52 books :: book 6 :: Dead Until Dark

After finishing reading the Susan Wise Bauer books and taking many notes, I was ready for something a little lighter! The Well Trained Mind and the Well Educated Mind are great books, but right now there are some stresses in our home and that is when I know that all my mind can handle is some "light" reading.

I watched a few weeks ago the full season 1 of True Blood from HBO. I still am not sure if I really like the series, but when I realized that it was based on a book, I put it on hold at our local library to give it a try. It arrived with perfect timing last Friday. I started reading it this past weekend and just finished it this morning.

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris is the first novel in the Sookie Stackhouse series. The story was very similar to the series until about half way through, even some of the dialogue made it into the show. The novel is written from Sookie's point of view. I found that some of the other characters from the show were not included in the book at all, or had very little importance in it. The novel is still gory in some parts, but not as much as the tv series. I will try the next book in the series soon, but so far I enjoyed the book better than the show.

Here is how the novel starts...Sookie Stackhouse is a young bar waitress in a small town in Louisiana. She has a special gift that lets her read other people's minds. To her it isn't a gift though, as she would much prefer not to hear people's thoughts. She has learned to protect herself and to tune them out. Vampires are a part of society, they "came out of the coffin" two years before the novel starts. Sookie had never met a real vampire until she meets Bill.

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