The Book Club
Brooke’s Book Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
I started a book club this year to help keep me from sliding into an illiterate funk and, so far, it’s been quite successful. In addition to our first official book club selection, “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson, I’ve also re-read two of my favorite books by my favorite writer, Arthur Nersesian.
The first meeting of “The Bookies,” as I stupidly named us, took place at a Mexican resturant and not so coincidentally fell on half-price margarita night 
I think having most of the members drink giant punch-sized bowls of alcohol really aided in stimulating the conversation.
Only one member admitted to not reading any of the book, one person half finished it, and two members had the ingenius idea of sharing the book. One member read the first half, the other member read the second half, then they filled each other in on what happened. NOTE: This is NOT the kind of book you can start in the middle and know what the hell is going on, as evidenced by the fact that that member was totally lost on the plotline.
There is A LOT going on in this book, so I’ll sum it up by picking out some key highlights:
*** A journalist with a tarnished image is hired by an old, wealthy man to solve a decades long mystery involving his niece, who vanished one day and was never heard from again. Okay, that is the main plotline.
*** There is a sub-plot involving a private investigator (who is actually the girl with the dragon tattoo) and let’s just say something really, really bad happens to her and she gets MAJOR revenge. It involves her using a butt plug in a very interesting way. Enough said.
*** There is also a serial killer in the story and in one of his crimes he kills a woman who owns a pet shop and shoves a parakeet up her vadge. NOTE: I own two parakeets and just threw up in my mouth thinking about my birdies going anywhere near my lady parts.
So, this book does have some twisted parts and it is set in Sweden so you have to get past all the foreign names, but once you get past the first half you CANNOT put the book down. I stayed up one night reading until 3:00 A.M. just to see what would happen next. It’s seriously that good.
Our February pick is “Lamb” by Christopher Moore. It’s the story of Jesus as told by his childhood friend Biff. What, you never heard of Biff before? Well, looks like you better start reading!
Hooked On Phonics
I used to be a fairly avid reader, but over the last few years, my reading skills have declined significantly. Enough so that I’m amazed I don’t need to use “Hooked On Phonics” just to get through my People Weekly magazine. To remedy this sad situation, I decided to start a book club for myself and my friends.
We’re called “The Bookies” ( I know it’s a tad gay, but I couldn’t come up with anything better) and so far we have 11 members, although some just joined for the monthly meetings which will involve alcohol, so we’ll see how many people actually read the book I picked. We’re going to meet on the first Thursday of the month, so our first official meeting won’t be until February. I’ll be writing a review of each book we read, along with what everyone in The Bookies thought of it. So…this should be interesting.
If anyone would like to read along with us, our first book is “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson. I’m about half-way through and it’s really intriguing so far. My friends mom read it and told her there was some kinky sex stuff involved, but up until last night everything I read was pretty tame. And then I got to the chapter she must have been talking about because *SPOILER ALERT* one of the main characters gets raped…anally…with a butt plug. But it’s cool because they get an AWESOME revenge on their attacker. I can’t wait to see how it finishes out! Happy reading!
