Sookie Stackhouse series

If you don’t know who Sookie Stackhouse is… have you ever heard of the HBO TV-series True Blood ? 

Do I have your attention now? Good. Because True Blood is based on the Sookie Stackhouse series written by Charlaine Harris. Sookie Stackhouse is also the main character of both, btw.

For the past few months, this was my guilty pleasure.

I’m not going to go into everything that happens in every book. It would take too long as there are 13 books in the main series and then a few short stories for extras.

What I am going to point out though are the differences in the book and TV series. For example: the books aren’t nearly so violent and racy as HBO portrayed it.

In the books, more are said about the werepanthers whereas in the TV-series we are introduced to them, but then it sorta just dies down. In fact, there aren’t just werewolves and werepanthers… And they also make an announcement to the world. Sookie also doesn’t date Alcide.

We also learn more about Sookie’s fairy relatives.

In the book series, Lafayette dies in the first book, Tara gets a happy ending and Pam and Sookie are actually friends!

The only thing I didn’t like, is that baby vamp Jessica doesn’t exist in the books!

1. Dead until Dark
2. Living dead in Dallas
3. Club Dead
4. Dead to the world
5. Dead as a doornail
6. Definitely Dead
7. Altogether Dead
8. From Dead to worse
9. Dead and gone
10. Dead in the family
11. Dead reckoning
12. Dead locked
13. Dead ever after*

I love the way Charlaine Harris took the word “Dead” and made it a theme for every book title. (I once did that with a short story using the phrase “hide and seek”).

I dreaded reading the last book. I don’t know what I’m going to do now. How am I going to face the world? With what am I going to fill the void?

Do you know that feeling when you enjoy something so much you don’t want it to end? When you live and breathe with the characters that the story actually becomes real?

I literally couldn’t put it down. There were some nights my hands actually grew numb for holding onto the Kindle for dear life.

So, what’s the verdict?

Rating: Guilty

Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift

It felt like forever trying to finish this book. But I daresay it’s my own fault. The only time I give myself to read is just before I go to bed every night.

With these classics I find it harder to keep an attention span. Have you ever noticed how these writers never can seem to get to the point? Blah, blah, blah I would read two pages and end up falling asleep and the next night I would do it all over again. Except, that I couldn’t remember what I read the previous night!

And no, I did not watch the film first so I didn’t really have a clue what the book was going to be about.

What I did like: This book has some wonderful ideas of which I’m not going to go into right now seeing as I do not want to spoil anything except… I wonder if the website Yahoo got it’s name from the book?

I’m not really sure why though, but this book kind of reminded me of “The Phantom Tollbooth”.

Back cover:
When a kindly ship’s surgeon, Lemuel Gulliver, sets on several voyages from England, he has no idea of the fantastic adventures – and misadventures – he will have. Violent storms, shipwrecks, mutiny and pirate attacks lead him to remote places populated by strange and amazing beings.

During his travels, Gulliver discovers that these incredible creatures are very different from anyone he has met before. He soon wonders whether he’ll fit in or feel at home in any of these astonishing places.

Join Gulliver in Lilliput, where he finds himself held captive by a race of miniature people; in Brobdingnag, a country populated by giants; in the little island of Glubbdubdrib, where historic figures like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar talk to him; and in an unknown land that’s ruled by the Houyhnhnms, a breed of superior horses who find humanlike creatures repulsive.

By turns funny and frightening, Gulliver’s Travels will introduce you to some of the most outlandish and memorable creatures ever invented.

First published: 1726

Rating: 4/5

The Shack – William P. Young

I think the first time I’ve read this book was in 2009. One of my friends lent it to me.

Last year, I noticed a copy for sale at our local library. I bought it and lent it to the guard at work. He loves to read and he loved this book.

I then decided to reread it, because I could only remember snippets of the story.

Unfortunately, not everyone will like this story. My grandfather hated it, because he couldn’t accept that God may take on the form of a black woman.

I’ve also noticed they’ve turned it into a movie. Wonder how that turned out?

Backcover:

Mackenzie Allen Philip’s youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his ‘Great Sadness’, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend.

Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack’s world forever.

In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant ‘The Shack’ wrestles with the timeless question, “Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?” The answer Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You’ll want everyone you know to read this book!

What I liked about the book: The book is essentially about forgiveness. God, in the story, wants to save Mack from himself, from his bitterness. He wants to release him from his burden, his ‘Great Sadness’.

It teaches us that forgiving someone doesn’t mean you forget or that you have to trust that person again. ‘Forgiveness does not establish a relationship’ (p.225).

Forgiveness is also a journey, it’s not instant and you may need God’s help to forgive.

What I didn’t like: When I first read it, I believed it was based on true story. When you read the story, you really want it to be real. But when I found out it was just fiction, I was disappointed.

First published: 2007

Rating: 5/5

 

Slaughterhouse five – Kurt Vonnegut

I was somewhat disappointed. Maybe it was the title, but I expected it to be more horrific, gory even. I never imagined that it would read like a science fiction novel.

What I found interesting is the fact that the book is a meta-narrative semi-autobiography, because it is based on author Kurt Vonnegut’s own experience in Dresden.

I was confused and kept thinking that maybe, perhaps I had the wrong book in hand. But what are the chances that there are two books called ‘Slaughterhouse Five’?

It was hard to tell when the Billy Pilgrim character was telling the truth or hallucinating. Was he really abducted by aliens, was he really a time traveller or was it just all in his head?

I also kept thinking why ‘Billy Pilgrim’? Pilgrim creates the idea that the character is on a journey to discovery.

Backcover: Billy Pilgrim returns from World War II to a comfortable life and loving family, but the damage is already done. Unable to reconnect with his life, Billy has become “unstuck” in time and bounces from one decade to another, reliving moments of his life, unable to control where he will end up next. Slaughterhouse-Five treats one of the most horrific massacres in European history—the World War II firebombing of Dresden, a city in eastern Germany, on February 13, 1945—with mock-serious humor and clear antiwar sentiment (Source: sparknotes).

First published: 1969

Rating: 3/5

 

Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup

This is the most complete book I’ve ever read. Every possible angle the story could take is covered.

What’s it about: 
‘ There’s a caste system – even in murder.

Vicky Rai, the son of a high-profile Minister, has been shot dead by one of the guests at his own party. They are a glitzy bunch, but among them the police find six strange, displaced characters with a gun in their possession, each of them steaming with a secret motive.

India’s wiliest investigative journalist, Arun Advani, makes it his mission to nail the murderer. In doing so, the amazing tender and touching, techni-colour lives of six eccentric characters unravel before our eyes. But can we trust Advani? Or does he have another agenda in mind…?’ (Backcover)

First published: 2008

What I liked about the book: The ending will blow your mind! Characters, the way the book was written each chapter dedicated to a different character.

Rating: 5/5

Q & A – Vikas Swarup

Most of you will know this book by another name. “Q&A” was the original title of the book and when they adapted it into a film they changed the name to “Slumdog Millionaire”. But it’s not just the title that they have changed.

Much of the plot differs, the names of the characters are different except for Salim.  In the film the hero is called Jalim and his love interest is Latika. In the book he is known as Ram Mohammed Thomas and his woman Nita. In the film it is Who wants to be a Millionaire? In the book it is Who wants to be a Billionaire? Remember, it plays off in India. The big prize is a billion rupees.

I recently lent this book to someone and realized I couldn’t remember what happens in the book. I mean, I know the plot more or less each chapter ends in a question asked on the show and everything before the question explains how he knew the answer. I couldn’t remember what happens to all the characters, does he get to keep the money?

This is what the book is about: 
‘A former tiffenboy from Mumbai, Ram Mohammed Thomas, has just got twelve questions correct on a TV quiz show to win a cool one billion rupees. But he is brutally slung in a prison cell on suspicion of cheating. Because how can a kid from the slums know who Shakespeare was unless he has been pulling a fast one?

In the order of the questions on the show, Ram tells us which amazing adventures in his street-kid life taught him the answers. From orphanages to brothels, gangsters to beggar-masters, and into the homes of Bollywood’s rich and famous, Q & A (Slumdog Millionaire) is brimming with the chaotic comedy, heart-stopping tragedy, and tear-inducing joyfulness of modern India.’ (Back cover)

First published: 2005

Vikas Swarup is an Indian diplomat and once worked in South Africa. In 2006 his book won South Africa’s Book Prize.

What I liked about the book: I’ve mentioned the plot, each chapter revolving around each question. I liked the characters especially Salim and Shankar.

Rating: 5/5

 

 

Spider’s Web – novel based on a play by Agatha Christie

Originally a play by Agatha Christie in 1954, it was adapted by Charles Osborne into a novel (2000).

Back cover: “Clarissa, the wife of a Foreign Office diplomat, is given to daydreaming. ‘Supposing I were to come down one morning and find a dead body in the library, what should I do?’ she muses. Clarissa has her chance to find out when she discovers a body in the drawing-room of her house in Kent. Desperate to dispose of the body before her husband comes home with an important foreign politician, Clarissa persuades her three house guests to become accessories and accomplices. It seems that the murdered man was not unknown to certain members of the house party (but which ones?), and the search begins for the murderer and the motive, while at the same time trying to persuade a police inspector that there has been no murder at all.”

First published: 1954 (play), 2000 (novel)

Rating: 5/5 No Hercule Poirot for a change. The main character reminded me of the one who cried “Wolf!” too many times. Clarissa is a master of spinning the web and telling lies.

“Appointment with Death” – Yet another novel by Agatha Christie & Hercule Poirot

I must confess I feel a little annoyed with Agatha Christie and her character Hercule Poirot after reading this book. Why mus they drag it out and make me feel like an even bigger idiot because I couldn’t figure out who the murderer was? Poor me!

Backcover:”And among the towering red cliffs of Petra sits a woman’s corpse. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist is the only sign of the fatal injection that killed her.”

First published: 1938

Rating: 3/5

“Murder on the Orient Express” by Agatha Christie

No, I haven’t seen the film yet. Though I hear it is quite good.

What it is about:
Thundering along on its three-day journey across Europe, the famous Orient Express suddenly came to a stop as snow drifts blocked the line. Surrounded by the silent Balkan Hills, the passengers settled down for the night.

But Hercule Poirot did not sleep well. He awoke with a start in the small hours, roused by a loud groan from nearby. At the same moment the ping of a bell sounded sharply and someone said: ‘It was nothing, a mistake…’ Then Poirot heard no more.

In the morning the man in the next compartment lay dead, stabbed viciously and frenziedly over and over again. And Hercule Poirot confronted twelve unlikely suspects – for the murderer was still on the train.

First published: 1934

What I liked about the story:
The fact that it takes place in a confined space with so many different characters you have to decide with Poirot who is telling the truth and who is lying…

Rating: 5/5

The Butcher’s Theatre – Jonathan Kellerman

When I finished reading “Time Bomb” while I was on holiday, I turned to the front pages to see what other books Kellerman has written that I might want to read. This one stood out immediately. Maybe it is because I work at a theatre. I was intrigued. Funny, if I think back now I just assumed it would take place in a theatre hall or auditorium not a hospital theatre. Turns out it is neither. This is not a spoiler, because it is mentioned on the back cover of the book:

“Murder is never clear-cut. In the ’60s Jerusalem was dubbed ‘The Butcher’s Theatre’. Decades later and the City of Peace is about to regain that title. The corpse of a young Arab girl has been found – her body violated and then carved up with chilling precision. Sexual murders are virtually unheard of in Jerusalem and the killing throws an already unstable city into turmoil.

Chief inspector Daniel Shalom Sharavi, himself a Yeminite Jew, takes charge of the case. But with political and religious tensions in the city muddying the murder trail, could he be about to lose the killer in the confusion?”

First published: 1988

What I thought of the book: Very well-written and thoroughly researched. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book with 500+ pages. Seems a little long, but if you have the time you should read it.

Rating: 4/5