Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Who is Sookie Stackhouse?











I have watched with fascination as the books in Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series have clawed their way up into the New York Times bestseller list. I had seen them mentioned in various articles and top ten lists and the like but had always dismissed them as silly vampire dross with only novelty value. But they stayed. And then more arrived. Today there is a convincing coven of eight Sookie novels in the NYT top 35 paperback mass fiction list.

So who is Sookie Stackhouse? She is the mind-reading Louisiana cocktail waitress with a penchant for vampires in The Southern Vampire Mysteries, a series of nine novels first published in 2001. The first book, Dead until Dark, won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Mystery.

Sookie's supernatural escapades are said to be addictive. HBO is currently planning the third season of True Blood where Sookie is portrayed by Oscar-winning Anna Paquin. The first season received critical acclaim and won several awards, including one Golden Globe.

USA Today described the series as "Sexy, witty and unabashedly peculiar, True Blood is a blood-drenched Southern Gothic romantic parable set in a world where vampires are out and about and campaigning for equal rights. Part mystery, part fantasy, part comedy, and all wildly imaginative exaggeration, [True]Blood proves that there's still vibrant life — or death — left in the "star-crossed lovers" paradigm. You just have to know where to stake your romantic claim."

Pulp is selling Sookies individually at R79, and the boxed set at R558.

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