*THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE* by Stieg Larsson

(Barnes & Noble Review)
Joy is not the first emotion one would expect to feel while reading a long Swedish crime novel that deals with misogyny, sex trafficking, police corruption, and a handful of explicitly gruesome murders. Yet The Girl Who Played with Fire, the second novel in Stieg Larsson's internationally bestselling Millennium series, turns a reader inside out with a joy that can't be squashed, not even by the grim knowledge that the 50-year-old author died suddenly in 2004 after finishing three books and will publish no more. While it's not critical to have read the opening volume, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, before picking up this one, it's a good idea. That's where readers will get a solid introduction to Larsson's magnetic protagonists: the crusading investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist ofMillennium magazine, and the anarchic punk computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. While the first novel was mostly Blomkvist's story, the second belongs to Salander, answering some questions about her quicksilver personality while raising many more. A notable difference between the two books is that the first, while teeming with characters in a complicated plot amid an exotic (to Americans, anyway) Nordic milieu, respectfully adhered to a fairly traditional structure. As Blomkvist himself noted in Dragon Tattoo, the puzzle was "a sort of locked-room mystery in island format," of the kind popularized by classic crime writers like Dorothy Sayers. In contrast, the second novel blows many such conventions all to heck, and part of the joy here is the shared exhilaration in -- and indeed complicity with -- the author's playful insubordination. Larsson's biggest new tweak is his focus on Lisbeth Salander as heroine. While there are plenty of female crime novelists who've created male detective heroes -- Christie and Poirot; Sayers and Wimsey; James and Dalgliesh; Rendell and Wexford -- it's the rare male mystery writer who presents a female sleuth as his central character. And what a character Salander is. She looks like a skinny, sulky, 14-year-old club kid, aggressively festooned with tattoos and piercings; she's in fact 26, with a photographic memory, a passion for esoteric math, and membership in a shadowy international band of computer hackers. Unbothered by any notions of social courtesy, she's nevertheless possessed of a steely sense of justice that "did not always coincide with that of the justice system." She's also had some training with a world-class boxer, attempting to compensate for her tiny frame with swift reflexes and a never-say-die fighting style. But just when we might start thinking Lisbeth is some kind of Lara Croft crime-fighting hologram, Larsson steers us toward her vulnerabilities. Piecemeal, he drops clues that invite readers to form a patchy construct of her troubled life. As the author hinted throughout Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth suffered through a traumatic childhood and spent several of her early teen years in a psychiatric clinic for children in Uppsala. Since then, she's been forced to defend herself against more than one vicious misogynist, including her legal guardian, Nils Erik Bjurman, a sexual predator whose attack on Lisbeth and her subsequent revenge were meticulously chronicled in Dragon Tattoo. During a life consumed with self-protection, Lisbeth has yearned for trusting contact while at the same time doubting its legitimacy. As the new book opens, she has abandoned two sexual relationships that might have offered her true intimacy: most recently with journalist Mikael Blomkvist and before that with Miriam Wu, a lesbian sociology student and co-owner of an S&M boutique, whom Lisbeth had left for Blomkvist without a word of apology. Now, it seems, Lisbeth's worst suspicions about human nature are once again confirmed. A freelance journalist and his criminologist girlfriend have been shot dead in their apartment in Stockholm's Enskede district. The couple was about to publish some incendiary findings about the trafficking of underage eastern European prostitutes in Sweden that would implicate a number of prominent lawyers, policemen, and journalists. The articles were scheduled to appear in Blomkvist's Millennium magazine. And the murder weapon, found on the apartment building's cellar stairs, carries the fingerprints of Lisbeth Salander. As if this weren't damning enough, the body of a third murder victim is soon discovered: it's Lisbeth's detested legal guardian, Nils Bjurman. At this point, both the police and the frenzied media are certain they have an easy investigation on their hands, with Salander as the prime suspect. Fueled by misinformation, "the police appeared to be hunting for a psychotic lesbian who had joined a cult of sadomasochistic Satanists that propagandized for S&M sex and hated society in general and men in particular." We're pretty sure that Lisbeth is none of those things. Nor is she a prostitute, or retarded, as some are eager to claim. But what do we really know about Lisbeth and her past? Larsson encourages readers to defend her, along with Blomkvist and her former boss at a private security company called Milton, who reminds an investigating policeman, "Files are one thing. People are something else." But how do we know she isn't guilty? As Salander herself notes while hiding from the police and conducting her own secret inquiry, "Nobody was innocent. There were only varying degrees of responsibility." At varying points in the story, Lisbeth is not only the chief suspect but also a principal sleuth, a key victim, and a potential motive for the murders. In the meantime, along with Lisbeth and the police, others are conducting their own parallel investigations, including the Millennium staff, members of Milton Security, and the media. "Whatever the Enskede murders had been about," observes the veteran police inspector on the case, "it was much more complicated than they had supposed." So where is the joy in this big, dark, messy, imperfect book? It's in the author's invitation to make the reader as complicit here as anybody else, and in his cheeky defiance of crime-novel conventions. It's in the mix of stylistic elements: the real and the hyper-real, the surfaces and the depths, the ever-fixed and the ever-changing. And it's in Larsson's captured thrill of merely being alive in this big, dark, messy, imperfect world, even when things are looking truly hopeless. At one point while on the run, Lisbeth makes off with a thug's motorcycle and finds herself on the open highway, grinning with irrational exhilaration. We watch her go: a tiny, besieged young woman, trying to maneuver a powerful Harley toward an unclear future, having the time of her life. And somehow, whoever we are or might imagine ourselves to be, we know exactly how she feels.

*****Rate this 5/5. I am so anxious to start the third book in this trilogy and only wish that the author had not died because I love his writing. Lisbeth Salandar is the perfect heroine........

*THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO" by Stieg Larrson

(Washington Post review) this remarkable first novel by the Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson…has been a huge bestseller in Europe and will be one here if readers are looking for an intelligent, ingeniously plotted, utterly engrossing thriller that is variously a serial-killer saga, a search for a missing person and an informed glimpse into the worlds of journalism and business…It's hard to find fault with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. One must struggle with bewildering Swedish names, but that's a small price to pay. The story starts off at a leisurely pace, but the reader soon surrenders to Larsson's skillful narrative. We care about his characters because we come to know them so well. The central question—what happened to Harriet?—is answered in due course, and other matters involving romance and revenge are wrapped up as well. It's a book that lingers in the mind.

*****I loved this book and now anxiously await obtaining the second in the series. I am glad that I didn't pay attention to some of the negative reviews and judged it myself. A 590 page book that I read in 2 days!!!

*THE WISE WOMAN* by Phillipa Gregory

In this book, originally published after her bestselling debut with the Wideacre trilogy, New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory takes readers to Henry VIII's England, on a journey to the outer reaches of passion, where magic and female power meet.
Alys joins a nunnery to escape the poverty of her life on the moor with her foster mother, Morach, the local wise woman with whom she lives as an outcast, but she soon finds herself thrown back into the world when Henry VIII's wreckers destroy her sanctuary. Summoned to the castle as the old lord's scribe, she falls obsessively in love with his son Hugo, who is married to Catherine. Driven to desperation by her desire, she summons the most dangerous powers Morach has taught her, but soon the passionate triangle of Alys, Hugo, and Catherine begins to explode, launching them into uncharted sexual waters. The magic Alys has conjured now has a life of its own — a life that is horrifyingly and disastrously out of control.
Is she a witch? Since heresy means the stake, and witchcraft the rope, Alys is in mortal danger, treading a perilous path between her faith and her own female power.

*****Rate this 5/5. This is one of the earliest books written by Ms. Gregory and it was a great book. I had read her books on the Boleyns and Henry the Eighth, but decided to give this a try and I am glad that I did.

*ANGELINA: An Unauthorized Biography* by Andrew Morton

"If there is a celebrity today who merits the spadework of an unauthorized Morton biography, it's Jolie, with a potential audience that includes just about anyone who has gone through a supermarket checkout line in the last decade, glanced at tabloid headlines about Angelina, say, open- mouth kissing her brother or swapping vials of blood with Billy Bob Thornton and wondered: "What was she thinking?"If there's anyone to blame here, according to this book, it's the parents, since the bitter relationship between actor Jon Voight and Marcia Lynne (later Marcheline) Bertrand runs as a subplot throughout. Her father left Bertrand for another woman when Angelina was 2, and her mother/manager is portrayed as vacillating between being a laissez-faire hippie mother and a pushy sort of stage mom who, according to Morton, tried among other things to push her daughter into a relationship with Mick Jagger.It's at this point [after Jolie and Brad Pitt come together] that the book seems to move into hyperdrive, with endless rounds of globe-trotting, location shooting, child-acquiring and philanthropic efforts. But the faster it seems to move, the harder it is to put down. Maybe that's because, like salt, we have a craving for explanation, for back story, and Morton's book offers a satisfying dose of both. While the healthier approach might be to limit the intake by vowing to pick it up occasionally and flip to the index for a snippet like: "Haven, James relationship with" or "United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees," that's not likely to happen.Chances are you won't be able to put this book down until your mouth is dry and your blood pressure is racing."

***Rate this 3/5. I usually love Andrew Morton's books, but I liked his series on Princess Diana better than this one on Angelina Jolie. It did, however, give me a clearer impression on why she is like she is as an adult. If the facts of her childhood are entirely true, it is a wonder that she grew up normally at all. The book also portrays both her and Brad Pitt as master manipulators of the press, for their own advantages and agenda which I found surprising because I bought into the hype myself.

FURIOUS LOVE: Elizabeth Taylor: Richard Burton: and the Marriage of the Century by Sam Kashner

The definitive story of Hollywood's most famous couple
He was a tough-guy Welshman softened by the affections of a breathtakingly beautiful woman; she was a modern-day Cleopatra madly in love with her own Mark Antony. For nearly a quarter of a century, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were Hollywood royalty, and their fiery romance—often called "the marriage of the century"—was the most notorious, publicized, and celebrated love affair of its day.
For the first time, Vanity Fair contributing editor Sam Kashner and acclaimed biographer Nancy Schoenberger tell the complete story of this larger-than-life couple, showing how their romance and two marriages commanded the attention of the world. Also for the first time, in exclusive access given to the authors, Elizabeth Taylor herself gives never-revealed details and firsthand accounts of her life with Burton.
Drawing upon brand-new information and interviews—and on Burton's private, passionate, and heartbreaking letters to Taylor—Furious Love sheds new light on the movies, the sex, the scandal, the fame, the brawls, the booze, the bitter separations, and, of course, the fabled jewels. It offers an intimate glimpse into Elizabeth and Richard's privileged world and their elite circle of friends, among them Princess Grace, Montgomery Clift, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Peter O'Toole, Michael Caine, Marlon Brando, Rex Harrison, Mike Nichols, Laurence Olivier, Robert Kennedy, Tennessee Williams, Noël Coward, John Huston, Ava Gardner, the Rothschilds, Maria Callas, and Aristotle Onassis. It provides an entertaining, eye-opening look at their films, their wildly lucrative reign in Europe and in Hollywood—and the price they paid for their extravagant lives.
Shocking and unsparing in its honesty, Furious Love explores the very public marriage of "Liz and Dick" as well as the private struggles of Elizabeth and Richard, including Le Scandale, their affair on the set of the notorious epic Cleopatra that earned them condemnation from the Vatican; Burton's hardscrabble youth in Wales; the crippling alcoholism that nearly destroyed his career and contributed to his early death; the medical issues that plagued both him and Elizabeth; and the failed aspirations and shame that haunted him throughout their relationship. As Kashner and Schoenberger illuminate the events and choices that shaped this illustrious couple's story, they demonstrate how the legendary pair presaged America's changing attitudes toward sex, marriage, morality, and celebrity. Yet ultimately, as the authors show, Elizabeth and Richard shared something priceless beyond the drama: enduring love.
Addictive and entertaining, Furious Love is more than a celebrity biography; it's an honest yet sympathetic portrait of a man, a woman, and a passion that shocked and mesmerized the world.

****Rate this 4/5. A very thoroughly researched story of the love between Dick & Liz. I will alsways consider these two to be the love story of the century. I believe that Liz will love Richard Burton until the day she dies as Richard loved her until his own passing.

*LEAVING THE WORLD* by Douglas Kennedy

"On the night of her thirteenth birthday, Jane Howard made a vow to her warring parents: she would never get married, and she would never have children.
But life, as Jane comes to discover, is a profoundly random business. Many years and many lives later, she is a professor in Boston, in love with a brilliant, erratic man named Theo. And then Jane becomes pregnant. Motherhood turns out to be a great welcome surprise—but when a devastating turn of events tears her existence apart she has no choice but to flee all she knows and leave the world.
Just when she has renounced life itself, the disappearance of a young girl pulls her back from the edge and into an obsessive search for some sort of personal redemption. Convinced that she knows more about the case than the police do, she is forced to make a decision—stay hidden or bring to light a shattering truth.
Leaving the World is a riveting portrait of a brilliant woman that reflects the way we live now, of the many routes we follow in the course of a single life, and of the arbitrary nature of destiny. A critically acclaimed international bestseller, it is also a compulsive read and one that speaks volumes about the dilemmas we face in trying to navigate our way through all that fate throws in our path."

*****Rate this book 5/5 would give it higher if I could. I picked this book up and noticed the length, 480 pages, and said to myself, "well it better be good". I started reading, hoping to find a reason to not like it. It was after all a book about a woman written by a man, and I was prepared to not like it. I read this book in 2 sittings! It drew me in and I only put it down to get some sleep for the night. I loved it! Great story, great characters, and I loved the main character, Jane, even though a man wrote her story!

*AMBULANCE GIRL* by Jane Stern

Five years ago Jane Stern was a walking encyclopedia of panic attacks, depression, and hypochondria. Her marriage of more than thirty years was suffering, and she was virtually immobilized by fear and anxiety. As the daughter of parents who both died before she was thirty, Stern was terrified of illness and death, and despite the fact that her acclaimed career as a food and travel writer required her to spend a great deal of time on airplanes, she suffered from a persistent fear of flying and severe claustrophobia. But a strange thing happened one day on a plane that was grounded at the Minneapolis airport for six horrible, foodless, airless hours. A young man on a trip with his classmates suddenly became dizzy and pale because he hadn’t eaten in many hours, and there was no food left on the plane. Without thinking about it, Jane gave him the candy bar that she had in her purse. A short time later the color had returned to his cheeks, the boy was laughing again with his friends, and Jane realized that this one small act of kindness—helping another person who was suffering—had provided her with comfort and a sense of well-being.
It was shortly thereafter that this fifty-two-year-old writer decided to become an emergency medical technician, eventually coming to be known as Ambulance Girl. Stern tells her story with great humor and poignancy, creating a wonderful portrait of a middle-aged, Woody Allen–ish woman who was “deeply and neurotically terrified of sick and dead people,” but who went out into the world to save other people’s lives as a way of saving her own. Her story begins with the boot camp of EMT training: 140 hours at the hands of a dour ex-marine who took delight in presenting a veritable parade of amputations, hideous deformities, and gross disasters. Jane—overweight and badly out of shape—had to surmount physical challenges like carrying a 250-pound man seated in a chair down a dark flight of stairs. After class she did rounds in the emergency room of a local hospital, where she attended to a schizophrenic kickboxer who had tried to kill his mother that morning and a stockbroker who was taken off the commuter train to Manhattan with delirium tremens so bad it killed him.
Each call Stern describes is a vignette of human nature, often with a life in the balance. From an AIDS hospice to town drunks, yuppie wife beaters to psychopaths, Jane comes to see the true nature and underlying mysteries of a town she had called home for twenty years. Throughout the book we follow her as she gets her sea legs and finally bonds with the burly, handsome firefighters who become her colleagues. At the end, she is named the first woman officer of the department—a triumph we joyously share with her.
Ambulance Girl is an inspiring story by a woman who found, somewhat late in life, that “in helping others I learned to help myself.” It is a book to be treasured and shared.

*****Rate this 5/5. I happen to 'know' Ms. Stern through my Perfume of Life forum and always wanted a little background into her life. I decided to read a book she wrote that she said 'saved her life' after a bout with depression. I loved getting to know her through this book, an interesting read. Being a registered nurse, I can identify with her fears in the medical world.