Read more books

I got a Kindle Fire as a gift last November. Problem is, I’ve been using it for everything BUT reading books.

I found a website with daily listings of free/low cost Kindle books, and have downloaded quite a few. www.pixelofink.com

So… I just bought a Kindle Keyboard as a dedicated reader. Should be arriving any day now!

A satisfying conclusion to The Girl Who Played With Fire, this was a bit easier to read. There were, thankfully, few new characters and place names to confuse my (non Scandanavian) brain, and most of the plot threads were neatly sewn up. This one, like its predecessors, was fast-paced, complex, thrilling, and “unputdownable.”
I’m very disappointed that this is the last completed book, but I read in a review that Larsson had left behind a partially completed manuscript and notes. For myself there are a couple of story lines that I’d hope would be explored more thoroughly in the next book, of course, if it gets published.
I find it interesting that the “Hornet’s Nest” is never alluded to in the book. (Was the word even in the text?) But then, I find a lot of books and films don’t refer to their titles, at least not directly, in the body of the work.

Actually, this is like junk food reading. Lilian Jackson Braun has authored an impressive list of “Cat Who…” books, and I have read most of them. While each is different in its own way, they are all fairly formulaic and easy reads.

I couldn’t put this one down either!

Having said that, though, I did have a couple of problems with this one. There were even more peripheral characters in this one than in the first. And since I’m not familiar with Swedish, this was really difficult for me, especially when you consider all the place names that were in the mix as well. (It took me a while to figure out one of the places was in Estonia, not Sweden.)

By the last third of the book, I had pretty much resigned to the proper name difficulty I was having and just kept reading through, only paying close attention to the dozen or so main characters and places.

As other reviewers have also commented, the mysogynistic attitudes of many of the male characters bothered me. Is this representative of contemporary Swedish men? Or (hopefully) are men like Blomqvist more the norm?

And of course, Lisbeth is my heroine, on so many levels. Definitely a complex and intriguing character.

To sum up, I found it as engrossing as the first one. I have to say I was a bit surprised at the unraveling of the mystery. And a bit more so at the ending, which wasn’t as tidy as I expected or would have liked.

And so I am now off to the bookstore to get the third book…

This was a hard book for me to read because there were so many characters (two actually have the same first name, and I didn’t pick up on that until much later) and so many different plot threads. I kept expecting them to all come together in the end, and some were, but many weren’t resolved.

The chapters are interspersed with news items that the reader can relate to the plot threads. This was a nice touch, reminding the reader that the media doesn’t necessarily report accurately, or even truthfully.

At the conclusion, Crichton expresses his own opinions and concerns with the growing biotechnology industry, and his dismay that the ethics of bioresearch, the legal system, and human nature have not yet come to to consensus.

Food for thought.

I find it ironic, that this, Crichton’s last book, is titled Next.

Everyone participated in the discussion (I was worried about that), and everyone liked the coffee shop I picked. We set a date for the next meeting (in a month), and we’ll bring suggestions for a book we can read together.

Later that night I continued reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and it was literally “unputdownable.” I started reading at 11 pm and read through the night, only stopping when the sun came up!

I can’t wait to read the rest of the books in the series!

But instead of buying them, I decided to read a book from my shelf, Next by Michael Crichton. So far I’ve only read the first few pages, will get into it in earnest this weekend.

I started a “Casual Book Club” with a few of my friends. I call it “Casual” because it won’t have specific books and themes.

Our first meeting is next week, and everyone is to bring whichever book they’re currently reading and talk about why they chose it.

We’re going to compile lists of the books and comments by their readers, possibly even swap books amongst ourselves.

The main point of the group is to get together, promote reading, and have interesting and (hopefully) intelligent conversations.

The book I just bought is “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” I’ll start reading it tonight.