The Girl Who Played with Fire, Stieg Larsson

Oh Lisbeth. As my grandmother would say, you poor, poor thing. I know you really can't make better-- or even different-- choices, but I keep holding out some hope.

I'm glad that Lisbeth Salander is more human in "The Girl Who Played with Fire", the second of the Millennium Trilogy. She feels empathy and guilt, as opposed to operating solely on animal instinct and base survival skills. We discover that her behavior can't be simply labeled as Asperger's, it's deeper, more evil, more sinister. While I admired her independence and spirit in the face of adversity in the first book, now I just want to heal her and make her better. Be dull, but be well.

Blomkvist, on the other hand... I was cheering him on in the first book, but he's an annoying know-it-all in the second. I missed Berger and wished she had a greater role instead of checking out. And I can't keep track of all the detectives and officers and consultants. Character list, please?

I don't own the third book (in a moment of thriftiness, I only bought the first two books thinking that, if I didn't like the series, I'd put off buying the pricier hardcovered third). Whichever bookstore opens the earliest today might have me as a customer.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson

I had resisted reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" because of the subject matter (rape, incest, brutality, murder, etc.). I'm well aware of the horrors of those subjects and just don't find any entertainment in watching or reading those kinds of fictionalized tales. However, I also hate preaching from a soap box without being more fully informed. (Well, to be perfectly honest, I'm ok with it, but there are simply too many smart people in my life who like to question such opinions.) Enough people have praised Stieg Larsson's writing and complex plots, so I decided it was time to give him a shot.

They are all correct. After about 20 pages, I was gripped by the plot. I would write more about "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", but that would take me away from reading the second book in the Millennium Trilogy. I'm pretty fixated on finding out what happens (and have somehow managed to avoid all discussions and reviews of the final outcome). But, now halfway through the whole trilogy, I have to agree with Tom Matlack and others who question whether Larsson's books get people talking about violence against women or are simply entertainment. But I still have another 800 pages or so to go...

The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles

Reading Challenge #1: Accepted, endured, enjoyed and completed.

My first 100 pages of "The French Lieutenant's Woman" was filled with memories of my high school English classes, particularly freshman and senior year. These were the years I (re)read Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, DH Lawrence, George Eliot. Fowles' book (published in 1969) mimics the overdose of imagery, landscape and detail so commonly found in 19th and early 20th century literature and, of course, is set in the English countryside in the 1860s. He duplicates the cadence so well that it brought to mind a writing exercise I did in ninth grade, writing a letter in the style of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Of course, mine was two handwritten pages, and Fowles pulls it off in nearly 500 typewritten (but mine was pretty darn good, I have to say, for a 13 year old). It was hard to focus on the text while my mind was drifting off remembering CP listing Victorian slang on the blackboard or JB making us sit by the marsh while he read us passages on meadows and landscapes.

But, as always happens, the story took hold of me (this time at around page 250) and I followed the narrator along the dirt paths, steep inclines, carriage roads and hayfields to learn more about Charles, Sarah and Ernestina. I appreciated the twist of the narrator becoming an active character in the plot, shaking up a predictable ending. Brendan was right: TFLW combines many of my literary favorites, the English countryside, a smart alec servant, a beaten but strong woman. But there was also a hint of the summer fun of a Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook. "Do you think the Sam delivered the brooch to Sarah? If so, turn to page 417. Do you think Sam kept the brooch to finance his dream job? If so, turn to page 423." (Brendan: note the obscure but pivotal reference to the plot. See, I did read it all.) Wisely, Fowles refrained from treading too far down that path. (Incidentally, I read an adult book written in the CYOA style about a year ago. I can't for the life of me remember the title or author, but it was published recently. The goal was to see how far into the book you could get before you, the character, reached the end of your life. Help, anyone?)

Well chosen, Brendan. And the movie has now been added to my Netflix queue. Dan's gonna love it, right?

My Lifelong Link with Sylvia Plath

Of all the places where I keep my books (shelves, tables, baskets, bags, piles; my husband would say mostly piles), I only have one small set of bookshelves that are untouched by small hands. (My sons love to play a game called bookstore, where they stack as many books as possible onto the treadmill/conveyer belt, "scan" them, then stack them in teetering piles on a nearby bench. They have yet to learn how to return books to the proper place in the proper alignment. I'm sure they will learn this skill in preschool.) The books in my smallest bookcase are still organized by category, from short stories, collections, and plays to biographies and autobiographies.

Today, taking a cue from Brendan, I searched the depths of this bookcase in an attempt to find something to read (other than TFLW). For some reason, it's taken me 20 years to see the humor of what I rediscovered this morning:

This is the high school English Literature award I received in my senior year. Instead of trophies, our school awarded books related to the field of study, selected by the teachers with the recipient in mind. My book, chosen with care by the Head of the English Department was...

Judging from the dog earred pages, I've read it more than once. Good luck at college, Kerry!

Do You Think You're a Terrible Mother? Feel Better with Anne Tyler!

"Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" with other books I hope to read. Note the sultriness!

When I was home in June, I stockpiled a few books that I, in my naivete, thought would be "quick reads." One of these was a book that had always seemed tantalizing as a young boy, my mother's 1983 copy of Anne Tyler's "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant." The title practically guarantees comfort. Everyone likes dinner and how could anything unpleasant happen in a book with a word as cozy as "homesick" in the title? Plus, the cover was so alluring in the way that only early 80's cover art can be. A sexy woman's head, her lips slightly parted, hovers over a table, an equally good-looking man's head just off in the shadows. This would be a book where Big Things happen! After the first chapter, I thought I was in for a treat. A spinster marries a slick salesman, has three babies, and then promptly gets deserted. But she picks herself up, gets a job as a grocery store clerk, and proceeds to provide for her family. Familial laughs and tears would surely proceed, right? Right?!!!

Alas, no. Tyler subtly switches perspective and we realize that the mother, besides being the resourceful and loving woman we met in the first chapter, has reservoirs of fear and cruelty she regularly unleashes on her children. This is a book that shows Motherhood is Hard, and not Motherhood is Hard in a Tom Perotta "I-forgot-the-juicebox" kind of way, but in a I'm-So-Overwhelmed-By-Responsibility-I-Whacked-My-Three-Year-Old's-Face-Into-Her-Beatrix-Potter-Plate" kind of way. Needless to say, reading about such an unhappy family was kind of a slog.

Tyler pulls no punches and presents a bunch of people who have never really recovered from their past and probably never will. The kids hurt themselves and each other, periodically achieving periods of grace. I was aware that so many other writers and filmmakers have covered this territory since ("August: Osage County," "Interiors," "Six Feet Under") that I wasn't as entranced with the book as I would have if I had read it when it first came out. But Tyler's writing is beautifully precise and she crafts a humdinger of a closing paragraph. But the promise of the cover (who was that lady supposed to be anyway, 1982 Graphic Designer? Pearl? Her daughter? And if so, who was the dude behind her? Her brother? You're disgusting and terrible at your job) was never achieved and I shall have to hunt elsewhere for my summer escapist fare.

Me reading backstage. I was probably listening to speed-reading tapes.

Invoking the ISBN rule: Duxbury...Past and Present

I know, I know: our reading republic is rallying behind Brendan, hoping that he spends his time in Edinburgh reading instead of performing. Hoping that he's been stockpiling posts, that maybe tomorrow (or at least the day after tomorrow), he'll add 20 titles to his log. A more compassionate sister might focus more on epic tomes, or simply stop posting entirely.

Alas, we never determined skunk rules in our reading program, and I love my brother too much to deny him fierce competition to the end. Since Brendan has already shared my childhood love for invoking lesser known rules in our games, it's fitting to apply this to our reading challenge. Hello, ISBN rule!

I have now read ISBN 978-0-941859-11-0 (an adult, non-fiction book) at least 12 times this summer, mostly out loud (and in slightly condensed form) to my three year old sons, who are obsessed with-- what else?-- town history.

Yup. If they're very, very good this year, maybe Santa will bring them their very own autographed copies of "Duxbury...Past and Present".

Here's how it started: The town's historical society did a letterboxing project this summer (if you are local, you should check it out; it's very well done). 10 clues, 10 separate boxes, 10 different sites particular to Duxbury's history. While easy enough to do in a day, we chose to spread this out over the course of the summer, which helped turn this into the Summer of Duxbury History. Having grown up here, I remember most of the big facts (Pilgrims! Clipper ships! Cranberries!), but my kids are into the minutiae: like that the Cranberry Factory Mill had nothing to do with cranberry production (textiles); Myles Standish has been exhumed three times; and the Powder Point School for Boys was destroyed by fire. They now know that practically every abandoned stone foundation that they see near water was once the site of a saw mill. They have nearly suffered whiplash while quickly turning to catch the sight of a stone marker by the side of the road (there are loads). They are hooked. So, they ask questions, I respond or we look the answer up in the book, then we pass away a little more time reading about some other local history and lore.

Earlier this week, they found their last remaining letterbox and made their way to collect their prize: a pretty swanky t-shirt announcing that they "put their stamp on history". They are excited that another round of letterboxes is in the works for this fall. And the three of them are talking about making their own clues and creating letterboxes. Best yet*, I was able to take pictures of the three of them together (a rare thing, indeed).

(Lest you think this was all idyllic, I'll share that there was quite a bit of arguing over who got to find the clues, some bossiness, a few mosquito bites, and one moment when the kids decided to explore a conservation trail and I basically whined to get them back on the letterbox track. We were on a mission, folks!).

*Well, no. The best is that I added a book to the log in the process.

Winter Garden, Kristin Hannah

"Winter Garden" is an odd choice for a summer read, but I grabbed it out of my mother's library bag on the strength of previous books by Kristin Hannah. As it turned out, I read much of the book at night during a rain storm, while my children had nightmares and wandered from bed to bed. That setting was a good match for the story.

Hannah is from that large genre of women who write of the complex relationships between women, especially within families. The men serve to move the story forward, but it's the many roles of women-- wife, mother, sister, daughter, female, girlfriend, friend, colleague, professional-- that Hannah explores in each novel. Usually, the story is pretty linear, but in "Winter Garden" she covers 60 years of relationships, jumping back and forth from time and place to tell the story of Anya, a Russian immigrant and distant mother to adult daughters Meredith and Nina. Hannah uses the first half of the book to tediously lay the groundwork for the real story in the second half: Anya's unspoken life in Leningrad during the era of Stalin. Hannah doesn't sugarcoat Anya's experiences, forcing the reader to slowly move through the horrors and sadness of wartime to present day. As a somewhat prize to her readers who stuck with the nearly 400 page novel, Hannah leaves us with a story on the upswing, an unexpectedly happyish (and unrealistic) ending to a sad, sad (too true) tale.

(It wouldn't surprise me if this book gets optioned and we see it in theatres in 2013. I predict that the music of Celine Dion will play a major role in the film. It's Titanic, set in snowy Russia. Our father will buy the soundtrack and Brendan will poke fun, then secretly upload the files.)