Another day spent mostly tapping away at a keyboard and squinting at a screen. Too bad, but I've broken the back of the particular fair trade project I've been working on and now I'm waiting to see what others will do with it.
Before boarding the plane at Newark on our recent trip to the UK I bought a copy of Steig Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Not because I specially wanted to read it but because I definitely didn't want to read any of the other fourteen titles that were the only alternative offerings in the pathetically tiny air-side bookstore. I thought it got off to a slow start and for the first 200 pages I couldn't work out what all the bestseller fuss was about. But once the story gets going it's pretty gripping, though some of the subject matter is quite repellent. That's thrillers for you. Have any of you read it?
I guess I wasn't totally put off, as today I borrowed the sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire. In the opening chapters the story is set in Grenada, which is intriguing to me because it's not a place you often come across in books, and I happened to live there for nine months, in another incarnation. Funny how a handful of place names on a page - the Carenage, Grenville, Grand Anse beach - can whistle you back to long-forgotten sights and smells and sounds. Many thanks to the relatives who let me stay there with them back then. Grenada is an exceptionally beautiful island. I hope it's faring well. It mostly relies on tourism - maybe I should recommend it to my dentist for her winter hols?
I haven't read it or seen any of the films. I'm not sure how I've managed that - its been in everywhere. Currently reading the Gnashional Trust issue of the Beano. (Beano joke: Whats invisible and smells like bananas?)
ReplyDeleteWe read it in our book group last year. Very gripping, but we were disturbed by the authors detailed description of violence towards women while purporting to be against it.
ReplyDeleteYes, that concerns me too. I sometimes wasn't sure which side of the line the author was really on.
ReplyDeleteI do like the anti-heroine, though - it's satisfying to come across a new and quite complex character.
Avril, is it something a monkey leaves (ahem) behind?
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