Henry's Sisters

My mother always said that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

The Girl Who Played With Fire

Turns out that reading with a baby isn't as hard as I'd originally thought. If I use my boppy while nursing Edie then I have my hands free to read while she eats! In this manner I polished off The Girl Who Played with Fire, sequel to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo which I read while pregnant. I found this book equally addictive, but was consistently distracted by the terrible translation from Swedish to English. The plot sucked me in really quickly and I kept hoping that Edie would get hungry so that I could read. But then while reading I would find myself thinking, "That's totally implausible!" or, "People don't really use those types of words in casual conversation!". Nevertheless, I kept reading and am looking forward to the third and final novel in the series. I'm kind of a sucker for a good mystery slash thriller.

The Art of Racing in The Rain

I know, right? It's been a LONG time. But dudes, I had a BABY so you have to cut me some slack. And despite all the howling the wee one seems to be doing lately, I managed to consume a book! Sadly, because of all the howling I have very little time to summarize my thoughts on this book, so this will be a short review.

Basically, I really liked it. My first thought was, "Its' written from a dog's perspective?? Meh." But really I ended up loving that about it! The dog was so sweet, exactly like I imagine a dog thinking. I loved imagining that dogs really do like that you leave the tv on for them when you go to work. I loved that it took place in Seattle where I live. I have many more things to say but the babe is grumped up and needing attention. Basically, go read this book - it's real good. Thanks Mom for loaning it to me.

In Case You Were Wondering

I had my baby. And she's pretty cute. Please welcome miss Edie Bee Culver.

Edie as in Ee-dee and Bee as in bumble bee, which also happens to be my Grandmother's middle name. She was born August 30th at 7:18pm and weighed in at 8lbs and 2oz. The birth was relatively uneventful as far as births go and we are all home and doing well, but sleeping little. Reading even less. To keep updated on our happenings (and for a ridiculous number of baby pics), feel free to visit my personal site - link is in the side bar.

The Sugar Queen

My brain is turning to mush like in those Hulu commercials because I read this book last week and totally forgot to post about it. To further confirm my brain-->mush theory, I actually remember very little about the book, despite having finished it only like 6 days ago.

Here’s what I can tell you –

The Sugar Queen is about Josie, who I think was in her twenties and lives in a small town and cares for her bitchy elderly mother. Then a crazy lady appears in her closet one day and it changes her life. Suddenly she’s not this lonely future-spinster, because the crazy closet lady has forced her to go out into the world and meet people and DO STUFF.

It’s mostly a sweet romance (with a touch of magic) and I rather enjoyed it for what it was. Perfect vacation or bathtub reading.

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.