The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The book club decided to jump on the "everyone's reading it" bandwagon with this month's selection of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. A long-time frequenter of just about every best seller list imaginable--from the time it was published in 2008 to today--this Swedish novel sparked our interest, and we decided to see just what was so special about the first in this three-part mystery series.

Robert Dessaix of The Sydney Morning Herald describes the book as such: "An epic tale of serial murder and corporate trickery spanning several continents, the novel takes in complicated international financial fraud and the buried evil past of a wealthy Swedish industrial family. Through its main character, it also references classic forebears of the crime thriller genre while its style mixes aspects of the sub-genres. There are references to Astrid Lindgren, Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, as well as Sue Grafton, Val McDermid, Elizabeth George, Sara Paretsky, and several other key authors of detective novels. A journalist and magazine editor in Stockholm until his death, Larsson reveals a knowledge and enjoyment of both English and American crime fiction. He declared that he wrote his opus for his own pleasure in the evenings after work."

Did the book club agree? The members who took part in the meeting seemed divided: some liked it and were already on the second and third books in the Millennium Trilogy; others didn't know what all the hype was about. Buy the book on Amazon.com if the intrigue of this mystery has pulled you in, then post your thoughts below!

Let the Great World Spin

Laura selected the book for last night's meeting: Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin. A 2009 National Book Award winner, a New York Times Bestseller, Amazon.com's 2009 Book of the Year, and one of Oprah's 25 Books of Summer, this title obviously has much critical acclaim to its name. Luckily, this time, the members who attended agreed: the novel was well-written, had characters one could identify with, and was overall a very enjoyable read.

The book, which is told from the perspective of many seemingly unconnected characters, is underlined by funambulist Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in 1974. (The event was also highlighted in the 2008 documentary Man on Wire.) Not unlike the movie Crash or the television show Lost--although not in the least bit cheesy, campy, or unrealistic--this single event ties together the lives of everyone from an Irish priest to a group of mothers who lost their sons in the Vietnam War to a bunch of prostitutes working the stroll beneath the Major Deegan--raising to mind the theme that while everything in our lives happens by chance, some things happen for a reason.

While the majority of the book takes place in the 1970s, when the World Trade Center was being completed, its timeline spans into 2006 and makes an unobtrusive comment on the world post-9/11.

The book spurred some great discussion topics last night, from perspectives on death to John Mayer and bathing suits, but the overall consensus was that it was a worthy read. Buy it from Amazon.com, or read more about it on Colum McCann's website. And of course, comment on it below!

A Short History of Women

So for our inaugural book club meeting, Naz and Ally picked a book that we thought would represent the spirit of our girl's-only book club: Kate Walbert's A Short History of Women.

We selected the book based on its New York Times review:

"Nearly everything about Kate Walbert’s new novel is wickedly smart, starting with the title: “A Short History of Women.” Does it connote modesty or grandeur? “Short” sounds modest. “History” sounds grand — grandiose, in fact, when affixed to a work of fiction. But “Women” clinches it: modest, then. After all, what more trifling subject could one elect to research? Such, at any rate, is the prevailing view in the world inhabited by Walbert’s characters — all five generations of them. One of the book’s accomplishments is that it persuades us that this sentiment holds no less currency in 21st-­century America than it did in late Victorian England. But Walbert’s primary concerns — unlike those of some of her characters — aren’t political. Her writing wears both its intelligence and its ideology lightly. No manifesto, this is a gorgeously wrought and ultimately wrenching work of art." (Read more from reporter Leah Hager Cohen's review here.)

Sounds good, right?

Well, members of the club disagreed greatly with Ms. Cohen's opinion. General consensus: not worth your time. Chime in below on how you felt about the book!