Fancy Pantsy

I had an awesome Saturday. Why? Because I took my car to the shop for service and was there for 3 hours. It was awesome….when I called the man to tell him they said it would be at least 2 hours, I was positively giddy! 3 hours of coffee, reading, toasted egg sandwich and the toilet (clean private bathroom) and no kids!!! worth the 60$ bill!!!

I got so into my book that I actually missed them calling my name. It reminded me how much I have missed reading lately. I still read a bit, but it is hard. Charlotte is a monkey and I cannot read at all when I am alone with her, and she barely ever naps. I have gotten into TV more than I used to be out of necessity (nursing), and she does not let me read while I breast-feed, which I did with the girl all the time. Since I am not in my car for hours like I was when working, I have not really been reading audio books either. I mostly read in the…umm…powder room.  Mostly fluff, since it is easy to get back into.

I have read a few really good books in the past year though, and wanted to share some.

Firstly, the book I am reading right now is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrson.  This is a Swedish novel that took the work by storm, both because it is so good, and because the manuscript made it to print after Larron’s death. TGWTDT is the first in a trilogy  about . I am about half-way through the book, but loving the murder mystery and the characters so far.  I don’t feel like explaining it, so here is the Wikipedia summery: A middle-aged journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, publishes the magazine Millennium in Stockholm. He is hired one day by Henrik Vanger, the aged former CEO of a group of companies owned by a wealthy dynasty, in order to chronicle the family history. His real mission, however, is to solve a cold case – the disappearance, some forty years previously, of Vanger’s great-niece when she was sixteen. Blomkvist encounters “the old Miss Marple closed-room scenario” with all the wealthy suspects marooned on the family estate on an island; a village we grow familiar with, full of hostile locals peering out from behind their curtains”.^[1] The real main character of the story is Lisbeth Salander, an asocial punk who has been victimized by authorities throughout her whole life. By accident she meets Blomkvist and the unlikely couple become another classic detective pair where the hunters become the hunted.

Another great read was Any Man: A Fictionalized Account of Something That Really Happened by Louise Corum. This book is the author’s fictionalized account of her aunt’s disappearance decades before, and the father’s search for his missing daughter. A  quick and excellent book.