The Week in Loot

In case you’re wondering why I haven’t posted in the past few days, it’s because I’m trapped in the holiday frenzy — Christmas shopping to complete, presents to wrap, parties to attend and the horrible city traffic. Plus the dawn masses have started and I wake up at 4am to go, so I’m running on very little energy at the moment. Hopefully normal blogging resumes after Christmas, but I’ll try and post more before then.

Anyway, I was supposed to be shopping for books on other people’s wishlists, but they’ve been elusive so far, and I’ve illicitly gone a-looting for myself (I promised not to buy any more books for myself until Christmas, but I’ve given up on that) because well, the holiday stress was getting to me and book shopping is therapeutic (and yes, I have no self-control)!

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The Fire and the Hornet’s Nest


Last week, I decided to finished reading the rest of the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson.

I found the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo an engaging read — it took a while to get into the story but absolutely compelling when it hit the groove. I admit I was a bit apprehensive about the rest of the series, because I kept hearing opposite opinions about it. One side emphatically insisted the series gets better in books 2 and 3, the other side insisted, with equal gusto, that the first book was the best of the bunch.

I liked the first book enough that I thought I’d miss out if the next two books did turn out to be better, so I went ahead and got myself the next two books in the series. There were no more trade paperbacks available anywhere (my TGWTDT s a trade paperback) so I settled on the UK mass market paperbacks, which looked like they had better paper and binding than the first, and they’ve held up pretty well through the first reading — spine creasing not so pronounced — although now they’re crying out for me to “upgrade” them. I hope bookstores would restock the trade paperbacks; I don’t know how long I can resist getting the nice hardcover set tempting me from the bookstore window!

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Reading time!

I’m not  a terribly vain person, but there is a reason I like going to the salon — I get some reading done! The, erm, “beautification” is an added bonus.

This year has kept me pretty busy that I’ve rarely had time to read for very long, and I have to consciously jump at all opportunities for reading, including, to the amusement of my officemates, that snippet of time after the afternoon bell has rung, and I’m waiting for the rest of them to shut down their terminals and pack up their stuff.

Anyway, last weekend, I threw some books into a totebag and headed to the salon for a hair rebond. I get my hair rebonded once a year, because it saves a lot of time fussing about hair all year round and drastically reduces the frequency of bad hair days (especially in the humidity!).

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

 

 

I’ve always wanted to read Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — I’ve actually had a copy sitting on my shelf for several months now, but for a while there was some hype about it and I wanted to wait for it to dial down a bit. And then when I was looking for a book to read this weekend, the chartreuse cover got my attention so I finally took it out of its packaging, covered it in protective plastic (of course), and started to read it.

Originally written in Swedish, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. The novel has won multiple awards, including Sweden’s Glass Key Award in 2006 for best crime novel of the year, the 2008 Boeke Prize, the 2009 Galaxy British Book Awards for Books Direct Crime Thriller of the year, and the 2009 Anthony Award for Best First Novel.

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Fables and more

Saturday was the Flips Flipping Pages Book Discussion on Bill Willingham’s Fables: Legends in Exile, led by our youngest-ever moderator, 13-year old Paolo.

I read my Fables deluxe edition back in March (I had it signed by James Jean in December) and I enjoyed it a lot, so I was looking forward to discussing it with the Flippers.

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