November 2010 - First to thirteenth

61) The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Steig Larsson,724 pages, Penguin Canada, 2006
WHY I PICKED IT: Second book in a trilogy, recommended by Rachel Menk
ELAPSED TIME: 2 Days
RATING: Very Good.

If you liked the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, you'll like this book.  Great plot, well written, the right amount of back story interspersed with the main plot...  Larsson has created engaging characters that are all likeable in different ways... Long books can be hard to read because they typically weigh you down with long time lines.  This book avoids that with a multitude of parallel interconnected characters all moving at the same pace through the four months that are this book.

62) The Confession, by John Grisham, 418 pages, Doubleday, 2010
WHY I PICKED IT: I like a good John Grisham as mindless entertainment once in a while
ELAPSED TIME: 2 Days
RATING: Good.

The story of a man on death row... wrongly convicted nine years earlier... and the guilty man on the outside who finally wants to come clean.  This story, like most of John Grisham's is entertaining and absorbing, without being mistaken for literature.

63) Steig Larsson, My Friend, by Kurdo Baksi, 144 pages, Viking Canada, 2010
WHY I PICKED IT: Because his crime fiction is fantastic; because he died before finishing the complete story of Lisbeth Salander
ELAPSED TIME: 4 Days
RATING: Good.

Wow.  This man was fantastic.  That he carved out the time to write such phenomenal stories is fantastic... but his other work, was his real work.  A tireless advocate for tolerance and acceptance - to fight injustice in all forms - racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia... from a white man from rural Sweden, this is fantastic.  The book itself tries hard to show both sides of the man, while keeping his personal life out of it... in that Baksi and succeeded, while displaying the true depth of the friendship and the sense of loss that he suffered when Steig Larrson passed away.

64) Three Day Road, by Joseph Boyden, 382 Pages, Penguin Canada, 2005
WHY I PICKED IT: Recommended by Jennie Olden
ELAPSED TIME: 2 Days
RATING: REQUIRED READING

Wow.  What a gripping story.  Isabel Allende said it better than I could possibly: "A beautifully written and haunting story of survival and innocence shattered, of friendship, death, redemption, and love of the land... Please, please don't miss it!"  For the last two days, Little Bird has been in my life... I feel like I have gone to war with him, and now he is gone.  I will miss him.