When I learned the truth behind the sex slavery in this Swedish crime novel it was a jaw dropping experience, disconcerting experience. Strongly recommended.

I finished this book late last night and didn’t have the oomph to write about it.

It’s the kind of book that browns you off reading for a while and not because it isn’t good, but rather because you think you’ll have a tough time finding a worthy follow up.

There is so much wisdom and humor in this book. It reminds you that at the age of fourteen you are in so many ways unequipped to deal with life and at the same time understand certain things about it that seem far beyond your years.

The book takes place at a private Catholic boys’ school in Dublin. I won’t be spoiling it for you if I tell you that Skippy does indeed die and in the novel’s first five pages. The following 650 pages outline what leads up to and follows this event. As one reviewer pointed out the narrative is told from at least twenty different view points. In my opinion this adds to the reader’s understanding and is not confusing about the way we all figure into the lives of those around us. There were some laugh out loud moments and no manipulative tear jerking ones, quite a feat concerning the subject matter. So much insight from such a young author.

Highly recommended if you hadn’t guessed that already.

I know this movie got a rotten review on tomatoes but I enjoyed it!

Not as good, in my opinion, as Mina’s Garnethill trilogy but a well done and thought provoking crime novel nevertheless. I will continue to look for books by Denise Mina.

During the course of reading this book I read an interview with Donna Tartt published shortly after its publication. The author stated that she had never cared about being a prolific writer, that she labored for years over each book. She writes sentence by sentence looking for just the right word (sounds like Flaubert). I began to read The Little Friend more carefully and take note of her style. I found many visual images and similes and metaphors which struck me as just right. (for example, she describes death as a collapsed bridge gaping in the dark). Aside from a few pages describing strung-out meth head delusions I read each page and was sorry when the novel came to an end. I will miss Harriet and should the author ever write a second novel about her I would gladly read it. I have read that a third Tartt novel will come out in 2012 and I look forward to it.

I found this book to be worth the time invested in reading it. Possible spoiler follows. Having now read this and The Corrections I think I can isolate two concepts important to Franzen: family and forgiveness.

Stopped watching this one half-way through. Trite and preachy like so many of Denzel’s recent movies.

This book made me think. It concerns a young Irish woman who comes to Brooklyn in the 1950’s to find work. I was getting pretty annoyed with her near the end until I realized that she allowed herself to be the pawn of others (probably not so unusual for a woman of that time, or indeed of anyone at any time) and that this personality trait governed and directed her life. I’m happy to say that one of the blessings of getting older is that many people stop caring so much about what other people think.

I nearly threw in the towel around page 333 but some of the reviews I read pulled me back. Indeed things greatly improved in the next fifty pages or so and remained quite interesting for the rest of the narrative. I am now looking forward to the second book in the trilogy.

This one made me squirm.