Mystery Monday: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

It's thrilling, fast-paced, and unpredictable. The late Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is today's Mystery Monday.

Caution: this book is not for the faint of heart or stomach. Larsson is brutally honest with his character's lives and gives gruesome details about murder and assault.

For those of you who can get past all that brutality... you're in for a treat.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo takes place in Sweden and follows two main characters as they try to crack the case behind the disappearance of a girl in the 1960's. I loved the foreign language thrown in every now and then--I felt like I was constantly reading an Ikea catalog. Interestingly enough, the author died in 2004. His manuscripts were published by his girlfriend after he died. There was a Swedish film made after this book, and rumors are flying that a Hollywood film is next.

Good:

• Very unique characters, especially Lisbeth Salandar. She's a private investigator covered in tattoos and body piercings. She's a walking conflict: very relatable and different at the same time. 
• The storyline is divided into subplots, and all of them have surprises. It's not very often you read a mystery thriller that is as unpredictable as this one.

Bad:

• As I said before, if you can't handle explicit material, don't pick up this book. Or... you could always just skip those parts.

Rating:
4.5 stars

beauty school drop out

today i got my first manicure.
it was delightful.
i'm a terrible nail biter, so it took weeks of self-control to stop from nibbling off any whiteness. but now, all my weeks of not biting have paid off. i have pretty fingers.

but i'm starting to think that i should have gotten them teeth style.

i'll fly away

i love airports. yesterday i was in three of them. in the past eight months, i have been on a plane eight times. that's eight different airports. six of those flights were crammed within three months. i am a pro at navigating airports.

before i flew to paris last september, i hadn't been on a plane since i was five years old (except for the time i went skydiving, but that doesn't count because i jumped out of the plane). i was nervous and didn't know what to do. i called up my cousin-friend laura and told her my fears (cousin-friends are nice. you should get one).

she said, "airports aren't bad. in fact, i love them because you are always going somewhere exciting or coming back from somewhere exciting."

and just like that, i knew i would love them. and i do.

i always sit next to the window. i love to look at the clouds and imagine what it would feel like if i was a giant goddess and i could run my fingers across the fluffy things. the two coolest things i have ever seen from a plane are the grand canyon and iceland.

i love to fly.

rebel yell

guess who can't audition to be an anchor for the daily news at noon because her hair is too long?

your's truly.

retaliation is inevitable.