Took me 4 or 5 episodes to decide whether or not I liked it. Just stormed through the first two seasons of Dexter, and am a few episodes away from the end of season 3. Anyone else been watching it? Anyone suggest reading the books?

I've watched all 3 seasons so far, really enjoying the show one of my favourites out their at the moment really looking forward to season 4 which should start this fall . I personally haven't read any of the books, but i've not heard great things said about them so i've decided to stay clear to be honest.

Yeah I started reading the first one (before watching the series) and just could not get into it. Wonder if having watched the series would help, or whether there's no point!

I wasn't crazy about Season 2 because Lyla just bugged the shit out of me....
Season One is great and I thought Jimmy Smits was brilliant in Season 3...

Obviously we are heading towards Dexter being caught, killed, changing his ways or perhaps teaching his child the tricks of the trade.....

Not sure which.

I got into the show because I loved Michael C. Hall in Six Feet Under...I love Deb's potty mouth as well...

Tell me about it! I couldn't believe the actress was actually British, her accent sounded so fake!

I enjoy this show but some elements kind of bug me, so I'm not as big a fan as my girlfriend is. Still it makes me wish somebody did a Punisher tv show for a cable chanel.

A punisher tv show, now that does sound very interesting. The violence shouldn't be that much of an issue seeing as the Blade tv show was rather graphic and rather cool (pity it got cancelled)

Am I the only one who always has the feeling that they were trying to make Patrick Bateman more crowd friendly and likable when watching this? Don't get me wrong, I like the show and buy the seasons on DVD and all. Maybe it's just because of both this and American Psycho had narration to them.

No you are not the only one. It's definitely a more palatable American Psycho if there is such a thing possible. Although perhaps this comes from liking Dexter. Patrick Bateman while funny and certainly a great metaphor for the eighties is a scumbag.
I think the film version of American Psycho holds up better with age. I remember being so into the novel (don't think I am weird)....and being initially disappointed by the film but years later I really liked the film.

I watched the film before reading the book and remember only being amused but not too psyched. The book demolished me though, it was really awful but extremely good so I kept reading it even though it was freaking me out.

Off Topic, but you should really read Glamorama. Same author, very bizarre, not as violent, but perhaps stranger? Fun read as well.

I thought the film of American Psycho was ok... but I didn't like the book at all. It took so long for any violence to take place (as it were) but when it did, it was so over the top to the point of boredom. Isn't there a line where he says something about his gym locker containing seven vaginas? I feel like maybe I missed the point.

Dexter is one of my favorite shows!

Far be it from me to question what anyone thinks about any film or novel or record.
In this case though maybe it's not missing the point of American Psycho but perhaps asking the wrong question. Most people don't feel like Catcher in the Rye takes forever to get started.
American Psycho is set up as a massive fuck-off to and commentary on the '80s. Kind of like a mixture of Michael J. Foxes Facts of Life Character blended with The Great Gatsby. The superficiality, The obsession with mundane music, designer labels.
What Ellis does is set up a story in a methodical and even boring fashion.
The question isn't why isn't there more violence sooner. You get that soon enough. TRIES TO COOK AND EAT GIRL is perhaps the most appalling chapter in modern literary history.

The question for American Psycho is what is more disturbing: a chapter on killing a child at a zoo or a chapter on why Huey Lewis and the News represent the apex and sum total of musical evolution and artistic endeavor. American Psycho by Ellis and Diceman by Luke Reinhardt capture the disaster that was New York in the Eighties.

I moved to NYC during the tail's end of this time period and managed to go to some of the clubs that get a lot of pub in the book...This was a time of complete conspicuous consumption. Patrick Bateman is America in the Eighties. A man so full of himself and strung out on himself that while he bores himself to death in his office he daydreams about the most gruesome and banal things imaginable..

So yes. I see Ellis' work as an eighties' version of F.Scott Fitzgerald writing about the depravity and shallowness of the ruling class.

it is the best tv in my top 10.