In an unexpected turn of events last Friday, I found myself on a college campus with a few hours to kill. My favorite way to wile away my spare time is with a book, but I didn’t have one handy. So I went to the campus bookstore. I briefly considered buying something from the English department’s books-for-class section, but I wasn’t sure whether my purchase would mean some poor, procrastinating student would end up without his required reading. (Rockford assured me later that it wouldn’t have mattered.) I ended up in front of the “popular books” shelf.

I immediately ruled out the Danielle Steele and the Nicholas Sparks titles, and after standing in front of the shelf for a good long time — I’m pretty sure I was making the cashiers uncomfortable — I finally picked up Charlaine Harris’ “Dead Until Dark.” I’ve read good things about “True Blood,” the HBO series that’s based on Harris’ “Southern Vampire Mysteries.” But I nearly didn’t buy the book. Because of the cover. The image on the front of the TV-tie in paperback is lewd, and I was sort of embarrassed to be walking around with it.

I’ve always been a fan of mysteries and books about the South, and I have been known to pick up an Anne Rice book, even though I had nightmares every night for three years after watching “The Lost Boys.” So with Halloween just a few days away, I thought I’d give the vampire book a shot.

Happily for me, “Dead Until Dark” isn’t a horror novel. For a book about murders and the supernatural, it’s pretty light-hearted fare. The book’s heroine is mind-reading Louisiana waitress Sookie Stackhouse, and the novel is set shortly after the world’s vampires have “come out of the coffin.” Sounds a little goofy, right? Well, it’s a lot goofy, but it’s sort of fun, too.

I didn’t find all that much tension in the book’s mystery component. I liked Sookie and most of the other characters quite a bit, though, and it was so nice to be able to sit and read a book with no responsibilities on a cold, rainy fall day, so I enjoyed the book. I have the second in the series on my to-read list.

If you like your vampire tales without a hint of humor or if you don’t like supernatural stories, this is not the book for you. Oh, and that lewd image on the cover? Parts of this book might make Danielle Steele blush. Consider yourself warned.