The True Blood / Sookie Stackhouse novels

I have a pile of new books sitting on my windowsill just screaming to be cracked open. AS Byatt rubs shoulders with Simon Hopkinson, Rebecca West with Colm Toibin. But I dare not go down that route. I have no self control and if I so much as pick one up I am lost.

And, as if that pile wasn't tempting enough, Miss P handed over my birthday present last week.

I wept.

She has given me the entire True Blood Boxed Set.

Yup. Eight paperbacks about vampires. Mind Readers. Werewolves. Witches.



I had zero interest in this genre until last Christmas. Miss P had dragged me along to see Twilight at the movies, and we both enjoyed it. Mr Pattinson is really very lovely. But I just didn't see how the books could possibly appeal.

Then I went by train with the Barrister to Washington for the Inauguration. After the streets cleared and we made our separate ways, I was left at the train station staring in horror at the endless lines for trains to New York with nothing to read. In vain I scanned the shelves in Hudson News. There just wasn't anything I could bring myself to read. I really do draw the line at James Patterson & Dean Koontz.

And there was the Twilight book. No. NO. I did not want to read a stupid YA book about vampires. I loathe fantasy novels. Then I caved. There really was nothing else.

By the time I arrived at Penn Station I had finished the book. And was hooked. At 10am next day I was in Strand Books buying New Moon. No, I said to myself, You are not buying Eclipse too. Pointless restraint, as I was back the next day to buy it. And Breaking Dawn the next. My mother was in town, staying in my studio apartment and I read the books under the covers after she went to sleep, rising grumpy & sleep deprived each morning.

So I know what will happen with these books if I start the first one, & I can't afford to be distracted from work. So, they are going in my suitcase under the bed and coming back to New York with me. IF I can hold out that long.

If you have better self control than I, Amazon has a special offer on the Boxed set herein the UK and here in the US. (Because, as I know well, it's utterly pointless buying this kind of book one at a time. It just ends up costing twice as much.)