True Blood, Alan Ball’s critically acclaimed television adaptation of Charlaine Harris’ bestselling Southern Vampire mysteries, is HBO’s most-watched show since The Sopranos, averaging over 12 million viewers an episode in its second season. Thanks to its large, dedicated fanbase, it won the People’s Choice “Favorite TV Obsession” award in early 2010.

A Taste of True Blood: The Fangbanger’s Guide gives those fans something to savor between episodes—and whets their appetite for more. Covering the show’s first two seasons and released just in time for the third (with real-time online updates from the book’s contributors throughout season three), the book includes pieces on:

• Vampire Bill’s season 2 slide from hot to not
• Sookie’s mind-reading talents as a critique of our oversharing Facebook culture
• What a Louisiana setting adds to the traditional vampire myth
• Why the television series had to differ from the books (co-written by the Southern Vampire mysteries’ editor Ginjer Buchanan)
• And much more, from shapeshifters to maenads to Merlotte’s

A Taste of True Blood also includes a quick reference guide to the show’s first two seasons.

The anthology includes:

• “Home Is Where the Bar Is: Merlotte’s, True Blood’s Answer to Cheers” by Maria Lima
• “Blood, Wine and Roses: The Aesthetics of Color in True Blood” by Peg Aloi
• “Letting the Animal Out” by Phillipa Ballantine
• “From Nosferatu to Merlotte’s Bar & Grill” by Bruce and Karen Bethke
• “No Easy Way Out: Religion, Ritual, and V in Alan Ball’s True Blood” by Jacob Clifton
• “Overture to Hell” by Daniel M. Kimmel
• “Blue Collar Bacchanalia: Or, Maenad as Intellectual Interloper in a Working Class World” by Alisa Kwitney
• “Sucking for Jesus” by Peter B. Lloyd
• Sookie Stackhouse: Hero of The Proletarian Revolution!” by Nick Mamatas
• “Pure Blood: Bon Temps, Bram Stoker and the Invasion Mythology of Dracula” by Joe McCabe
• “A Kinder, Gentler Vampire?” by Vera Nazarian
• “Everybody Bleeds” by Carol Poole
• “Well, I Never: Vampires and the American South” by Paula Rodgers
• “Psychic Overshare” by Bev Rosenbaum
• “Sookeh, Bee-ill! and the Downfall of Mr. Compton” by Jonna Rubin
• “Why the Show Had to Differ From the Books” by Susan Sizemore and Ginjer Buchanan
• “Being a Man in Bon Temps” by Kristy Walker
• “Vampires and the Cult of Celebrity” by Jules Wilkinson