books I love

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08
Mar 10

Books I Love: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

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The best books are always the ones that come out of left field and grab you by the collar and force you to sit down and devote all your free time to until you've turned the last page.

Then, and only then, can you catch your breath and truly appreciate the ride. 

As you can judge by the title of this blog post, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is one of those books.

My brother recommended it to me last year, so, at his suggestion, I took it with me to jury duty.

Due to a glitch in the system, my name was never entered into the pool of potential jurors, so I sat and read until they released us.

And that's probably a good thing, because I was prepared to be held in contempt of court if that meant I could keep reading.

The book, which takes place in Sweden and is presented in the classic "closed-room"style made famous by so many other authors, follows the story of former reporter, Mikael Blomkvist, and superhacker, Lisbeth Salander, as they are hired by a Swedish industrialist to determine what happened to his great-niece, who disappeared decades ago.

What appears on the surface to be just another cold case, the books seeks to exploit some of the less-than-favorable attitudes about the treatment of women in this Nordic country. But if you think the story is just a thinly-veiled attempt to rail against current practices, you're dead wrong.

There is a depth to the main characters and story that you don't often get in your run-of-the-mill thrillers. And, rightfully so, since the late author, Stieg Larrson, had originally planned to write at least eight books in this series. Sadly, he died of a heart attack after he turned in the first manuscript.

The only drawback is that the first 60 pages, or so, can be kind of a bear to get through, what with the somewhat dry talk of the financial scandal that ultimately lands Blomkvist in jail. 

If you can get through that (and I strongly suggest that you do) the rest of the book more than makes up for it.

This book as become my go-to book recommendation for anybody in search of a good read. If you're looking for one, you'd be hard-pressed to find something better.

 

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23
Nov 09

Books I Love: Thunderstruck

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What do Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian inventor who discovered wireless telegraphy, and Hawley Harvey Crippen, the diminutive American doctor accused of killing his wife in cold blood, have in common?

They were key players, albeit indirectly, in the first made-for-tv car chase, which contained neither tv's nor cars, but instead, wireless communication and transatlantic ocean liners.

In the summer of 1895, Marconi, who was trying to perfect the idea of wireless communication, moved his experiments outside his lab/attic and discovered he could transmit messages long distances using electromagnetic waves. From that success, he was able to seek out assistance from the British post office to fund further experiments.

In the year 1910, Dr. Crippen poisoned his wife in their London home and claimed she moved to California to cover up her disappearance. To escape the authorities that were closing in on what really happened, Crippen and his lover, Ethel Le Neve, altered their appearances and tried to escape to America via Canada on the SS Montrose.

Thanks to Marconi's wireless device, which was now installed on most ocean liners of the day, the captain of the Montrose was able to send messages, while en route on the open sea, that he suspected Dr. Crippen was a passenger on his ship.  While he wined and dined the doctor into a false sense of security, people all over the world followed the chase through newspaper coverage fueled by regular updates sent via these magical wireless devices.

(Think of it as a slowly evolving OJ Simpson chase, only with a different verdict.)

When the Scotland Yard investigator chasing the doctor stepped on board to arrest him as the ship approached Canada, Crippen's fate was sealed. And with the arrest, and subsequent analysis of the crucial role Marconi's device played in the apprehension, the importance of instant communication was was forever set in stone.

Our world would never be the same.

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25
Oct 09

Books I Love: In Cold Blood

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In 1959, two ex-convicts traveled to Kansas for what they were led to believe was an easy score.

According to one of their former cell mates, a wealthy farmer from Kansas hid a large amount of cash on his property, and it was ripe for the picking.

The plan was simple: steal the cash, kill the family, and escape to Mexico. But only two parts of the plan came to fruition. They never found any money.

A brief about the unsolved murders in The New York Times captured enough of author Truman Capote's attention to cause him to convince fellow author Harper Lee to accompany him to Kansas so he could write about the crime before any arrests had been made. He spent six years on it — including interviews with the suspects – before it was published in four parts by The New Yorker.

Six years. That's equivalent to six decades in today's tweet-it-before-you-prove-it news cycle.

If Capote spent six years on a story today, the publisher would laugh him out of the building when he turned in his manuscript.

But Capote worked in a time when there wasn't as much urgency; you could let a story simmer before serving it to the public. You could make sure every word was accurate without somebody breathing down your neck to throw up something half-assed because they didn't want to be the last to file the report.

Obviously, those days are history, which makes this book somewhat of a recent relic.

I highly recommend it.