So, as you may have gathered, I am a bit of a reader. (And of female-authored books, no less! I promise there will be a man-written book on my list by September, if I have to re-read one of my James Ellroys or Sebastian Faulks to get it there!) And as a reader—and a woman, as I alluded to in the bracketed sentence above—I appreciate a well-plotted love story. It's been a pleasant surprise to find a good love story in the middle of a series of books about a telepathic barmaid in Louisiana.

I read Charlaine Harris's All Together Dead on Saturday, and as I read I realized that in between the mind reading and the blood-giving and the vampire machinations, Harris is telling one hell of a love story between Sookie, the aforementioned telepathic barmaid, and Eric, the hot Viking vampire. From the first book, readers knew there was something there, and here we are in book six still waiting for the big payoff. But unlike the will-they-won't-they dance they do on TV, Harris gives readers just enough that we feel like the story is progressing and that the characters are moving towards one hell of a romance.

I wonder if the HBO series is going to mess with that to play up Sookie's relationship with Bill. I wonder if Eric will even see the light of day (no pun intended) in the first season, beyond maybe a trip to Fangtasia. And most of all, I wonder when True Blood will air. Since I burned through this book and have to wait a year for the next one, I can't fricken wait.

Anna Paquin is playing Sookie in the HBO version of the Southern Vampire novels!

. . . holy crap, holy crap, holy crap. . . .

So I've been on vacation for two days now (officially; with stat holidays I've been off since Tuesday), and instead of getting back to my blog with a vengeance, I've gone the opposite way and spurned technology altogether. Though it's not for lack of inspiration, or from no desire. In fact, for the past three weeks or so, my hands and arms have been tingling. Never a god sign when work is slowly crippling you.

My neighbour C and I went to see The Devil Wears Prada on Friday night. She's a big fan of the popular chicklits, like the Shopaholic series and books like that; ones that I avoid like they are on fire. (I'll read the genre, but only stuff that other people don't. Even in chicklit, I'm a snob.) So when C and I saw a five-minute preview for Prada when we were at The Break Up, I was intrigued and she was excited. She lent me the book immediately after, but I was too busy reading MaryJanice Davidson's latest Undead books (one of which can only be described as werewolf porn. Though, to be fair, her porn is much, much less vulgar than Laurell K. Hamilton's), so I didn't get around to it before we saw the movie.

The flick was great. I really like Anne Hathaway (especially that she's a dark-eyed brunette. I spent more than half the movie checking out what colour eye shadow she was wearing so that I could emulate the look), and Meryl Streep was wonderful. The story held together, and then ending, though very chicklit in nature, was satisfying. (C pointed out that Anne isn’t in for much of a career if she gets a makeover in every movie she’s in.)

I started the book (compare and contrast, class) on Saturday morning and finished it last night. It was better than the movie. The ending was much more satisfying, and the out-of-character things Andy did in the movie weren't even in the book. I was pretty surprised to discover that some of the popular books have more going for them than "girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy back." This one had "girl meets boy, girl treats boy like shit even though it's not her fault and really what could she do differently, girl and boy try to stay friends." Neat.

Wow, one blog entry done and my rambling is more pronounced than ever. I blame it on my numb arms and fingers.

P.S. How thrilled was I to hear Bitter:Sweet in the flick? I've been rocking to them on my Pandora stations since I heard them on Morning Becomes Eclectic three months ago. Good on them!

I have to say, this is going to go down as one of the worst months for updating my blog.

While I'm rocking on the weather, which has managed to get my condo above 20 degrees for the first time since September 2005, I am not happy with how much I've worked this month. I have been in at least one day every weekend, and this coming weekend I will be working both days from 9 to 5. Yummy. At least I have a week-long vacation starting in nine days. Then I can get reacquainted with my old friend MediaHoard.

I'm listening to: A whole bunch of new stuff; most notably Camera Obscura's Let's Get Out of This Country and Gotan Project's Lunático.

I had a party the weekend before last. A couple friends came into town and ran an evening 5k race, and then I made them dinner. I put together quite an extensive soundtrack for the evening. I love introducing people to new music, and it was such a subtle way to do it, over drinks and dinner. I didn't have to go all fan-girl on anyone.

I'm reading: I finished reading MaryJanice Davidson's latest Undead book, Undead and Unpopular. It was cute, as usual. I read it in an evening, as usual, and I spent way too much money on the hardcover, as usual.

I'm watching: E at work lent me the first two seasons of Scrubs on DVD, so pretty much just that. When I haven't been at work, I've been watching JD and the gang. It's probably why I haven't updated my blog in more than two weeks.

Hmm. . . .

The month is slipping away from me. I've been on vacation since Wednesday, and have been keeping blissfully away from my computer. But since it's 10 degrees out there today (on Victoria Day, natch), I suppose I have time to get back online and tell y'all what I've been up to.

Flash back two weeks to Saturday the 6th. I told you I was going to watch Akeelah and the Bee with Elena. We did not. Instead, we got Dairy Queen and rented Derailed. It was terrible. We turned it off after about an hour, and in doing so, missed the shocking twist. I was okay with that.

I haven't watched the entire Gilmore Girls season finale yet. I was so unimpressed with the 20 minutes I did see that I can't bring myself to watch the rest. I can't wait to see what the new regime does to this show, because the last two years haven't really been worth watching.

I am thrilled that Veronica Mars made it to the CW Network. Hopefuly Gilmore Girls hasn't alienated too many of its fans, so that Veronica and Company will pickup on some of its lead-in audience.

I finished reading Charlaine Harris's latest two Southern Vampire books. They were good reads, but quick, quick, quick. Only one complaint about the last book, Definitely Dead. Did I miss a novella where Sookie's cousin Hadley died? Because I can't believe that Harris wouldn't write the scenes where Sookie met the Queen of Louisiana for the first time, especially if they took place in the manner described in this book. Very strange.

I've been listening to The Leaves's Angela Test a tonne lately. They sound like the Icelandic version of Coldplay, but that really hasn't stopped me from digging on them a bunch.

And that, pretty much, is that.

My friend Alan and I have been arguing this week about whether bands like Neko Case and Jenny Lewis are "country." Alan argues that they are, while I vow that they aren't. He compares them to Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash, while I suggest that they're nothing like Garth Brooks and Faith Hill.

Being Scottish, Alan can't see what the big deal is about country music, and why I—and Sh, who brought the CDs in and started this whole debate—would be offended by labelling things we listen to as country. He doesn't get that to most Canadians, country equals redneck, and what he would refer to as country—sweet, twangy music that feels organic and earthy—is just plain folk music.

So folk it is, regardless of how their record label might categorize them.

I'm reading: I started A. S. Byatt's Possession for the first time a week or so ago. I got about 150 pages into it and discovered that Marian Keyes has a new book out, called Anybody Out There? I was finding Possession a dense read (Jana says to skip the poetry—who knew?), so I shelved it for now and read the new Keyes novel. It was lovely. The ending made me tear up on the train. How embarrassing. Now I'm on to Kelley Armstrong's Broken, and then after that, the newest Charlaine Harris paperback, Dead as a Doornail.

Damn, I'm craving frothy chicklit again. Must be the warm weather!

I finished Dead Until Dark last weekend, and decided I liked the book enough to continue. Charlaine Harris has four more books in the series, so on Tuesday, I ordered three of them from Chapters.Indigo.ca (a million times better than Amazon.ca if you’re buying straight-up books, btw. They ship them separately if one book is going to hold up the order, and the books arrive lickedy-split!). I avoided getting the hardcover, since they’re way more expensive and I wasn’t sure that I was going to like the series enough to warrant at $30 purchase.

They showed up on Thursday, and I finished the final two yesterday.

Elena bought me Dead Until Dark because the books are being made into an HBO series (she thought we should have a head start). The setting is definitely HBO-worthy—a rural Louisiana bar, a 150-year-old house, and a vampire club where most people are tourists looking for their first glimpse of a real vampire. Vampires have just “come out of the coffin,” so people are still getting used to having vamps as neighbours. The characters are neat: There’s telepathic barmaid Sookie, the buxom blonde who doesn’t date because who wants to hear your boyfriend bitching about your giant ass when you’re trying to get it on?; her brother, Jason, who’d be well suited for the phrase “the village bike” if guys ever caught flack for being huge whores; her boss, the cute-yet-ineffectual Sam, whose mind Sookie’s never really gotten a good read on; Vampire Bill, the first vampire the small town has ever seen; and his boss, Eric, the tall, blonde former (not Minnesota) Viking who owns the vampire tourist bar. The mysteries are mysterious, and could practically take up a whole season each book.

There are a lot of similarities between this series and the Laurell K. Hamilton Anita Blake books, which are sort of the gold standard for vampire lust-and-mystery books (though I’m increasingly unsure why). The lead characters are both female humans with special powers (telepath, necromancer), a huge dose of Christian guilt and little-to-no sexual awareness. They both accidentally-on-purpose get involved with a dark-haired vampire, get sucked into his politics, and end up being beaten and munched on by various undead creatures. Then they meet werewolves. And other shapeshifters. Who are all hot and want to tittie-fuck them. So far, the Harris books have been way more modest in their sex scenes (i.e. no orgies where the main characters change from human to leopard in a gush of fluid, or no threeways where the woman has to ask the man behind her not to do anal. I’m so not a prude, but it wasn’t quite what I signed on for when I started that series), but things are leaning that way. And Anita didn’t become a whore until about book eight, so there’s still time for Sookie to catch up.

I’m hoping that the HBO deal will keep Ms Harris more grounded in her future books. There are several hottie-hot-hot vamps and werewolves introduced already that Sookie could be stuping. She doesn’t need to meet any sexy new werechickens or lust-demons or businessmen from Chicago looking for a good time.

Okay, now I feel dirty. I think I need to read something substantive now. Maybe Tolstoy’s not a bad idea for me, either. I have owned War and Peace since 1993 and haven’t even cracked it open. Is that bad?

I finally got my book in the mail today. It took, like, a week, and the CD I ordered to get my purchase over $39 (Ivy's In the Clear) got here last Friday.

In the end, I suppose it was a good thing that it didn't get here until tonight. I didn't have any major plans this evening, which allowed me to read the book in its entirety—from cover to cover in about 2 1/2 hours. I'm not sure if that means I'm finally starting to read at a decent clip, or that the book was just that short. (It clocked in at about 260 pages, so, while shorter than the tomes I usually read, it was far from a novella. Yeah, that's the ticket.)

To sum it up: Sinclair was yummy but surly, just the way I like him; Betsy was not as bitchy as usual (boo!), and the new sister was intriguing and not too distracting from yummy Sinclair. Have I mentioned that Sinclair is yummy? I have? Excellent.

I am reading: Perhaps the best e-mail I've ever received at work. It's from a colleague who was checking out my iTunes this morning.

"I finally got sound on my computer. And I wanted to say thank you, thank you for your fantastic taste in music."

I mean, dude!

At the same time, she and Alan from my Music Club both recommend the following site for great streaming music. She says: "Check out the show Morning Becomes Eclectic w/ Nic Harcourt on KCRW.com out of Santa Monica. Best radio show on the planet. It airs live from 9 - 12 LA time, but you can listen on demand whenever."

Who do I have to kill to get the new MaryJanice Davidson book?

Just kidding. I ordered it from Chapters last night. Nifty.

I am listening to: I recently acquired three albums from the band Elk City (which is also a city in Idaho. You learn something new every day!): Status, The Sea is Fierce (EP) and Hold Tight the Ropes. I stumbled upon the trio by accident, and have been listening to all three albums pretty much non-stop since. The male-and-female leads are very folky, but the music is heavy with instrumentation. According to the website, there is a new album coming out, featuring just the woman, Renée LoBue. I can't find any info on it, but she has a lovely voice so I'll keep my eyes open. Download the mp3 of the beautiful single, Love's Like a Bomb, from Status.

'Sup, everybody? It's my birthday today and I am bored out of my mind. My bedroom ReplayTV is on the fritz, and that's where I tape all my fun things, and my book (Marian Keyes'—shut up!—Watermelon hasn't caught my attention after 60 pages. And my Book of the Summer, MaryJanice Davidson's Undead and Unappreciated, is late getting to the bookstore. I was so looking forward to reading it this week while I was on vacation.

Plus, I think my friend and I are going to a movie tonight and there is nothing out there that I'm interested in seeing. When does The Wedding Crashers come out?

MaryJanice Davidson's website. Her werewolf and weird Alaska-prince stories may be only slightly amusing, but Betsy the Vampire Queen and her naughty king Sinclair are delightful! My favourite vampire series ever! (Sorry, Laurell. You had me until you made Richard a wuss and Anita a raging whore.)