i'll finish this one before year's end & don't know whether to start another. would be nice to start 2010 without a carry over.

currently reading: dead until dark by charlaine harris - the first book in the southern vampire mystery series on which the hbo series true blood is based.

it's billed as "a delightful southern vampire detective series" and i thought maybe it would be like vampire-lite, but there would appear to be no such thing. the whole drinking blood issue makes me a bit peckish, and no amount of humour is going to cover that up. on top of that this isn't a particularly well-written book - not totally surprising for a first book in a series, but still, i had hoped for better writing. good fiction will show, not tell, and this is all about tell, tell, tell -- too much description. the dialog is okay, not a distraction, but nothing special. the characters are oddly not compelling. all the description makes you feel that they should be compelling, but they aren't. [not sure that makes sense.] the plot lacks pacing, sort of bumping along with no coherent waxing & waning, no build up and release, no clear tension and resolution. instead, there's a sort of constant low level tension buzzing around like an annoying gnat, but it's not like real suspense. i guess that's the "lite" part.

the thing about the whole vampire subculture is that there is one -- there are rules and a hierarchy and a system of beliefs. this book purports to be in part about a young lady getting to know her first vampire, and so she doesn't know these rules, but yet her vampire doesn't exactly reveal much - which should lend an air of mystery but is simply frustrating. therefore, because it's frustrating and not mysterious or intriguing, i contend it's not well written. i'll finish it because it's okay as far as entertainment goes, but i will not feel compelled to read any others in the series.

i thought i might like it because i thought, as i said, it might be a sort of vampire-lite, but the descriptions of drinking blood - both by vampires & humans - are just a bit much for me. i would like to say that durr, i know vampires drink blood and that's the whole point of vampirism, so yeah, i don't know what i was thinking there.

this is why i don't think i'd like the stephanie myers books. i get the whole "vampires are really good looking" thing and the whole "vampire subculture is really intriguing" thing and the whole "can't live forever without drinking blood" thing. however - i am sure the descriptions in stephanie myers's books are more graphic than those in dead until dark, so if the ones in this book are repelling to me, then why would i like the other?