Over in the Political Forum, I was scathing about the old "Dukes of Hazard" TV show for its negative stereotyping of white Southerners, especially lower middle and lower class white Southerners, those frequently called "rednecks" for their sunburned necks from working out in the fields all day. Well, here is an example of how one can portray these types of people as honest and hardworking types as well as the negatives.
Charlaine Harris has written five novels about a young woman in the upstate Louisiana town of "Bon Temps", or "Good Times". Her heroine's family goes back to when the Anglo farmers first settled there in the early 19th Century. She and the whole town are dirt farmers and lumberyard workers or work in the businesses that support these others. The heroine, Sookie Stackhouse, is a twentysomething woman of more than good looks and of considerable intelligence but who has a disability. She can read people's minds. This made it almost impossible for her to study as a teenager and she never even tried college. It also makes dating a near impossibility when you can read the mind of your date.
But the world of Charlaine Harris' novels has a twist, the Japanese have invented a truly effective artificial blood. This allowed the vampires to "come out of the coffin" and announce their presence to the public since they no longer needed to hunt people for survival. Sookie discovers that she has a new/very old neighbor, a Bill Compton, whose mind she cannot read. This is so new and marvelous to her that she becomes fascinated and then infatuated with Bill, who is a vampire who had been a private in the War Between the States before his change. Meeting Bill is the first step in Sookie's growth as she meets and confronts all sorts of supernatural creatures from werewolves to werepanthers to fairies to witches to Wiccans.
The books, while being well-plotted mysteries with great character development, are also quite funny and a neat satire on the Ann Rice stories of decadent vampires living in old plantation houses or in the French Quarter of New Orleans. All of Harris' vamps seem to be from more recognizable stock, a Yakuza, a Norseman, a maybe Brit, a Buddy Holly lookalike in Dallas, and Bubba, Elvis Presley rather unsuccessfully translated into a vampire at the moment of his death. It does account for all of the reported Elvis sightings.
I have just finished reading the first four of the series which are:
Dead Until Dawn
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead
Dead To The World and I very heartily recommend them. I do have one note of caution, and that is that they would be rated a very hard "R" were they movies, so keep that in mind.
Charlaine Harris has written five novels about a young woman in the upstate Louisiana town of "Bon Temps", or "Good Times". Her heroine's family goes back to when the Anglo farmers first settled there in the early 19th Century. She and the whole town are dirt farmers and lumberyard workers or work in the businesses that support these others. The heroine, Sookie Stackhouse, is a twentysomething woman of more than good looks and of considerable intelligence but who has a disability. She can read people's minds. This made it almost impossible for her to study as a teenager and she never even tried college. It also makes dating a near impossibility when you can read the mind of your date.
But the world of Charlaine Harris' novels has a twist, the Japanese have invented a truly effective artificial blood. This allowed the vampires to "come out of the coffin" and announce their presence to the public since they no longer needed to hunt people for survival. Sookie discovers that she has a new/very old neighbor, a Bill Compton, whose mind she cannot read. This is so new and marvelous to her that she becomes fascinated and then infatuated with Bill, who is a vampire who had been a private in the War Between the States before his change. Meeting Bill is the first step in Sookie's growth as she meets and confronts all sorts of supernatural creatures from werewolves to werepanthers to fairies to witches to Wiccans.
The books, while being well-plotted mysteries with great character development, are also quite funny and a neat satire on the Ann Rice stories of decadent vampires living in old plantation houses or in the French Quarter of New Orleans. All of Harris' vamps seem to be from more recognizable stock, a Yakuza, a Norseman, a maybe Brit, a Buddy Holly lookalike in Dallas, and Bubba, Elvis Presley rather unsuccessfully translated into a vampire at the moment of his death. It does account for all of the reported Elvis sightings.
I have just finished reading the first four of the series which are:
Dead Until Dawn
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead
Dead To The World and I very heartily recommend them. I do have one note of caution, and that is that they would be rated a very hard "R" were they movies, so keep that in mind.
