series to series

I have been tearing through a couple of fun series lately: the Sookie Stackhouse books (the basis of HBO's True Blood), starting with Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris. Soap opera-y but with vampires, I've seen the show, but love love love the books. One of them I finished on a train ride to NYC, it was so engaging. With a break to read Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (a must-read for every comic book geek), a co-worker lent me Storm Front by Jim Butcher, the first book in the Dresden Files series. It's a great mix of noir and magic; at least two of the books I finished in a day, they are such fun and engrossing reads. Sure, they might get a little predictable, but I still need to know what happens; which is probably also why I've stuck with TV shows Battlestar Galactica and Heroes. Now that Medium is on after Heroes, my Monday nights are couch-bound.

Want a taste? Try Many Bloody Returns, a good collection of short stories edited by Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, and Toni L.P. Kelner. Also included is a short story by Kelley Armstrong, author of Bitten and the "paranormal romances" Women of the Otherworld." Yes, she wrote the short story "Twilight" and no, it has nothing to do with Edward and Bella.