Sunday, January 17, 2010

True Blood & Sookie Stackhouse Series



The HBO show True Blood has to be my favorite show on TV right now.  I just love it!  I even went to the HBO store in NYC last September and bought myself a Merlot's t-shirt like the one Sookie wears in the show!  I also got my boyfriend a Bon Temps Football shirt like Jason's.  It doesn't look like a cheesy t-shirt, and he wears it a lot, but nobody ever registered it as a True Blood shirt.  Sad.  I guess our friends aren't real True Blood fans!  I wanted to get the True Blood drinks too, but they were out of stock.  =(

I am anxiously awaiting the 3rd season.  I never thought that I would be into a vampire show, since there are so many shows and movies out there right now about vampires.  Like that stupid Twilight series.  Ugh, I don't understand why anybody past the age of 13 would like it, but apparently some of my facebook "friends" love it, as per their status updates.  I seriously thought about deleting them from my friends list after I saw their obsessive, multiple status about it.  But I hid their feeds instead.  Hmmm... anyway, so how I got into True Blood is I accidentally saw one of the True Blood episodes on HBO one night when I was channel surfing, and it just caught my attention right away!  This was actually a really good show!  Then I had to go and find the earlier episodes.  I couldn't stop watching them!  They have really good cliff hangers at the end of each episode.  Then of course when I got all caught up, I had to wait for the new episode to air every week.  And then second season was over!  =( 

I like True Blood obviously for the great acting, story line, and good writing.  But I really like how it's aimed at adults, and not teenagers like Harry Potter or Twilight.  Don't get me wrong, I love Harry Potter, I read all the books and watched all the movies.  But it was still aimed at teenagers to begin with, though it got much darker later on.  Anyways, since I was waiting around for the 3rd season of True Blood to start, I figured I would seek out the Sookie Stackhouse books to try to get over my withdrawal. 


 
I bought the box set from Barnes & Noble and started reading them right away.  They are really fast and easy reads.  Each book is about 300 pages or so, and I can finish one in a day or two.  The writing style of Charlaine Harris, the author, seems to be aimed more at teens though.  I don't think she has particularly good writing skills, but her plots are creative, and I never got bored.  They are definitely entertaining to read.  They are also different from other fantasy type of books.  While she writes a lot about different types of supernatural beings, the setting is still in today's modern world with normal human beings that live like you and I everyday, only with secret supernatural beings (and not so secret vampires) among them.  It's definitely an interesting concept.  I do wonder if there are other things out there that we don't know about??

The first two seasons of True Blood are loosely based on the first two books of the series, so I definitely picked up on the similarities.  But there are also some distinct differences.  For example, Tara and Lafeyette are not big characters at all in the books but huge characters in the show.  Jason is never addicted to drinking vampire blood in the books either.  The books do mention the maned, but only a little bit.  Not nearly as drawn out a story line as the show made it out to be.  That was the most annoying part about the show in my opinion.  That character was just annoying and pointless in the show.  They focused way too much on her, I don't know, maybe they will lead to something in later seasons.  Also, Bill is not nearly as likable in the books as the show (Eric is WAY more likable!), and Sookie is kind of a slut in the books!  Hahaha... I mean I still like her character, but she does get around.  The show seem to be drifting further and further away from the books though.  So I could see 3rd and later seasons becoming way different.  Maybe they will keep Sookie and Bill together forever in the show, who knows?  But that would be boring and I hope they don't do that. 

Well the downside about reading all the books is that I sort of know what is going to happen in later seasons so that kind of takes some of the suspense away.  Like I pretty much know who took Bill at the end of season two, but of course I won't ruin it for everyone else who hasn't read the books!  Also, the writers of True Blood could make it completely different anyways.  So I'm still excited to watch season three.  I hope knowing what happens in the books won't make me confuse the two plots of the books vs. show together!

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