The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Loved it. I know there’s a lot of hype, and I caught on a little late, but when I was at Barnes and Noble buying a gift recently, there was a big table covered in this book right next to where I was waiting in line. I’d heard so many good things about it. And all I had to do was reach my hand out and… well, the rest is obvious. I bought it. And read it in like 3 days, despite it being a chunky monkey. It’s sort of an international thriller meets murder mystery - like Bourne Identity meets The Likeness, in Sweden.

I think some of the hype surrounding this book is based on the fact that the author died shortly after submitting the manuscripts for this book (and thankfully - its two sequels). Mystery surrounding mystery!

Anyways. The book is about so many things that I’m not really sure where to start. There’s the financial journalist Mikael who’s just been sentenced to 3 months in prison for libel after being tricked by a crooked financial leader about a story, and there’s Lisbeth - the tiny, spiky private investigator with man-issues. You follow their separate stories and then watch as the book brings them together to investigate the disappearance of a 16 year old girl who vanished in 1966. Somehow it (mostly) all comes together and while there were a few times where I was all, “What just happened?”, like a lot of thrillers, it either doesn’t matter that much, or things start to make sense a little bit further in.

For me, this was the type of book where I brought it to work to read during lunch, but really wanted to just shut my office door and read it all day. I didn’t necessarily feel totally satisfied at the end of the book, but they’re clearly winding you up to go right out and buy the next book in the series – The Girl that Plays with Fire, which they ensured by publishing the first chapter of it in the back of this book. So now of course I’ve read the first 10 pages of the next book and must have it. Meanwhile, I’m supposed to have a baby in like, oh ANY DAY NOW and have about a bajillion other things I should be doing, but I think instead I will buy The Girl that Plays with Fire and start it immediately.

The Thirteenth Tale

I'm currently sequestered upstairs, breathing in the clean fresh air that our top floor has to offer. Jeff is downstairs, painting an elaborate system of built-in drawers and bookcases in our living room, inhaling enough toxic fumes for the two (almost three) of us. We don' t have a tv upstairs and this whole sequestering thing has become a common affair lately while Jeff completes layer after layer of primer and cream paint. This means much book reading. My most recent conquest was The Thirteenth Tale and I loved it.

When I was at Half Price Books last week I almost walked right by the bargain table. The truth is - I judge the bargain table. Part of me assumes that any book that's selling for that cheap must be lame and I usually walk on by. But this time, a stack of The Thirteenth Tale books caught my eye and sparked a memory of reading a good review for this book somewhere - was it Mari's site? Anyways, it was only a dollar! This seemed like a low risk decision, so I bought it. And let's just say that I was pleased with my ROI. This book is creepy and addictive and I a little bit loved it.

The story is about Vida Winter, an aging but very famous fiction writer in England. She's notorious for the mystery that surrounds her personal life - no reporter has ever been able to get the truth out of her. She tells every interviewer a different story about her life, none are true. But now she's old and sick and for one reason or another has chosen Margaret Lea to tell her story to. Margaret is the lonely adult daughter of an antique book seller, an avid reader and author of a few informal biographies. And PS - she also has a bit of secret past herself. Anyways, Margaret goes to stay with the crusty author and Vida tells her real story. And her story is creeepy and mysterious (and there are twins!) and I couldn't put it down. It's not Tana-French-style-creepy-genius, and there was a second where I sniffed a bit of Phillipa-Gregory-style-incest, but it was short lived and the book is still worthy. If you've read and enjoyed Nicholas Christopher (A Trip To the Stars is still one of my favs), I'd say you'd probably appreciate this book as well. No romance (sigh) but give it a try.

The Virgin of Small Plains

A quick, engrossing read of questionable quality. The story is great - very captivating - but the quality of the writing is just okay.

Description I stole from the author’s website:

Seventeen years ago, the brutalized body of an unidentified young woman was discovered in the snow during a blizzard in the Flint Hills of Kansas. Deeply disturbed by this senseless death, the town rallied to give her a decent burial in the local cemetery. Since then, strange miracles have visited those who faithfully tend to her grave -- some even believe that her spirit can cure deadly illnesses. Slowly, the legend of the ill-fated girl -- the so-called Virgin of Small Plains --has spread.

But with the reappearance of prodigal son Mitch Newquist, troubling questions arise. Why did Mich abandon his beloved girlfriend, Abby, and flee on the night of the murder? Can Abby unravel a tangled seventeen-year-old skein of lies? And why do the town's leading citizens, including Mitch and Abby's own families, seem determined to keep the truth buried?

The style reminds me a bit of Jodi Piccoult, kind of addictive, but a little ridiculous every once in a while. Anyways, I still liked it and tore through it in like 2 days, so I guess I shouldn’t bash it. Also like Piccoult, it sounds like Pickard has written a bajillion books. In a pinch, I’d probably pick another one of hers up without batting an eye.

The Likeness

This book is truly awesome. Not that I’m surprised. Tana French’s first book, In The Woods was also awesome. That said, I’m still impressed. Loved every bit of this book.

Description from the back of the book:

Six months after a particularly nasty case, Detective Cassie Maddox has transferred out of Dublin’s Murder squad and has no plans to go back. That is, until an urgent telephone call summons her to a grisly crime scene.

It’s only when she sees the body that Casssie understands the hurry. The victim, a young woman, is Cassie’s double and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used on an undercover job. Suddenly, Cassie must discover not only who killed this girl but, more importantly, who is this girl? And as reality and fantasy become desperately tangled, Cassie moves dangerously closer to losing herself forever.

There are great characters that suck you in, the mystery is creepy and fascinating and unlike In The Woods, she does not leave you hanging with unsolved crimes. I'd put it in my top 5 for 2009.

My friend Maggie loaned me this book and told me that it was excellent. Maggie – I hope my love for this book makes up for the fact that I also liked Water for Elephants.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

I've seen this series all over the place and for some reason assumed it was all Janet Evanovich style. Which is when I guess I have to confess to having read one of the Stephanie Plum books. But I swear I didn't like it! Actually, now that I think of it, I think maybe I listened to it as a book on tape. More shameful? Not sure. Mostly I just remember a sassy, red-head type who solves mysteries that involve a handsome, surly man who ends up in the sack with her. After having read The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency it's pretty hilarious that I put it in the same category as the Plum series because they are totally unalike.

This book features Precious (Mma) Ramotswe, an enormous lady from Botswana. Her much adored father dies after working in the diamond mines for his entire life and leaves his fortune to his only child. She spends it all on starting her own detective agency. She has no qualifications other than being wise and observant, in a folksy, tea drinking sort of way. She is the only "lady detective" in all of the country and she solves an assortment of quirky cases in this book. None of them are particularly challenging and each is resolved in about 24 hours. I don't know. It was sort of uneventful. Some woman's long lost father reappears only to mooch off her for weeks. Detective Ramotswe tricks the father into admitting he's an imposter and tells him to go away. So he does. Then she follows a high school girl around because her father thinks she has a boyfriend and doesn't approve. She finds out the girl doesn't really have a boyfriend and tells the father to give his daughter space. He does. All mysteries are solved faster than an episode of Law & Order.

Then you get to the case of the missing 11 year old boy. This case is referenced on the back of the book as being "the big mystery" so I was looking forward to this part of the book. The boy is abducted on his way home. Then Mma Ramotswe hears from her mechanic friend about a bag of witchcraft medicine (ie; bones and skin) that was found in a car at his shop. The "medicine" is the finger bone of a young boy recently---

Woah! I have to take this review on a detour for a minute because some seriously questionable music just started playing on Jeff's computer. I swear a minute ago we were listening to something normal, but this song appears to be Mexican gangster rap interspersed with mariachi music. Um, wha? Jeff was at the computer before I sat down and I left his playlist undisturbed. Strangely, when I look at the iTunes window it says I'm listening to God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. I wish Mma Ramotswe was here to solve the mystery of why Jeff is listening to this terrible music. But she's not, so I will continue with my review.

Back to the finger bone. So she tracks down the medicine man who sold the finger bone to the car owner. He must be the killer, yes? But after a 5 minute chat with the medicine man's wife, she finds that, surprise! The boy isn't dead. It wasn't even his finger! They bought those bones at some other village. They're just keeping the boy as a forced laborer at a cattle ranch a few hours away. Mma Ramotswe drives to the cattle ranch and takes the boy home. Except what? If it wasn't his finger, than how does the solving of the mystery even make sense? The only reason she found the medicine man is because of the finger bone! Is anyone else smelling something not quite right? Maybe I'm the one missing something, but it seems like this book could have used a continuity director.

Here's the thing, the main character is pretty badass. She's enormously fat and all the men love her. At one point, she's looking at some blouses and when the saleswoman asks her to buy one, she proudly responds that they don't have a blouse big enough for her, like if I were to say to the Clinique woman, "I'm sorry, but I can't buy any of your foundation because it doesn't come in a shade as flawless as my natural skin tone." She's smart and sassy and the descriptions of Africa and her father are really endearing. I guess it's a sweet book. I was just so distracted by the simplicity of it all, I couldn't really enjoy it. I think if you're looking for an entertaining series starring a lady detective, I'd recommend The Bee Keeper's Apprentice over this series any day. But if you're thinking of picking up the Stephanie Plum series by Evanovich, put that thought out of your head right now. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency ranks higher.

The Janissary Tree

The Janissary Tree is a Turkish mystery novel; the first in what appears to be a new series that stars the character of Investigator Yashim. A coworker loaned it to me and I loved the descriptions of Istanbul in the 1800’s, the culinary detours it took describing Turkish food, and I really enjoyed the character of Investigator Yashim, who is a eunuch (crucial to the plot, not just a middle school fixation on a minor detail).

That said, I was sort of over-stimulated by all the different characters and their titles. Sometimes it seemed like each chapter was its own little story, introducing a whole bevy of new characters with confusing titles that you may or may not see reappear later in the book. By the time one character would reappear in the story, I couldn’t remember if they were new or if maybe we’d met them 10 chapters ago for like a second – and then I’d wonder, “Am I supposed to remember something important about this dude that is crucial to the solving of the mystery!?”

The story follows corruption and murder within the Ottoman Empire of 1836. Yashim is summoned by the city’s military leader to solve the mystery of 4 soldiers who recently disappeared and are feared murdered. One by one, the corpses of the soldiers appear in public ala Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. While Yashim fights the clock to solve the mystery before all 4 soldiers are killed, one of the sultan's harem girls is murdered and the jewels she was wearing stolen. Yashim is left to wonder if the murders are connected, or if he has two separate mysteries on his hands.

This book has murder, a sexy Russian princess, coups, sparkly jewels, lots of eunuchs (no jewels), and clashes between traditional Istanbul and western modernization. But even with all of this, The Janissary Tree fell just a few steps short of being awesome for me. I’m pretty sure the author Jason Goodwin isn’t reading my blog to see what I thought and he’s probably already finished his next book starring Yashim, The Snake Stone but my advice would be to eliminate all the extraneous characters and further develop only the best ones. I hope the future books have more of Preen, Stanislaw Palewski, and Murad Eslek, these were my favorite supporting characters.

For my next read, I have a top secret assignment. Well, not totally top secret, but kind of! A friend of a friend (or really, a daughter of a friend of the family who I've never met) wrote a novel and I've volunteered to read it and make suggestions to help trim it down. The secret part comes in because I was told for now not to mention the book title. I was a little nervous when the weighty envelope arrived on Saturday because I really had no idea what the book was about and maybe I would hate it! But imagine my relief after reading 60 pages tonight and discovering that it is GOOD! Whew. Bullet dodged.

In The Woods

I loved this book like I haven't loved a book in a long time. I stayed up way past my bedtime because I literally could not put it down. I finished it around 11:40 last night and was left satisfied, confused, a little creeped out, but mostly really impressed.

In The Woods was recommended to me first by a family friend, Cheryl in August. I promptly forgot about it until it was mentioned again by my friend Heidi a few weeks ago. Then last week, I was leaving my friend Jessie's house when she ran back inside to grab two loaner books for me (she is a human reading machine and always loans me winners) - one of these books was In The Woods by Tana French. I was dubious at first, having just finished a creepy book about a dead kid I wasn't sure that I needed to start another one right away. But I was sucked in by the book's description -

Three children leave their small Dublin neighborhood to play in the surrounding woods. Hours later, their mothers' calls go unanswered. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children, gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.

Twenty years later, Detective Rob Ryan - the found boy, who has kept his past a secret - and his partner Cassie Maddox investigate the murder of a twelve-year-old girl in the same woods. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him, and that of his own shadowy past.

Creepy, right? Except it's so much more than just creepy! It's smart, funny, and craftily written. Plus, it's almost Halloween and a murder mystery is the perfect read for this time of year. I don't want to give too much away because I really want you to go read this book and I don't want to spoil it for you. But I will tell you that the mystery is not one of those lame ones where you know what's going to happen all along, in fact even after I finished the book, there were things I was still dying to know. There are so many plot twists and red herrings, but also, there is character development. So often, thrillers and mysteries rely too heavily on plot and you never get to know anyone in the story, but this is not so in this book!

I guess Tana has a new book out (is it out yet?) called The Likeness and it also looks creepy and fantastic. I read the first few pages because they were printed in the back of In The Woods and from what I can gather, the new book is told by Cassie Maddox - Rob Ryan's partner from In The Woods, presumably about another case. Now, this may leave you wondering - Sell out? Series? But it leaves me wondering - do I know anyone who will loan me this book?

Special Topics In Calamity Physics

Wow. I don't even know where to start. This book was unlike anything else I've read in a long time. It was sort of Cruel Intentions meets The Gilmore Girls, meets Heathers, with a pinch or two of conspiracy theory thrown in at the end. Doesn't sound like a stew you'd like to read? That's what I would have said too, but this book is GOOD.

I actually finished it on Friday night and had planned to write about it yesterday, but some bozo at a construction site a few miles from our house downed a power line that left the entire neighborhood without power until around 2am last night. Genius. FYI - Being without power seems kind of fun and romantic at first, but not when your plans were to blog, mow the lawn with your electric lawn mower, do the dishes, start a load of laundry and paint your bedroom in the evening. Instead, plans were revised. I loaded the dishwasher, worried about our food going bad, fretted that our neighbor's Koi were going to die without the pond pumps working (we're Koi-sitting while they're on vacay), and spent the evening painting in the dark with a flashlight (calm down, it was just primer).

ANYWAYS. This book by Marisha Pessl is about a girl named Blue vanMeer and her Dad. They move all over the country every 3 months or so (he's a genius professor that hops Universities) until her senior year in high school, when they stay put for the entire year. Blue attends a prestigious school and starts running with a very Heathers meets Cruel Intentions like crowd. They have Sunday supper gatherings where they talk about intellectual things while their teacher slash friend, Hannah Schneider cooks gourmet meals for them. Things get a little creepy and weird and eventually the story turns into a mystery with conspiracy theory solutions. There, I don't think that gave too much away.

When I started this book, I spent the first 25 pages or so distracted by the overly sharp, witty banter between Blue and her father. I've never actually followed The Gilmore Girls, but it's hard to flip channels without catching some of it every once in a while. I'm sure it's a good show, but every time I watch it, I find myself shouting at the TV, "People don't talk like that in real life!". It's so ridiculously smart and snappy that I always assumed it took a whole bevy of writers to script it. But Pessl does it all by herself. The writing is in such a different style from just about anything I've read, it's hard not to be blown away every once in a while. So after fighting the style for about 25 pages, I finally just fell into step with it and stopped noticing it. Then I started loving it.

The story is SO captivating and the characters are fantastic. Every once in a while the whole Dad-worship thing got on my nerves. I'm sure it was intentional, but the plot would detour back to her Dad for pages at a time, when all I wanted to know was what happened next. The daddy-detours were sometimes relevant, but many times just felt like overkill and I skipped more than a few to just "get on with it". Aside from this, I really loved this book. I tore through the last 100 pages and was then really disappointed that it was over. It's the kind of novel where you want to immediately talk to someone else who's read the book and see what they thought about various parts of the story. Has anyone out there actually read it?

Well, I'm off to see if the Koi made it through the night or not. Wish me luck. The directions our neighbors gave us include a bullet point that says, "Dead Fish - these guys are heavy and you will need a garden rake or shovel to pull it out of the pond." Gross.