Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Mourning the Last of Steig Larsson

It's taken me more than a year.  When I received my Kindle in the summer of 2010, one of the first books I purchased was The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Steig  Larsson.  It is the last of his Millennium Trilogy, and the only one of the series I had not yet read.  And there it sat, waiting patiently, while I sampled and downloaded and borrowed lots of other books. Steig Larsson passed away in 2004 before his trilogy was published, and Hornet's Nest is his last completed novel. To read Hornet's Nest meant the end, forever, of Larsson's incredible writing.

Larsson's first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, continues to rock the publishing world.  Despite being published posthumously, Dragon Tattoo spent months on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold more than 48 million hard and digital copies worldwide.  Now that the movie has come out, the series has seen another boost on the bestseller lists.  There is good reason for all this popularity - the series is fabulous.  Hornet's Nest lives up to the reputation of its predecessors, with plenty of action and a thoroughly satisfying ending filled with vengeance and justice for all.

As the trilogy's main character, Lisbeth Salandar is a kick-ass, hard-core heroine who is as dysfunctional as she is brilliant. The last book captures the true essence of Lisbeth, who manages to defeat the bad guys while confined to her hospital bed, recuperating from a bullet to the brain.  As I finally started Hornet's Nest, it was a bittersweet experience - this young woman, who I had come to admire and know so well through Larsson's series, would never again grace the pages of another novel.  I believe that had Larssson not passed away, Lisbeth would have risen again to battle evil and corruption, albeit in her own disturbing way.

Characters like Lisbeth Salandar come along once in ... well, a millennium. Thank you, Steig Larsson, for sharing your talent and imagination.  You are truly missed.

Friday, January 20, 2012

The Reluctant Reader


Months ago I started to hear buzz about the nonfiction bestseller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  It was a strong contender for our community's "One Book" choice for the year.  Friends mentioned the book and how much it moved them.  Reviews were glowing.  So I downloaded the sample onto my Kindle and started reading.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a nonfiction account of an African American woman in the 1950s whose cancer cells were taken, without her permission, and found to be extraordinary. They were the first cells, in fact, that were able to reproduce in a test tube environment.The book begins with a lot of very technical and scientific information, and while people had told me that it "reads like fiction" I was not getting that at all.  And it was about cancer. 

You see, like most of us, I have personal experience with cancer.  Many years ago, my dear friend's husband died of cancer, leaving her a widow with two preschoolers.  My cousin died of Hodgkin's Disease in his 30s. The list goes on and on, and as I get older, the number of friends and relatives touched by cancer rises exponentially. 

So reading a book about a woman who died from cancer, even one whose cells helped pave the way for future treatment and cures, was not appealing.  I sighed and I grumbled.   The teenager inside of me whined, "I don't want to....."  I made excuses and told friends that it was "on my list to read" (which is code for, 'When I am totally desperate I might pick it up again.').

But there is my Achilles Heel: my book club.  When Henrietta Lacks was chosen as this month's book club pick, I had no choice but to knuckle down and read. It turns out all those friends and blogs and reviewers were right.  Henrietta Lacks is an amazing story, equal parts science and heartbreaking family history. It's a story that needed to be told. Henrietta's legacy of cell immortality and the back story of the impoverished Lacks' family would make a great foundation for any book club discussion.

What is the moral of this story of reluctance? Read everything you can, even when you don't feel like it. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a reminder that some books, even if you don't WANT to read them, need to be read.


Monday, January 2, 2012

Happy New Year 2012

I love the holiday season, I really do, but this year I was even more keenly aware of the books that sat on my nightstand, my Kindle, and at the library waiting to be read.  It seems each year is busier than the one before, and this year, my reading really took a back seat to shopping, baking, and the overall craziness of life.

But with 2011 behind us, it is time to look forward to all I have to read and talk about this coming year.  I just finished V is for Vendetta, Sue Grafton's latest alphabet mystery, and next up is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, my book club's choice this month. Waiting in reserve is a great nonfiction about a guy who buys and tries to run a Korean deli in New York, as well as the newest Flavia de Luce novel.

What would the new year be without resolutions? I resolve to be more faithful to this blog, to write even just a few paragraphs when I don't have a whole review to post.  It's been more than a year since I started "Turn of the Page," and sharing my love of reading has never been more enjoyable.

Happy New Year!