations suck (no pun intended) in comparison to the books they are adapted from.

What’s my favorite thing about the books? The heroine, Sookie Stackhouse.

I love the fact that Sookie is a pretty normal, modern female. Yeah, she’s got some fairy in her but she’s not a kickass slayer who can kill a vampire without blinking and she isn’t this weak, helpless little thing that doesn’t grow a pair until she becomes a vampire.

She’s a human (in all 11 books) who makes mistakes but doesn’t let the supernatural people in her life (vampire, werewolves, shifters, weretigers) control her.

While I enjoyed reading the Twilight series (I never felt the need to analyze it; that’s like trying to find meaning in a Kesha song), the main character’s dependence on the boys in her life irked the hell out of me. Then again, Stephanie Meyer’s heroine is only 18. She’s insecure and needy but hey, weren’t we all when we were teenagers?

Anyway, I also think the books are just funny as hell. They’re entertaining, sexy and smart without being pretentious. They’re pretty much everything that makes True Blood so popular (two more days people)!

If you love the show, read the books.