Jen's little update

I've finished one more book on my list! I've spent the summer buying a house/fixing up said house/moving into same, so reading has unfortunately fallen down my list of priorities...also now I can't find the books I want to read, since they're all in boxes. Soon I'll have organization again, and I'll post more often.

This past week I finished Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It's a slow-burn thriller--took me a while to get into it, but once I did, I really wanted to know what happened. There are some parts to this book that are not for the squeamish: there's some sexual abuse, gory details about murders, and some truly ugly (personalities, not looks) characters. The first part of the book is *not* about the girl with the dragon tattoo, so at first you wonder where the title came from. But Larsson ties the plot threads together very nicely, so it all makes sense in the end.

Since this is a translation of a book originally published in Swedish and I'm not Swedish myself, I missed some of the references, and had to actually look up what the nickname of one of the main characters meant. And I had no idea where most of the places were--obviously I didn't learn my Swedish geography! I noticed that this book had an ending a la "Return of the King"--just when you thought everything was wrapped up, there are still fifty pages left! But it works, somehow. Larsson answers questions you forgot you had from the beginning of the book and leaves you wanting more. Luckily, he turned in two other manuscripts before he died, so your cravings can be satisfied.

If you like murder mysteries, give this one a try. Of course, you're not even sure if there *has* been a murder at the beginning, which is part of the fun.