The End of August and I'm Currently Reading...

On my Barnes and Noble Nook I'm reading Billy Boyle by James R Benn, the first book in the Billy Boyle World War II Mystery Series. On my Sony Reader I'm rereading 1632 by Eric Flint I downloaded it from the wonderful Baen.com web site. On my Motorola Droid's Nook Application I'm reading The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi.

Operation Paperback

 Joined Operation Paperback as a volunteer last week. Shipped my first box of books overseas today. Twenty-three books, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Science Fiction and Westerns shipped to our troops serving overseas. I'll get another address next month and send another shipment out in September.

Current and just finished reads.

Finished The Lost City of Z by David Grann and Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen; before starting The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

The Lost City of Z tells of the quest by David Grann to discover what happened to the famous explorer Percy Fawcett who disappeared in 1925. Grann's quest is woven together with the tale of Fawcett's own quest for the Lost City of Z. The contrast between these two stories is the contrast between Fawcett's time and ours.

Garden Spells is a much simpler read and it is impossible (at least for me) not to be reminded of the movie Practical Magic.

The Girl with the Dragon Tatto Just finished 08/10/2010

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Just finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. I did enjoy this book, that said I don't know why it's the most sold e-book on Amazon and I think Barnes and Noble too. The book contains a wealth of information about the characters, but it is presented to us, we don't really learn about characters through the characters themselves. The plot itself was generally predicable but it did offer unexpected twists every now and then. Then after the twist the plot in the new direction becomes predicable. Lisbeth Salander, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is by far the most interesting person in the book, troubled herself and troubling to others she is the one who changes the most in the course of the book. Mikael Blomkvist the other main character in the story is less interesting. He doesn't seem to know why he does what he does.

After finishing the book I watched the movie: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on Netflix's Instant Watch service. While several incidents are left out of the movie and more simplified I thought it to be a good take on the book.  More noirish than the book the movie covered the same ground and I think set the right mood. The end of the movie did seem rather rapid, as if they realized that they only had so many minutes left and had to get certain scenes in to wrap it up. The actor playing Mikael Blomkvist comes across as lost and confused as the character in the book.