With cheesy titles and even cheesier covers the Southern Vampire series (recently made into the TV show True Blood), the Sookie Stackhouse novels, incorporates little cultural artifacts that require the reader to know something about the world to participate with the character. In Sookie’s world her co-worker Arlene gifts her a “word a day” calendar every year. This ridiculously simple gift does a lot to the reader. First it simply measures time, as days pass and new words are introduced, the reader knows that time is passing. The words also, conveniently, foreshadow events that are coming up. Most important, this calendar humanizes the main character. As a telepathic part fairy who dates vampires and wereanimals it is probably a bit hard for readers to identify with Sookie and her everyday life. However, the everydayness is more poignant when little daily reminders of our everyday life are dropped into the story as a way to recognize the humanness of Sookie. We read her reading the word of the day calendar and know what they look like, how they work, why people have them. We see the purpose they serve in her life, we understand the character that gifts them better. We get a human glimpse into the life of a fictional character through something as simple as a daily calendar. It is little quirks like this that we overlook in our daily lives that help us understand each other, and little quirks that we don’t think about while reading that endear characters to us.
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