Are These My Basoombas I See Before Me?; The City; Dead Until Dark; Living Dead in Dallas

So the last Georgia book by Louise Rennison finds Masimo sad about the Stiff Dylans going to London but determined to stay behind for Georgia, which makes Georgia feel bad because she's not entirely sure how much she really likes him. In the end, she tells Masimo to go and she and Dave the Laugh finally start going out together. Huzzah!

"The City" by Dean Koontz was pretty darn good, kind of spooky. In an unnamed city in the late 1960s, a young boy, Jonah, lives in an apartment building with his mom, who sings at a nightclub. His grandfather plays the piano, and so does Jonah. His good for nothing deadbeat dad finally seems to be out of their lives when a mysterious and very dangerous woman moves into the building, threatening both Jonah and a mild mannered man living on the fifth floor, Mr. Yoshioka. When she finally moves out they are both relieved, but the weirdness and threats don't end. Jonah and his mom move in with his granddad. What I took away from this book was that cities themselves are not inherently evil, but the people who reside in them can be.

I read the Sookie Stackhouse books already, but after the show True Blood ended on HBO, I felt like reading them again. This is the first one, and it's pretty good. Sookie is a telepath, and as a result she hasn't lived a very normal life. She's excited when Bon Temps gets their first vampire, Bill Compton. She can't read his mind, so she doesn't have to be bombarded by his thoughts. They start dating, and it seems like the locals are just getting used to Vampire Bill when young women known as "fangbangers" start turning up dead. Then Sookie's own beloved grandmother is murdered. Everyone seems to think it was Bill. Luckily in the end it was Rene, Arlene's second husband and current boyfriend.

The second Sookie book by Charlaine Harris finds Sookie being lent out by Eric to a nest of vampires in Dallas. One of them has gone missing, and Eric promises Sookie's mind reading capabilities to help them find him. Sookie does: he's being held prisoner by the Fellowship of the Sun, a cult that believes vampires are evil. Also, Lafayette has been brutally murdered (damn good thing HBO had the good sense not to kill off LaLa, otherwise, things would have been bad) and found in Andy's car. Portia, Andy's sister, is trying to find out who killed Lafayette so she can clear her brother's name.