Dead Until Dark

So, I got my hair done about a week or so ago, and my colorist really likes Twilight, and then she was like, OMG, do you love Sookie Stackhouse? And I'm like, What's that? and she's like It's this series by Charlaine Harris who has a dirty, filthy mind, and the books that those True Blood shows are based on? And I'm like, Oh yeah, like these Southern vampires? Yeah, she says, they're like, mainstream, kind of, and "true blood" is this fake blood created by the Japanese that they can drink.

I'm in, I said.

She says, You don't have to wait until the 4th book, ifyouknowwhatImean.

You had me at filthy dirty. I told her.

So, the first one is called Dead Until Dark, and the main character is Sookie Stackhouse, who's psychic. She can read everyone's thoughts except for this one vampire, who she falls in love with right away. And, yes, vampires are "out" although they're mostly discriminated against.

What I found quite interesting, in comparison to other vampire stuff I'm been reading/watching lately, is what this book has in common with (particularly) the Twilight series and how it deviates.

An icky thing that the books have in common is that the vampire dudes, who are, of course, ridic-strong, are always picking up (literally) our fair heroine and carrying her around and holding her on their laps. WTF? Is that like, a thing I'm not aware of?

Aside from a little lap-sitting, Sookie's much more of a liberated woman then the teenager in Twilight - in fact, it's mainly Sookie who does the savin' in this book. Also there's like, lots and lots of sex. And fluid exchange:

Someone was stretched out beside me; it was the vampire. I could see his glow. I could feel his tongue moving on my head. He was licking my head wound.

Whhhhhaaaat?

This is by no means high literature, but it sure was a lot of fun and the perfect thing to read on a recent plane ride. It actually had a pretty good murder mystery that I didn't solve but wasn't too far fetched, and I like the universe she's created. I guess they're technically sci-fi, although I don't really like labeling things like that. I'd definitely suggest this to anyone as a better alternative to Twilight if one wanted to jump on the vampire bandwagon.