Books like Dead Until Dark

After reading a succession of more serious books, I felt the need to read something light and trashy. As I discovered from reading this book, you should be careful what you wish for. Light? Yes. Trashy? Oh yes. Oh yes, yes, yes. But not in a good way - just trash, trash, trash.It is hard to say what I disliked more about this book - the sophomoric writing, or the annoying, vapid, 2-d, Harlequin-romance-heroine-helpless-twit persona of Sookie Stackhouse. Sookie is a psychic, and this fact is used to explain everything from why she didn't do well at school and became a cocktail waitress to why she spends all of her free time sunbathing to why she can't see an obviously dangerous situation until she's up to her eyeballs in it. It does not, however, explain why she has such bad dress-sense (denim mini jumper dress with yellow bandana hair clip to impress the vampire who comes to dinner; Tweety Bird night gown that drives him wild with desire), or why her sexual naivete comes and goes like a rash - at times she is very confident about her sexual attractiveness (wearing "fuck me" red high heels etc) and other times wondering what Bill the vampire and all of the other men in Louisiana could possibly see in "l'il ole me".The sex scenes are either squirmingly bad or tedious. After reading two I just had to skip ahead a few pages any time sex with Sookie looked like it was going to rear its ugly and badly-written head.I know a lot of folks have enjoyed this series, and have devoured every book written by Charlaine Harris. From reading other reviews, it seems to be a very polarizing book. As for me, I could barely choke this one down and will look to satisfy my literary appetites elsewhere.3/28/10 - After having viewed the first two episodes of the HBO series "True Blood", I can now understand why people have gone bananas over this series of books. The show (what I've seen so far) is exceptionally good, thanks to a great cast and the writing talents of Alan Ball, who has turned a sow's ear into a silk purse. I can see how a reader might enjoy the books if they had viewed at least some of the series first and kept it in mind while reading Charlaine Harris's less than stellar prose. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case for me - and while I won't be reading any more of these books, I will continue to enjoy the show!