I just started watching the True Blood series (only got up to episode 8 of series 1) and so thought I’d get started on the books on which it is based, Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels, the Southern Vampire Mysteries.  I’ve just finished the first, Dead Until Dark, (I believe the whole of Series One is based on this first book), so these are just some very rough initial impressions. The book is readable enough, but, unusually for me, I think I prefer the television series, True Blood, mainly because it plays so much more wittily wit

by Dr Andrew Sneddon

UK release September 9

Novala Takemoto’s Shimotsuma Monogatari Kamikaze Girls and the Japanese Lolita KATHRYN A. HARDY BERNAL   A true Lolita must nurture a Rococo spirit and live a Rococo lifestyle.[1] Momoko Ryugasaki   So begins Novala Takemoto’s novel, Kamikaze Girls, known in Japan as Shimotsuma Monogatari (“Shimotsuma Story”), and the inspiration for Tetsuya Nakashima’s 2004 film of the same name.[2] Spawning a manga version, illustrated by Yukio Kanesada in 2005, it is an example of shōjo (teenage girls’) fiction that weaves together the stories of two

Kathryn Hardy Bernal