I’ve been sitting on this review for a few days because it is a very hard book to read, let alone talk about. Meg Tilly tells the story of Gemma, a twelve-year-old girl who is being raped by her mother’s boyfriend. Everything goes wrong when the boyfriend sells her for a night to his friend Hazen, a sexually-frustrated pedophile who becomes obsessed with Gemma and kidnaps her.
I’m honoured and excited to be a part of Serena’s National Poetry Month Blog Tour 2010. Hopefully this will be the first of many successful literary blog tours! I applied to take part to showcase Canada’s (particularly BC and Vancouver’s) poetry scene. This post is basically a Canadian/BC/Vancouver poetry linkfest!
This book has been at the top of international bestseller charts for quite a while now and is “destined to be regarded amongst the best crime novels ever written”. The most intriguing part for me is that the novels have been published post-humously; Steig Larsson died suddenly in 2004 with three complete novels in the Millennium Trilogy, and a fourth novel half-finished. Originally titled “Men Who Hate Women” in Sweden, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is an intriguing story which begins with Blomkvist, a journalist convicted of libel. A middle-aged journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, publishes the magazine Millennium in Stockholm. In the opening courtroom drama, Blomkvist loses a libel case brought by accused Swedish industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström, and this has serious repercussions for the future of Millennium. In disgrace, Blomkvist agrees to be hired by Henrik Vanger, the aged former CEO of the Vanger companies, owned by a wealthy but dysfunctional dynasty. The old man offers not only to help his financially strapped magazine, but also to give him information to prove that Wennerström is corrupt. Officially, he is to spend a year writing the Vanger family history. Blomkvist’s real mission, however, is to solve a cold case—the disappearance, some forty years previously, of Vanger’s niece Harriet when she was sixteen. Blomkvist encounters “the old Miss Marple closed-room scenario” with all the rich suspects marooned on the family estate on an island. [From the Wikipedia article]
Henry loves watching the outdoors. He’s not suited to be outdoors unattended, so I often boost him onto the windowsill in my bedroom. At my parents’ house, he used to sit for hours in my office chair rolled up to the window. Now he doesn’t seem to remember that he can go look out the window, he just has to jump. I’m planning to get some of that window-tint stuff (like cars have) so that I can leave my blinds open while I’m at work. Maybe then he’ll hang out there more often. Safely behind the screen. No he isn’t that big… the windows are kinda small, but yea he’s a big boy… but he’s not f-a-t. The windows go from where the cement foundation ends to basically my ceiling. Watching the awesome outdoors… cars! people! Things to smell! Chill out… (that’s what the blanket is for). Sniffing the air. I close the window and lock it so it’s open just a smidgen when I’m not watching him. I know that if I was to leave it open, he’d probably pop the screen out by accident and escape. Basement suite apartment, not so good for outdoor-challenged kitteh. Oh hai! Wut do u haf? *purrr*snort*purrr*
As soon as I finished the first book in the Buckshaw Chronicles, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, I picked up my ARC of The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag. I got this copy through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program. I am so pleased I had it for when I finished Sweetness because I just wanted to carry on with Flavia and her journey. I think it will be interesting to watch her grow in the next book as she is only 11 years old and incredibly bright. Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce didn’t intend to investigate another murder — but then, Rupert Porson didn’t intend to die. When the master puppeteer’s van breaks down in the village of Bishop’s Lacey, Flavia is front and centre to help Rupert and his charming assistant, Nialla, put together a performance in the local church to help pay the repair bill. But even as the newcomers set up camp and set the stage for Jack and the Beanstalk, there are signs that something just isn’t right: Nialla’s strange bruises and solitary cries in the churchyard, Rupert’s unexplained disappearances and a violent argument with his BBC producer, the disturbing atmosphere at Culverhouse Farm, and the peculiar goings-on in nearby Gibbet Wood — where young Robin Ingleby was found hanging just five years before… [From the publisher, Random House of Canada] While I found The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag to be a good book, and perfectly capable of standing alone, it didn’t [...]
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