Discover Top Posts Tagged with #charlane harris

April Reads

April was a surprisingly mixed bag in terms of reading. Some of the books I was really expecting to like were a pretty big let down, while several others lived up to their hype. (more…)

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After a couple of hours of letting my feelings simmer over the ending of Dead Ever after, I feel like I can finally hash out what I feel went wrong. The last 2 books weren't written by Harris. They just couldn't have been. Deadlocked was a trainwreck from start to finish, and then the readers were made to sit and watch the carnage in all 23 chapters of Dead Ever After. The last two books this series was published and printed fanfiction with no beta. I can't seem to wrap my head around the idea that an author would spend a better part of a decade creating and shaping three dimensional characters only to supply us with cardboard cutouts in the end. Why cram all the characters you haven't killed off through the series and bring them back, only to kill them or leave their storylines unresolved? It's an outright slap to the face of to the fans. I was trying to talk one of my friend's into sending her book back to get a refund. I can't in good conscience let her throw good money after bad, even if it's to complete the collection on her shelf. Friends don't let friends read terrible books. I mean even for those who ship the pairing at the end should be offended. That ending doesn't do that pairing justice, it's cheap and flimsy with no substance or spark. It's more of a caricature of what it could have been, if that caricature was being drawn by Rob Liefeld.

#dead ever after #charlane harris #hndwrttn lateblogs books

30 Days of Books Challenge

Day Nineteen: A book that turned me on

The Sookie Stackhouse Series by Charlane Harris

#30 days of books challenge #books #reading #book love #Charlane Harris #Sookie Stackhouse

I finished the entire 3rd season of TrueBlood in 2 days. And now I'm on season 4.

Tara's a lesbian? Fuck yeah, I can deal with this.

#true blood #sookie stackhouse #tara #charlane harris #bill compton #erik northman

Adaptations add bite to the book...

Now, I’m never one to say a film or TV adaptation of a book is ever as good as the read itself. I’m not much of a reader as I’m more of a visual person, but when I do read it’s usually something that I know I use as an excuse to be more critical of something I will be watching. Those that have read the Harry Potter books know that although the films are great, they are not even a dusting on the original stories in the books (the special effects don’t do JK Rowling’s descriptions justice).

But the recent rise in the ‘Paranormal Romance’ adaptation have pleasantly surprised me. I’ve been listening to the Sookie Stackhouse audiobooks (adapted to True Blood), which has an amazing narrator in Joanna Parker (on several occasions I forgot that she was just one person doing the voice of every character, including a brilliant Eric) and although the books are amazingly exciting, funny and a little on the erotic side, where Alan Ball has changed parts of the story for his True Blood series he has truly changed them for the better.

Another example is the popular ITV2 series Vampire Diaries. This series started out as a TV version of the Twilight Saga, but has quickly turned into a much darker, edger show. Again, with these books I am listening to the audiobook versions, I’m currently listening to The Fury, and it seems like they have taken some these characters names and the element of a diary, rings to allow vampires to stay out in the sun...and created an entirely new concept. If it wasn’t for watching the TV show I wouldn’t continue with these books, Elena is a selfish ‘queen bee’ who is rude to her friends and Bonnie is of Scottish decent, still a witch but really her only skill is to allow a paranormal being to use her body to communicate with Elena.

The final example I would like to raise, and I apologies if I offend any Twi-hard teenage fans out there is the Twilight Saga. There is a great story idea in these books, but they read as if they are written by a child. Often cheesy and feeling like a copy of the Sookie Stackhouse storyline these books annoyed me, but I kept reading as I wanted to know what happened next - I just wished someone else had told me. The films, so far, have taken the story of the books and, as you would expect from a film, taken out the fluffy descriptions (except for the pointless and cheesy slow motion running scene in New Moon) and just given us the story as it should have been told.

What interests me the most from these book to TV/Film is although you would expect to know what will happen next, these are adaptations that are ignoring the original idea of their creators and delivering something that has taken the world by storm and creating the new ‘Paranormal Romance’ genre.

#Vampire #Stephenie Meyer #True Blood #L.J. Smith #Charlane Harris #Twilight

Adaptations add bite to the book...