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What I’m Reading Now 25

Posted August 18, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.

What I’m Reading Now: The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson
What I Just Finished Reading: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (2009)

First off, consider this a spoiler alert. I’m not going to give away any of the key mysteries, but some folks don’t want to know anything ahead of time.

I don’t read a lot of popular fiction, but this book was so well-reviewed, I figured I’d give it a try.

I read books every day at lunch. Waiters invariably ask me what the book I seem so engrossed in is called so they can pick it up. They are usually nonplussed when I tell them it is John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion or In Praise of Folly by Erasmus.

Some books I read can be downright dangerous. One year I was reading up on the Second World War. I brought a copy of Mein Kampf to a restaurant. The waiter came up to me and said “If I was Jewish, I’d punch you in the mouth.” I stopped reading A. Hitler outside my home.

So it has been sort of thrilling to read a book that people actually recognize. Almost everyone tells me they have either read the book or are about to read it. It is a sort of adult Harry Potter phenomenon. Nothing wrong with that.

And the book is really pretty good. But it also tells me why I don’t usually like the genre.

First, there is the fact that in books of this type, written by middle aged men, the boss almost invariably sleeps with his new, much younger, assistant. Which makes me feel like I’ve been neglecting my duties as a supervisor these past 20 years.

Second, there is the whole scattered morals of the heroes. For example, they do something to protect a client that leaves the families of several disappeared women wondering for eternity what happened to their daughters. Without any real reflection on the issue at all.

But, it is summer and this is the nature of the summer book.

What I’m Reading Now are occasional blogs that I post when I start a new book. They are not always immigration related. Here are some other notes I’ve written on books I’ve finished since September 2009:

23. Custerology by Michael Elliot

22. The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Littlebighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick

21. American Passage: The History of Ellis Island by Vincent Cannato

20. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 by Mary Beth Norton

19. Roger Williams: The Church and the State by Edmund Morgan.

18. Night by Elie Weisel.

17. Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick.

16. Champlain’s Dream by David Hackett Fischer.

15. American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson by Eve LaPlante.

14. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson.

13. Einstein by Walter Isaacson

12. The Possessed by Elif Batuman.