I just finished my read of Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris. This was #5 in the Sookie Stackhouse series, featured in the HBO series, Trueblood. There have been very few series I’ve enjoyed in the years of my reading, but Harris’ books have definitely been one of them.  The series goes to 8 and 9, and those I intend to get on audio books to listen to while I drive this fall, when I have an intensive schedule building. Already I have 30 book signings set up. I’m going to fill in with schools, libraries, and other events, and I expect this to be the busiest fall of my career. Back to Harris: This read focuses on the shifters and their killers, lots of action taking place to the general population of “normal” people, but for the vampires, weres, fairies and others of the unseen realms, a very real problem.  A great read if you’re into vampires and the unseen realms.  Here are a few of the many quotations I underlined in my read:

“Only willful ignorance could ignore the charge of magic in the air. Only a group lack of imagination could account for people not wondering what went on in the dark around them” (11).

“Most peoples’ minds don’t bear reading. Their thoughts are boring, disgusting, disillusioning, but very seldom amusing” (11).

“I knew so many secrets, but almost none of them were my own” (54).

About vampires: “Or maybe it was centuries of conditioning that made the difference, decades of disposing of people as they cose, taking what they wanted, enduring the dichotomy of being the most powerful beings on earth in the darkness, and yet completely helpless and vulnerable during the hours of light” ( 227).