Saturday June 9

True Blood Fans: 11 Reasons to Read Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse Novels Now

With season five of "True Blood," the HBO adaption of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels, premiering this month, we think it's high time you got into the book series as well. Here are eleven reasons why the Sookie Stackhouse novels are our vampire mystery/romance/action series of choice.

1. Unlike some other vampire novel series intended for a young adult audience, the Sookie Stackhouse novels actually have main characters that are over the age of eighteen -- so you don't have to deal with all that teenage angst! Plus, those character crushes you've developed are a little less creepy.

2. It takes place in the South (Bon Temps, Louisiana, to be exact), which really makes you want to go hang out there and do Southern things like cook biscuits, go to Baptist church, fight off gators, and tan with Sookie.

3. Sookie could kick Bella's butt.

4. ERIC NORTHMAN: Be seduced by the smoldering bad-boy vampire who always has the perfect witty quip. Just see if you aren't hooked by the end of book one.

5. The writing is actually good! Finally, guilty-pleasure books without the occasional episodes of nausea, induced by overtly saccharine plotlines and adverbs.

6. Speaking of guilty pleasures -- we all know a main reason to read these books is for the romance. Harris definitely delivers, with a slew of relationships, love triangles, and steamy plotlines that involve -- just to name a few -- humans, fairies, vampires, and were-panthers. After reading these books, normal human romance novels seem so … dull.

7. Pam. Eric's right-hand woman and vampire progeny is the most badass person you will never meet because she's fictional. She'll make you want to cast off reality and become her BFF in fiction land. And her interactions with Sookie, a mixture of amusement and condescension, crack us up.

8. Sookie is funny. Name one other female character in a vampire series that has a sense of humor ... that's right, you can't.

9. Sookie is no damsel in distress. Just after defeating a malevolent batch of memory-stealing witches, she has to take out crazed, jealous, werewolf psychopath, Debbie, with a shotgun. Does Sookie whine and moan? Nope, she just gets it done, and has Eric bury the remains in the woods. Her non-human kill count would impress the toughest Navy SEAL sniper.

10. With twelve books in the series, and more to come, you won't run out of your Sookie fix so quickly! No trilogies here — read on!

11. Oh … did we mention Eric Northman?