Sookie Stackhouse novels, take 3

Although they are extremely hilarious, and their universe/premise is both fairly unique and really cool, there are several problems with these books that I can't get past, to wit:

1. Sookie is such a goddamned Mary Sue that I keep expecting her to get sorted into Sparklypoo



2. Skanky gender issues



3. Unintentionally funny and kind of boring genre-formulaic Supernatural Romance smut, although at least there was not as much of it as in the first book



4. The eye-buggingly ouch descriptions of what people are wearing



5. A bizarrely small quantity of non-white people considering the setting, which is thankfully not reflected in True Blood

But on the other hand, the books are very funny, and they do offer:

1. Eric



2. Bubba



3. Eric



4. Bill/Sookie/Eric (not really, but at least they make it easier to drift away thinking about it, alright? It could happen later, but they don't really seem like the onscreen-threesome kind of book)



5. Eric

sneakers of the day

Skechers "Licensed" and "Artemis" bikers. Skechers always come in more than one colour, by the way. I just pick my favourites, and I really liked the texture and patterns on these two.

the source of all that SVEA logo stuff

Today bluesbell and I took each other shopping. See, I am in the pre-shopping phase of getting a nice cocktail-formal dress for Wax to wear at my cousin's (and any other) wedding. I can't leave her to do it, because she just won't; and shopping with her is difficult or impossible because she gets bored and wants to quit after an incredibly short time. So Bell took me to Element, an overpriced preppy boutique selling more of the same United Colors of Benetton/Gant/posh department store shit, except when we walked in, there were actually three women including a clerk conversing fluently in Swedish, and in the back room two actual Swedish women from Sweden. "I think we've accidentally come into a Swedish-Speaking Better Folk shop," I whispered to Bell, and she said she knew that.

But wow! Because I have never been to such a place outside of the Swedish Club. "Swedish Speaking Better Folk" is a Finnish-language phrase for a somewhat racist Finnish stereotype against Swedish-speaking Finns - that they're all rich, spoiled country club brats. Statistically this is not true of the majority of Swedish-speaking Finns at all, only of a slightly higher proportion than Finns (a few percentage points). The vast majority of the snobby upper class in Finland is Finnish-speaking: most of the leading families have Swedish and Finnish-speaking branches. So, for example, when shiroi_chi says that she doesn't go into posh department store Stockmann because it's a Swedish-speaker store, this impression is false; the store is a big, country-wide chain and the vast majority of its employees and customers are Finnish-speaking. It wouldn't even be possible for a store to become that big subsisting primarily on Swedish-speaking customers. But evidently it was our lucky day to catch the shop on a day when someone was visiting from Sweden, and apparently at least one of the employees was a Swedish-speaker. I suppose that for a boutique it actually would be possible to remain kind of part of the ghetto...

For the record,

If Wax and I ever have occasion to breed cats, rabbits, or sheep, we are going to name some of them

• Merlin


• Corwin

(me) and

• Adrian

(Wax).