The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

Hrm. Quick overview of this lovely trilogy..

And if you've not read any of these, this probably won't make any sense. So. Sorry. In advance.

Book one -

Men definitely hate women in this one - A LOT, Nazis and big corporations are the roots of all evil - OF COURSE, who needs big boobs anyway (or I mean boobs at all), or condoms for that matter, or to be faithful to one's spouse.., and all those names..good grief. My review of this one is here.

Book two -

The giant blond dude from Rocky IV/man who feels no pain from the Brosnan (slash fake) Bond movies makes an appearance and boy is he pissed, Lisbeth is actually in this one - like she does stuff and everything (I mean everything), again with the names...holy crap....but this one by far my favorite of the three.

Book three -

Lisbeth is in the hospital and now she's pissed, duct tape cures all ills (my husband slash life partner could've told them that!), hot Amazon women are attracted to middle-aged, over-weight men, Lisbeth is still in the hospital.., ack, those names! I wanted to ram my head into the wall they were so confusing, Salander is still in the hospital..., stalkers are always skinny nerdy men, Swede's like to use the word whore a lot, giant blond freak makes an appearance at the beginning and the exact end of the book - in between I completely forgot about him, wha? Salander finally leaves the hospital?? Just in time to save the day? Not really, and the mysterious sister? She never shows...ah, come on!!

A really funny take on this series is in The New Yorker. I laughed myself silly it was so. spot. on.

3 stars

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The inside of this book jacket (along with mention of it's eleven book awards with names like the Dagger) included a brief description of the contents as follows:

"A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue."

I've always loved the word amalgam. It's just fun to say. Amalgam. A mixture of equal parts. How you get that out of amalgam I have no idea. So I asked myself the question, is this popular book by Swedish author, Stieg Larsson, who unfortunately died of a heart attack right after delivering the manuscripts of the three books in this series, a fine-tuned mixture of mystery, saga, love, and intrigue?

It is, at its heart, a family saga with the main point being - What happened to 16-year old Harriet Vanger who vanished without a trace forty years ago? Her grandfather, Henrik Vanger, has hired a down on his luck journalist and magazine editor, Mikael Blomkvist, to dig up the skeletons in his family tree and find out what happened to her. But, Blomkvist has his own set of problems: his girlfriend is married to another man (must be a Swedish thing), he's been forced out of his current job and is therefore running out of money, and he's about to start a three month prison sentence after being convicted of slander against a dirty corporate industrialist that took him to court over a story he wrote. (Yes, pant, pant. Just like the book...)

Blomkvist takes the job for Vanger because he needs to get away, and, of course, the money won't hurt. For help, he recruits a computer hacker with a dragon tattoo on her neck, a girl named Lisbeth Salander, who is by far the most interesting character in this series of books. Think of a tinier, craftier Laura Croft with an even worse attitude and she's your gal.

Next then, mixed thoroughly throughout is plenty of mystery and intrigue, some of which is in the form of tons of backdrop on the world of finance (the first 100 pages or so bored me to tears), then throw in some magazine and journalist type lingo, some Nazi backstory, and lastly the occasional political statement that jolted me from the story when I started to doze off. There's also a whole lot of violence. Really terrible violence. I've heard the original title in Swedish was Men Who Hate Women. After reading this book, I believe that was entirely appropriate.

And love? I would never think of this as a love story. Not. At. All. For instance, our main character's girlfriend's husband has no problem that she and Blomkvist still "see" each other on a regular basis.

Hmm...
Right.

Really there's just a whole lot of sleeping around by pretty much everyone, married or no. It's like a magical, casual sex fairy land where condoms aren't even necessary and no one worried about diseases. Again, maybe that's a Swedish thing.

Aside from what I've just mentioned, when taken as a whole, I will admit this was an interesting book. It improved as it went along until, aside from bathroom breaks, I had a hard time putting it down. It was well-written and moved at a great pace. All the characters are well-defined, complex and super meaty. Larsson had no problem weaving together the story lines, and I didn't even have too hard a time keeping track of all the Swedish names, like Gregor, Gottfried, Gerda, we're talking umlaut central here. You just have to somehow get through all the violence against women and casual sex.

Good luck!

So now I feel all Swedishized! Meatballs recipe anyone?
3.5 stars.


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And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

There's something you should know about me: When it comes to books, well... I cheat. I often look at the last pages of a novel before I finish it. I knew Tess died. I knew Dumbledore died and what happened to Snape. Same with tv - Buffy died three times? I knew it before I saw it. Sometimes the anticipation is just too much. It becomes a distraction from my enjoyment. Sometimes I just have to know!

This branches like a big, old withered Department 54 Halloween tree into all aspects of my life. I'm generally an impatient person.(Well, duh?) I'll never do cross-stitch, make jewelry or do anything that involves intense small movements for increased periods of time. I've come to accept this fact about myself, that I'll never be able to tie a knot with a pair of tweezers, let alone use them to pluck the hairs from my chin, but with my reading I must inject one strange, bizarre anomaly.

Agatha Christie.

That master of suspense. That seller of a half a billion books, and no I didn't make that up. The "champion deceiver of our time." I've only read two of her novels, this one and Murder on the Orient Express, and I must say, both times I was peeing my pants with suspense, dying to know what happens, canvasing for clues, hidden red herrings, but...did I look ahead as a result of my heart palpitations?

No.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't look ahead. I didn't want to know. Christie is different. Whether it's true or not, my mind is under the delusion that she's leaving me clues along the way. That somehow I can figure out who the killer is. Maybe it's because I secretly think I'm Nancy Drew right down to the Aquanet hairdo and I can solve the mystery of the skeleton key, or, ah..I mean who was the mastermind behind these evil plots.

Just like in Murder on the Orient Express, I was sure who the murderer was (I was wrong, of course). I wondered aloud and often about the fates of the ten people invited to Indian Island under suspicious circumstances by a mysterious stranger whom no one could identify. One by one, they are grimly advanced upon, following the pattern of a grisly nursery rhyme, Ten little Indian boys went out to dine...

Needless to say, it's a nail biter from beginning to end. Her cast of characters was so ingenious, honestly I don't know why she lists them in the front of the book. They're so well described, so distinguished from the rest, that it's impossible not to know which was which with perfect clarity.

It reminded me of one of my all time favorite movie's, Clue, which now I know is loosely based on this book.

An excerpt -
Mrs. Peacock: What are you all staring at?
Mr. Green: Nothing.
Mrs. Peacock: Well who's there?
Colonel Mustard: Nobody.
Mrs. Peacock: What do you mean?
Wadsworth: Nobody. No body, that's what we mean. Mr. Boddy's body, it's gone.
Mrs. White: Maybe he wasn't dead.
Professor Plum: He was!
Mrs. White: We should've made sure.
Mrs. Peacock: How? [muttering]
Mrs. Peacock: By cutting his head off, I suppose.

Ah, music. Sweet music.
I highly recommend this book.
4.5 stars

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Helluva Halloween Challenge and The Classics Reading Challenge

Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich

Lula (my favoritely named person) is having a bad day. She witnesses the murder of a barbecue king by some decapitating-happy psychopaths and wants deep-fried chicken with a side of doughnuts but can't find any. Now the killers are looking to put her in a similar headless position.

So what's a girl to do? Recruit her good friend Stephanie Plum of course, and with the super-duper help of Grandma Mazur, enter a national barbecue sauce contest to track down her would be axe murderers. But Stephanie has her own set of problems at the moment. Ranger's got a mole in his security operation and is need of her, ah...expertise. And even worse, no proud Jersey girl looks good in black.

Anyone who has ever read a Stephanie Plum novel knows "Death in the Burg was like pot roast at six o'clock. An unavoidable and perfectly normal part of the fabric of life. You got born, you ate pot roast, and you died."

This one is no different in that regard. Let's check the rest of my list of Stephanie Plum requirements to see if Finger Lickin' Fifteen passed the acid test of sexy absurdity:

-Car explodes or burns up, or get squished by a dump truck. Check
-Ranger calls Stephanie "Babe". Check ++
-Rex changes his address. Again. Check
-Morelli has the best buns in all of Jersey. Check super ++
-Lula and Grandma Mazur reek havoc at a funeral. Lid lifted? Check
-Morelli and Stephanie are fighting. Again, and again. Sheesh. Check
-The Buick makes an appearance. Check
-Joyce Barnhardt wants to do Morelli. Check
-Stephanie moves into Ranger's apartment, but nothing actually comes of it. You know what I mean ladies...Check
-Lula's hungry. I'm talking super hungry!!Check +++
-Ranger wears black shirts, black pants, black hats, black socks, pink underwear. No, wait, that's not right...Check

And then there were some new (spoiler) developments that I found not the least bit Plumish. There's a lot of farting and other forms of bowel discontentment. Good grief! Is this what one of my favorite series has evolved into?? Farts for laughs? And another thing, the flirting is sub-par, I would even say non-existent between Ranger, Morelli, and Stephanie. N-O-T-H-I-N-G happens. If Evanovich thinks I'm reading these for only the fart jokes then she's got another thing comin' Burg girl!

So, overall then, I was disappointed with this one, and probably with where the series is headed in general. Time for Stephanie to move on with her life. Introduce a new love interest, get her married, something. Anything, but this. Until then, I'll stick with books 1-10, by far the best in this tried and true tale of a curly-haired, blue-eyed babe from the Burg.

And since the barbecue sauce was a main character of sorts, I was hoping she'd include a recipe at the end (but then I remembered the super rich Janet doesn't cook), so I decided to add my own version here. Feel free to - like in the book: explode it, smash it, crash it, and cover the ceiling with it. It'd probably taste better that way.

Barbecue Beans -

6 strips of bacon, cooked

2-3 cans Pork n' Beans

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp garlic salt

1 tablespoon dried onion

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

salt and pepper to taste

Heat in oven until bubbling.

Eat on toast, with a hot dog, in a bread bowl or all by its little self.

2 stars

The Stephanie Plum Reading Challenge

The Historian

by: Elizabeth Kostova

A 16 year-old girl finds an old book in her father's library which doesn't have any writting in it, but has a picture of a dragon with the words "Drakulya" in the center of the book. She questions her father about the book and he goes on to tell her the story of how he found the book and what happened to him afterwards.

He begins by telling her that when he first received the book he confided in one of his professor's at his university about it. That professer had an intriguing story that included him saying that he believed Dracula was still alive. Hours later that professor mysteriously disappeared.

I had a hard time with this book. I liked it at first, then it got slow. Then it picked up again and I liked it, then slow again, etc. I wanted to know what was going to happen but I just couldn't seem to make myself get through it. It was like wading through a swamp. I wanted to get to the other side but my legs kept getting stuck in the mud and every step was labored.

I enjoy history and research, which is the majority of this book, and I found a lot of it interesting, but it began to get very tedious and I found myself not really paying attention. The author was very good at giving me the heebie jeebies though. Many a night while reading alone in the recliner I got the creeps and didn't want to open the door to put the cat out.

By the end I was all into it again and thought the whole book was worth it. All the build-up and suspense. I couldn't wait to see what happened. And then... major let down. The ending for me was very anticlimactic. I was disappointed. I was expecting more.

2.5 stars

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

I love modern English lit. I love the way the characters talk. Brief, quick sentences full of meaning. For example,
“Loosen up, Sis. Mycroft is a brainbox and Polly, well, she does have a fat arse,”
or –
“Thursday!—” shouted Bowden against the rasp of the engine.
“What?”
“Road.”
“Road?”
“Road.”

Perfectly timed and perfectly witty, this was a really funny book. The Eyre Affair is a heady amalgam of comedy and crime, and I guess alternate history, two words together I’d never heard of. Enter the world of Great Britain circa 1985 where time travel is common place, dodo’s are the pet of choice, Richard III is performed nightly with as much excitement as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and people vacation in their favorite novel. But now someone is stealing original manuscripts, kidnapping characters and permanently altering the stories. Hot on the trail of this slippery slope killer, such is a day in the life of Thursday Next, Special Operative in the literary detection division, until her beloved Jane is stolen from the pages of Thornfield Hall. Now she really means business.

Think Stephanie Plum with less hair spray and clothes that don’t glow in the dark. Instead of the rat, think dodo bird. Instead of the psycho grandma, insert time traveling father whose face could stop a clock. Landon is no Morelli (not even close), but there is a Vampire Spec Op agent who is dead-pan Ranger with dread locks and the cool shades.

Enough comparison though, I liked this book all on its own. In its own way it was original and funny, even bizarre at times. With names like Thursday Next, Captain Braxton Hicks, Jack Schitt, and Filbert Snood how can you go wrong I say. I laughed outloud multiple times.

The plot moved along rather swiftly for me, keeping me interested most of the time, with my only problem being it taking to so long to actually get to the Eyre affair. A lot of weird stuff happens before then, in fact I thought it might be better named The Eyre Affair, cont., but it is all wrapped up swimmingly, and like a good Bronte novel, ended with just the beginning. Be sure to read it with a cup of herb tea and a cucumber sandwich. 4 stars

The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts

by Lilian Jackson Braun

This is one of the many "Cat Who" books starring Jim Qwilleran, a newspaper reporter who lives in a small town with his two siamese cats.

In this installment Qwilleran receives a late night phone call from Iris Cobb, the curator of the local historical museum who lives in the home attached to the museum . She tells Qwill for the past few weeks she has been hearing eerie noises and thinks there are ghosts in the museum and her home. She seems so frightened that night that Qwill offers to come out to her home and take her to a friend's house. Qwill races to her home and finds it with every light off and Iris lying dead on the kitchen floor.

Qwill offers to move into the museum home while they look for a replacement for Iris. While there he is determined to find out what happened to Iris. Was she really frightened to death by ghosts?

I enjoyed this book. I love mysteries and it was a quick read that I found entertaining.

3 stars

Silenced

by Betsy Brannon Green

This is one of many in a series called the Haggerty mysteries. It is about a young cop named Mila Edwards who moves to Georgia for a new job and ends up on a case where two young children are abandoned by their mother. The police think the mother ran off with the father who was on the run from the police, but Mila thinks something more sinister happened.

We own three of this series and not in any particular order. We don't even own the first one but my husband likes the series so I thought I would give it a try. This is the earliest book in the series that we own so he said to begin with this one but he did warn me it was his least favorite. Well, I see why. I had to force myself to finish it and I started skimming at the end. I found it predictable and pretty slow. It just dragged on and took forever for anything exciting to happen. A few bright spots: I did enjoy the romance in it and it is by an LDS author so no language.

I will try the other two we have since he says they are much better but we will see. Apparently the others involve Eugenia Atkins, an elderly lady from Haggerty, Georgia, solving mysteries but she was only a minor character in this one. I think that was part of the lack of appeal for me. I was expecting more Murder She Wrote (which I LOVE!!!).

2 stars

Where Are You Now?

by Mary Higgins Clark

10 years ago when Mack MacKenzie's life was just about to begin, right before graduation from Columbia, he disappeared completely. His parents and sister thought it could only be foul play but Mack began calling every year on Mother's Day saying he was alright and will someday come home.

His sister Carolyn decides to go looking for him and find out why he is doing this to them. 3 young women have gone missing since Mack disappeared and one goes missing as soon as Carolyn begins her search for Mack. The police begin to suspect Mack himself. Is it really Mack? If not, who is trying to frame him and why? And where is Mack? This is what Carolyn is trying to find out and the more she searches the more dangerous her situation becomes.

I have always liked Mary Higgins Clark mysteries. This is another good one that kept me guessing until almost the very end. Clark is very good at giving you lots of suspects and they all seem to have a motive. It is fun weeding through the clues trying to figure it all out before the end.

I would recommend it for mystery lovers. 4 stars.