Guilty Pleasures Be Damned!

Guilty Pleasures
Laurell K. Hamilton
Jove

Well, if we're speaking of guilty pleasures, I don't know which to address first -- the book that is the subject of this week's entry or my sudden fixation with the two-wheeled warriors.  Oh hell -- I'm watching the replay of today's Tour de France coverage as I type this, so I might as well start with the cyclists. 

Holy smokes ... what a fascinating sport!  I'm not a huge television watcher, but I've suddenly become best friends with both my couch and the remote.  I even got up at 6:30 AM on Saturday so I could watch the race live.  I've yet decide if I think the riders are brilliant tacticians, Machiavellian strategists, or barking mad.  In any case, they are monsters and I just can't look away. 

Okay, enough of that ... on to another guilty pleasure.  I know I promised you some time ago that I would lay off the vampire novels.  Well, I hate to renege on a deal, but I was at the airport, I couldn't find anything to read and the oh-not-so-bookish clerk pulled Guilty Pleasures off the shelf and mumbled something that sounded like "favourite author."   Who am I to spurn a recommendation?  Guilty Pleasures turned out to be relatively entertaining and a little unconventional.  Anita Blake dabbles in the paranormal and is an accomplished animator who is paid to raise people from the dead.  She works for a man who is more interested in money than ethics, so it's probably a good that that Anita is a woman of integrity.  She also happens to be a survivor of a vampire attack and freelances for the St. Louis police department as a vampire tracker/slayer.  I know, right?  It doesn't get more outlandish, but I have to admit that it was kind of fun.

I liked this novel  because it defies convention.  Anita is not a perfect heroine.  She doesn't fall for the smooth talking and incredibly handsome vampire, she hangs out with assholes and doesn't judge, and she is fierce in a way that only a survivor can understand.  I'll be honest and tell you that I'm probably going to be reading another one of these novels if I'm stuck at an airport with nothing else to do.  And I'm going to secretly revel in it.  Three mindless zombies out of five.  Did I mention that there were zombies? ...