Ah, True Blood. It's definitely gotten mixed reactions all over the board, both from fans of the book and people who are walking into the show cold. I just finished reading the sixth book in the series, and it's fun vampire fluff, but it just never reaches that level of awesomeness that the Anita Blake series did--for me, at least. I think that something that the series has that others didn't was this tangible sense of Southern culture. It's actually one of the things that I really love about both the books and the show.

The books are in first person PoV, so they kind of expanded the TV series to showcase the other characters. (I don't know if you've ever read the books--if you have, I suspect all my babbling here will be stuff you already know. ^^) There's a Tara in the books, but it's not the same Tara that's in the show. We get to see all of Jason's exploits (which I could, quite frankly, do with a little less of, but in the canon, he is promiscuous), and I think they're playing up Jason's humorous aspects and maybe trying to contrast his sexual lifestyle with his sister's. (Sookie doesn't come across as quite the innocent virgin in the books; Anna Paquin has kind of this girlish demeanor about her, but in the books, I didn't realize that Sookie was a virgin until she came out and said it.)

I hope the series improves for you. ^^ I'm fairly fond it by now, but it could just be because I'm liking seeing the book brought to life.