The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson

Another bandwagon I have been too late to jump on(the others being Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series),The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo kept recommending itself to me until I finally got down to reading it...more like watching the movie,being horrified and then quietly deciding to read it.
Not that the movie wasn't great but I prefer reading violence to watching it.
And I ain't regretting nothin'.

You know a story only as much as you know it's characters and here,Stieg Larsson leaves nothing to chance.Even though none of the characters are endearing in the normal sense of the word,you still end up empathising with them.

The book is the tale of two(and more) people, set to the background of a snow-covered Sweden, who are destined to meet to unravel a messy murder story.That of Harriet Vanger, niece to Henrik Vanger(eccentric powerful billionaire chairperson of the family-business, Vanger Industries) who disappeared without a trace 19 years ago during the annual family board meeting,leaving her uncle wondering what happened to her for the rest of his life and plunging the already dysfunctional family into further dysfunctional-ness.
Whew.

And who better to un-knot this mess than journalist Mikael 'Kalle' Blomkvist(played by Daniel Craig in the movie *applause*),the eye-of-the-storm in the media-managed Wennerström affair where Bomkvist was accused of defaming the industrial financier magnate Hans-Erik Wennerström.
Joining Blomkvist in his seemingly fruitless and obscure search for Harriet is the girl with the dragon tattoo. Lisbeth Salander. Hacker extraordinaire. Social Pariah.Rationally Irrational.And victim to the society's appalling guardianship system.But she isn't going to take anything lying down.
And what follows is the pulling out of (a lot of) skeletons from the proverbial family cupboard...but not all skeletons want to be pulled out.

The language is very factual and straightforward(alluding to the author's journalistic background) with a lot of detail regarding politics and social policy which I found tiring at times and words are treated as words with none of the hidden shades of meaning in the labyrinths of prose stuff.Hence,be warned,reader discretion is advised.
The story is as gruesome and graphic as a story could ever get at times and a lot of explicit stuff is thrown at you with no preamble whatsoever...not recommended for your 15-year old book-loving niece.No sir.
So waving your tab around with the book opened at a serious Teach India conference is NOT a good idea.I should know.

And now excuse me while I go dig into The Girl Who Played With Fire.
;)

Book Specifications:

Original Title Män som hatar kvinnor (2005 - Swedish), This edition The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009) by Knopf

Author Stieg Larsson 

ISBN 0307269752 (ISBN13: 9780307269751)

Series Millenium #1

The Chosen One - Fritz Franke

Reading something of your own volition and reading something someone wants you to read are both very different. And in this case, really special. Because the author himself wants you to read his book. Apart from all the excited hyperventilation of talking to a real, honest-to-goodness published author, I was really happy (and worried!) about this assignment. Doing justice to someone’s baby is something you want to handle like a boa constrictor. Really carefully. And I do hope I've done it well!

A Wrinkle In Time - Madeleine L'Engle

A Wrinkle In Time is an old book. And old book with which I only recently came into contact with(my family not being the type to gift books on birthdays). And it’s fantasy.And a children’s book. All the more reason to love it!

Broken Harbor - Tana French

Book Specifications:

Original Title Broken Harbor

Author Tana French

Published July 2nd 2012 by Hatchette Books Ireland

ISBN 1444705105 (ISBN13: 9781444705102)

Series Dublin Murder Squad #4

Paperback, 533 pages

It’s not often (heck, more like never) that you get a crime-novel that moves you.

But Tana French manages to do that, Detective Mike ‘Scorcher’ Kennedy seems stiff-lipped, straight-a***d, stubborn - “Rule Number Three, and Four and Five and about a dozen more: you do not go with the flow in this job. You make the flow go with you.”  and those adjectives we typically use to describe the English but he has a heart...occasionally. And a mind too.

It all starts with a brutal, mass family-homicide. Pat Spain along with his two kids has been killed and his wife Jenny too has barely escaped...or has she?

Some digging leads to the name (and capture) of Conor Brennan...who strangely is not being the kind of witness Kennedy is used to. No sudden defences, no denial. Nothing. Only a quiet acceptance of the facts accusations.

And Kennedy’s partner Richie...the rookie who’s turning out to be a good find has different ideas about the crime.

With the accusation-arrow spinning too much for Kennedy’s taste from Pat to Conor and Conor to Pat and a dark past too(Broken Harbor was where his mother died),and adding to the mix Kennedy’s crazy sister Dina(she kinda made sense to me.I should be worried) and a  teetering-on-the-edge Jenny, Kennedy just might have too much too handle.

Just till they find out what really happened.

*I just wrote that paragraph and heck, it sounds like something straight off the jacket cover! Am I good or what!

And for those of you wondering what on earth this small print nonsense is, it’s just me having a complex. And the permission slip is here."You are allowed to have a complex”! Score!!!

I took some time reading this book (three days, 533 pages!) but there were always good parts to every session.

And the case isn't going to be easy -  If you’re good at this job, and I am, then every step in a murder case moves you in one direction: towards order. We get thrown shards of senseless wreckage, and we piece them together shards of senseless wreckage, and we piece them together until we can lift the picture out of the darkness and hold it up to the white light of day, solid, complete, clear... This case was different. It was running backwards, dragging us with it on some ferocious ebb tide. Every step washed us deeper in black chaos, wrapped us tighter in tendrils of crazy and pulled us downwards.

I’d always have something to think about just like a work of literary fiction and that’s hard to find!

Along with the detecting, and crime scenes, and post-mortems and things, you have the little sentences that touch you – “There isn't any why. That’s what I mean, trying to organize me. I'm not crazy because anything. I just am.”

 That you want to highlight and smile about - One of the definitions of insanity, my friend, is doing the same thing again and again and hoping for different results.

 That amazes you about the humanness of literary-characters - Interesting fact from the front lines: raw grief smells like ripped leaves and splintered branches, a jagged green shriek.

And I loved it. It was new reading a novel of the literary-crime genre (if that is one) but I loved it!

And I got my entry to the crime-section for the challenge done. HA!

Recommended as a gift to the crime-novel loving husband/boyfriend/nephew/wife/niece...or whoever you want to give a book that has SOMETHING in it along with all the slick gun-toting stuff they love!

A four point three (though some crime novel-lovers would give it more) and a thumbs up for surprising me!

Grace - Richard Paul Evans

Book Specifications:

Title	Grace: A Novel
Author	Richard Paul Evans
Publisher	Simon and Schuster, October 2008
ISBN	1416550038, 9781416550037
Length	336 pages, Hardcover

I picked up Grace at the Sunderbhai Hall book festival where you get books for INR 100/kilo... I'm not kidding. From among this long table filled with books, mostly dark, broody and cynical, I got Grace...a lovely, promise-filled title. With the following premise:

In the winter of 1962, Eric and his younger brother, Joel, help a runaway teenager by hiding her in a den in their snow-filled back garden. The diminutive Grace, swamped by an over-large coat and huge, almond-shaped brown eyes, captivates the two boys. But she is vulnerable, and her arrival will change everything-not just the coming of Christmas, but Eric’s entire life.

And it didn't disappoint. No way. Grace was just as beautiful as it (and she) seemed. This is what I wrote immediately after reading the book:

I feel full and warm in my heart after a long time...something I associate with a beautiful book. These words seem too cold to describe the warmth and secret gladness tinged with tears I feel for Grace. 

And yep, that's how you're going to feel too...it's too lovely for words...that bubbly feeling inside of wanting everybody to feel like you!

Eric narrates the story in 2006 after reading The Little Match Girl to his grand-kids brings him to tears...reminds him of a real match girl he knew. A girl who was...

My first kiss. My first love. She was a little match girl who could see the future in the flame of a candle. She was a runaway who taught me more about life than anyone has before or since. And when she was gone my innocence left with her.

Grace.

Found in a dumpster trying to grab something to eat. Behind the McBurger Queen. Where Eric finds her. Learns about her running away from home. Offers their den (with the indoor tap and a pin-up girl in a red swimsuit) as a temporary place to live, (“I have a girl hidden in the den.”Joel shook his head, “You wish”).Unknowingly giving Grace a place in his heart as well, (“You’re my hero.”“ Anytime”, I said. Of course I wasn't about to win any award but when you’re a fourteen year-old boy with acne and a bad haircut, it felt good to be somebody’s hero.)Trying to escape his mother’s notice (How do you explain having a girl with you in the bathroom??!).Playing hooky from school. Placating his father, who is paralysed due to Guillain-Barre syndrome (but will recover).Learning how a good friend is someone you can lean on. And love (Is a birthday gift worth 27 dollars worth the kiss you get in return??Sure is!).And trust. And make sacrifices and take risks for. And even betray (Why DID Grace leave home?). And forgive.

Grace is like hot chocolate (and I'm hungry!)...it warms, delights, surprises, cheers and reassures. Especially when it's cold!

Grace is something you’d definitely want everyone to read...and feel.*moment of solitudinous silence*

A four-point-fiver I'll whole-heartedly recommend!

Let's Pretend This Never Happened - Jenny Lawson

Book Specifications:

ISBN: 0399159010 (ISBN13: 9780399159015)

Published April 17th 2012 by Amy Einhorn: Putnam

Hardcover, 318 pages

Original Title: Let's Pretend This Never Happened: (A Mostly True Memoir)

Author: Jenny Lawson. This is her first book.

Here’s my fancy reviewer line to put on the book-cover along with my name: All the foibles and fallacies of a funny, f***-saying, freaked-out female in a package.

And don’t blame me if you go punch drunk and giggle when you hear ball-pop or anything like that after reading the book.*giggle*

‘Hilariously inappropriate’ (according to Marie Claire) is I think the best comment to describe this book in a nutshell.

The assortment of characters is pretty interesting and mostly unbelievable (just like real people).

You have a taxidermist/armadillo-racer/dead-squirrel-puppeteer father, a children- learn-and-live-through-risks mother, a patiently all-bearing occasionally crazy husband (make no mistake, this guy is fun...or must be, to bear all the antics) and a sister who’s dressed up as a chicken and best of all, an author.

And some taxidermied animals dressed up in cute costumes...the one on the cover is Hamlet von Schnitzel and I so want him...people who know where to get him, email me.

Don’t let the words memoir or autobiography on the cover put you off, not at all, rather this is the book you should be picking up even before that coveted copy of Bridget Jones(yes even if it is a sale).

After all, what can you expect from a person who is neurotic, polyarthritic, panic-attack-prone and has all the craziest things in the world happen to her?! I’m not kidding; the high point of her high school is sticking her arm up a cow’s vagina.

Yes. I know.

And that’s how I felt throughout the book.

This book is stuffed with oh-my-freaking-pants incidents like that. And it would be advisable to find a place where people don’t mind raucous laughing and choking and snorting because that’s what you’re going to do while reading. Really. I’m seriously worried about that look my brother gave me.

Jenny is only as screwed up as you or me plus a little extra maybe...she did manage to talk about a cow’s vagina during a funeral.

I don’t know what else to say for fear of ruining that first rush of gawky, chokey surprise when you read the book and not because I want to be the irritating reviewer who is all ‘lovely, beautiful, awesome’ and less story. All in all, a perfectly, hilariously, crazily, convoluted general knowledge autobiography (oh don’t be put down, Jenny explains why. In the end. And she’s a blogger. How cool is that??!link)

P.S. Don’t leave it open anywhere for your parents to find. Or your little sister. Or brother. Unless you know how to explain away cusses. If you can then it’s perfectly fine.

Rating: I don’t know how the scale works here but being one of those nothing-is-a-perfect-ten-ever people, I give it a 4/5 plus a big smile? hug? bookmark?...whatever you give a book for making you happy.

Go get it and pre-book the next.