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I’ve always disliked the cover art of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series. I find it annoying as all hell. It’s as though the illustrator was shooting for Naïve but, instead, hit full blown amateur-hour, junior high level, self-impressed crap, smack in the kisser.

It only occurs to me now that, what the artist may have been reaching for is a style which handily fits the main protagonist’s apparent artless makeup.

Sookie isn’t stupid by any means but, despite being able to read the minds of ‘normal’ as well as truly horrific folk, she’s sweetly childlike. Sounds great, right? Sure but she’s also the sort to use ‘super’ as an adjective (which has always bugged the shit out of me), as in ‘that’s just super cute!’

That feels pretentious and unfair of me though. I think what really put me off in my reading last night was her inability to walk a mile in another’s Timberlands. Was this just a plot device or is she just selfish and emotionally ungenerous? Dunno. She seems giving to other friends.

Maybe, when it came to these two, she was just clean out of giving.

I have (or had — we may or may not be in Past Tense City now) a close friend who, at the same time I entered this latest, heinous surgery-a-thon (two+ years ago), fell HARD into alcoholism. He made some startlingly awful life choices from which he may never recover. Gene had asked me for help on some issue. I had to demure as I was headed in for one of my big brain surgeries (of which he’d already been told). He said “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well” (???!) and then ghosted — totally ghosted.

I got it — his own issues, akin to West coast conflagrations — were/are rooted in long ignored and papered over depression. From what I ‘hear,’ Gene is now beginning to address shit. GOOD. I hope he can rebound and repair at least some of the damage he’s caused himself and others.

Will he and I ever be close again? Who knows? I know that, as Gene and I hike our respective Recovery Roads, neither of us has the bandwidth to help each other out. If I’m gonna come outta this, I need to focus on keeping my spirits and energy up, up, UP. Friday’s big event is just one round in the coming/continuing games.

Am I begging for sympathy here? FUCK no and FUCK that shit! All’s I’m sayin’ is that I get it — Gene doesn’t have room on his dance card. Sure, I’m disappointed but life’s not always a happy merry go round with room for all. I’m also clean outta capacity and that’s a wicked shame. I wish I could help him.

Back to Sookie though — is she inconsistently drawn or just your average erratically behaving human? I find Harris’s other series and characters more engaging, consistent and mature. I believe, as long as I’m doing the escapist reads, it makes sense to dive into those instead. Eh?