Reading

I was recently saying to my husband, Robbie, that I should have been a book critic. Reading is my favourite past time (even more than knitting), and I do a lot of it. If I have a lazy Saturday, I can easily finish a book in a day. Over the weekend, I read a novel and a collection of short stories. I've always enjoyed being whisked away into a new world or environment and getting caught up with the stories, the characters and the culture of the book. A great example would be Shogun, which I read several months ago. I absolutely loved how the author brought pre-Western Japan to life. I found the book hard to get into at first, but after they finished boiling people (totally gross), I got it. It clicked. I really enjoyed it and felt like I'd walked away with new information to cram into my head and blurt out at social events.

I tend to rotate my favourite books, all of which are pretty heavy reading and all of which are part of a series, and stick "fluffy" or new books in between them. The faves list is ever-expanding, although rarely do I drop a book off the list. The current list includes:

Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the full series)
Earth Children (Clan of the Cave Bear, Valley of Horses, Mammoth Hunters, Plains of Passage, Shelters of Stone)
His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass)
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Lord of the Rings
and The Harry Potter Series.

Thanks to my dear husband, who is continually buying me books (yay!), I can add another series to that list. Robbie got me The Southern Vampire Mysteries for my birthday. I read seven of them in ten days, and started and finished the eighth on Sunday. They are fluffy. They are funny. There is sex. This is my kind of book.

I much prefer the books to True Blood, which is based on the books. When I say based, I mean loosely based. The first season of True Blood followed the plot of the first book pretty closely, but the second one was *way* not on target. I like that the main character, Sookie Stackhouse, is vain and knows that she's hawt and likes to sunbathe. I like the strange Louisiana colloquialisms that get thrown in (knee-deep in alligators). I LOVE the vampires because, unlike the Twilight series, these are creatures of the night who are blood thirsty, money hungry, love sex, use, abuse, and are generally terrifying. Sookie is a strong female character, unlike Meyer's main character who does nothing but trip over her feet, be depressing and follow her man like a hungry puppy.

Sookie kicks ass and takes names. I like that in my heroines.

So. Check it out, folks. Southern Vampire Mysteries, starting with book one, Dead Until Dark. I'm putting this sucker on my faves list.