Stieg Larsson

I just whizzed through both The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson. So sad that he’s passed away – what a phenomenal storyteller. Lisbeth Salander is at once the most sympathetic and interesting character I have read in a long, long time. I highly recommend either the regular books or the audio books. I got both books on Audible and loved Simon Vance’s reading. Wonderful! I’m a little bummed that the third book in the trilogy won’t be out until Oct 09, but I can’t wait to see what happens to Lisbeth.

I couldn’t find a website for Stieg – probably because he’s Swedish – but Random House has this site for the books, and is running this contest to win a trip to Sweden until Sept. 30, 2009.

I will say that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was one of those books I kept seeing promoted and highly rated and kept avoiding because it didn’t seem interesting. Also, because it had been translated to English, I thought it would have a bunch of foreign references I wouldn’t get. Neither of these turned out to be the case. Both books were just great stories with the very intriguing character of Lisbeth. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

I also recently watched Sunshine Cleaning (awesome) and Gran Tourino (wonderful).  I recommend both for your Netflix queue. Warning: both made me cry.

I’ve been looking for shows to watch, and Netflix has CSI: NY Season 5 on ‘watch instantly’ right now. I’ve really only watched CSI: Vegas since the beginning. I lasted halfway through seasons 1 of the other two CSI’s, and found them super irritating. I love Gary Sinise though, so I thought I’d give NY another try. Big mistake. It’s so corny! I just couldn’t take it. That crazy high-tech autopsy room with the floor to ceiling video screens of the insides of dead people? Even if that’s real technology, it just looks so crazy and unrealistic. I can see how that show would really make it hard for REAL prosecutors and CSI’s and detectives to prove a case in REAL LIFE court – where this Star Trek-esque technology just doesn’t exist.